1 Misconception about My Mind
Ok - I'm becoming a "big" boy, which is all good - but kinda embarrassing how some of my dress shirts fit me. The worst part is how chubby my cheeks get when I put on weight/muscle. I look like a Gerber baby on roids. Just so as not to confuse people into thinking I walk around suffering from inner turmoil on a daily basis, I am finally ready to unleash my Indian Summer Inspiration Musical Theme for Holden Caulfields Lover - "On a High" by Mr. Duncan "Admit You Sleep With Me and Talk Me for a Cup of Coffee in the Morning if You Had a Chance" Sheik :
I'm on a high, I'm on a high
there's nothing more to it
we are the sea and sky
and the blue that runs through it, yeah.
and then there are some who say there are so many things I need
so I run or I fight and I crawl or I scream and I bleed
I bleed, I bleed
well it's a lie, it's a lie - don't you believe it
if you're fine then you're fine - it's all how you see it
oh, there never will be no conspiracy of happiness
I'm on a high, I'm on a high
and there's nothing more to it
I have the sun, it's a star
why should I refuse it
and there are so many reasons - I could give you - why I should be down
there's not enough money or time and my love you're not around
around, around
well it's a lie, it's a lie - don't you believe it
if you're fine then you're fine - it's all how you see it
oh, there never will be no conspiracy of happiness
you're alive, you're alive - how else could you hear me?
you are fine, you are fine - there's nothing worth fearing
oh, there never will be no conspiracy of happiness
I'm on a high, on a high
we are the sea and the sky
I'm on a high, on a high
I'm on a high...
It's a lie, it's a lie - don't you believe it
Cause I've tried and I've tried, and can't really see it
Yeah I'm trapped inside my conspiracy of hapiness
said I was yours, you were mine but I didn't really mean it
and I lied and I lied
and I wish you hadn't seen it
'cause I'm trapped inside my conspiracy of happiness
This letter must seem a surprise to you, probably - if not completely - a little unwelcome.
How have you been all these many years ?
It's been what - 20 years, 25 years since I've thought of you. I'd be lying if I said there weren't flickers of you in my subconcious - crap let's be honest here - you fucking haunt me. Sometimes when I awake early in the morning - in those moments before dawn takes into my darkened bedroom, I almost feel like your there - afraid of what the day may bring. So I know, I know you have things to do - roll in autumn leaves, watch "Land of The Lost" on you and your older brother's 13 inch B&W TV, your chores and then climbing that tree on 2 Fairhill Road... busy, busy aren't you ?
But listen, we need to talk and in all fairness this isn't easy for me.
I so remember you, running off to Sabold Elementary in the morning , that messy head of chestnut brown hair - always a mop, that huge beaming smile ever present, almost as large as your gigantic brown eyes - you saw everything with those didn't you little big man ?? Huh - funny - I just realized that you did see everything with those big brown eyes - that must not always have been fun for you.
You know I can look back now and since I'm older and wiser and - well your still so young - I can see some things better than you.
Where do I start to say what I need to say to you - how do I find the words to say...
It wasn't your fault - your Mother drank and screamed and swore because she didn't know any better - you weren't the cause - it was like a cancer that had set up camp in her so many years before you were born.
It wasn't your fault - that you disgusted him, he couldn't understand - he wanted you pitching for the Phillies in the bottom of the ninth, no men on base with two outs and two strikes and the trophy almost in hand - but you wanted to be an artist, a writer or maybe just a human. His anger was his fuel, you were kindling in the fire without even trying - you cried because you were human - he hit you because he wasn't.
And then there was me.
It wasn't your fault - I left you
I'm sorry - there it's done. I'm sorry. I miss you.
See I was a coward, when things got tough I abandoned you - I went my own way. I couldn't stand to see you cry, I couldn't continue to make you laugh, I couldn't protect you from them - what they would do to someone like you - someone so good, so kind, so sweet and gentle. I didn't pull away all at once - there were many moments - our parents and their back-n-forth "for the sake of the kids" marriage-seperation-divorce-whatever, the violence, the drinking, the dirty old men pawing you, the bullies in school, and when we moved to Arizona I had to close up shop move on without you...by then I was 10 and things couldn't stay the same. You weren't tough enough for life at the house back in '79, you would cry and it was embarrassing and girly, you were letting them get to you - so see there had to be a split. I had to go my own way. I was able to not care - about anything. I was able to not love - anyone, and they couldn't hurt me - these were my super human powers. And you weren't ready to let men touch you - not the way I was. And you see I didn't like myself anyway - so they couldn't hurt me when they touched me even if things got scary - I had stopped feeling.
So let's face it I didnt even look back.
It's so hard to look at you now - to know what I've done. To know I left you when you needed me most.
Wow - funny I never realized what a tough little fella you were for just being all the things you were - just how tough you were to go on feeling anyway. All these years later - somehow we both survived.
I want you to know I'm here for you - I won't let "anyone" hurt you and I won't use my old ways to protect me or you.
We can do this.
I'm alive with you in me.
We can learn to feel,
it's ok to be in love,
we can reinvent ourselves,
we can make our own family - the two of us together.
Survive vb. 1 SYN , See OUTLIVE
2. To continue to exist or function in spite of an unsually adverse condition or development.
Outlast, Endure, Persist, Live Down, Recover....Continue
"The dance of recovery is owning and honring the emotional wounds so that we can release the grief, energy - the pain, rage, terror and shame that is driving us"
What are "your" rules of survival ? How do any of us become survivors - and what is it we think we are surviving?
Where did I perfect my game face - did I do it because I "had" to - is there a theory of "cause & effect" ?
The "Effect": I've wasted so much energy over the past 33 years trying to survive, forgetting to live.
But how does a survivor give up the one thing that has kept him alive - kept him passing the open windows ?
Maybe by learning the causes - by witnessing the effects.
Boozing, fist fights, drug habits, casual sex, failed relationships and a fear of letting people get close.
If I'm willing to look in the closet - are the shadows as scary ?
If I take inventory of my eccentricities, can I stop calling them faults ?
If I stop punishing myself for my parents unhappiness - can I find my own ?
I guess I wouldn't write it unless I was willing to find out.
What is your self-worth - worth ? Did you ever do an odd job in college, one that was completely (in your mind) beneath you - desperate for any infusion of cash that it may bring. I put my self through college on a variety of student loans that to date have been absorbed and consolidated and reconsolidated so many times that my eyes blur everytime I attempt to remember which one started when. I waited tables at some of the better restaurants in the "Valley of the Sun" and paid my dues as a "Cater Waiter" - which to this day still makes my shoudler ache just thinking about it. I did the grunt work for a landscaper - swinging a pick, mixing cement, digging holes, building walls in the scorching Arizona sun (often on the same days that I would have 16 credit hours and then be off to my waiter job that night)...I will never ever have a good back. But in the end money often ran tight and I swear I sold more clothing at Buffalo Exchange then they did. How often I walked into a bar to see someone wearing my favorite "Mr. Bubble" shirt or Lucky jeans - but a boy had to do what a boy had to do...
...this is where the pictures come in (bet I made those of you at work scramble to minimize the window!)
In the late Spring of 1996, with the Spring semester coming to a close - my GP at 4.00 and two classes left to graduate, I found out my loan elibility was saturated. My parents were scraping by helping my divorced sister - apparently battling third stage pancreatic cancer that had metastasized to other organs in her body - and my then 4 year old nephew get by since my sister couldn't work and the deadbeat ex-Brother-in-Law didn't pay child support. I didn't believe in "Sugar Daddies" and I had no guardian angels - just me trying to scrape by. I'm not stroking the "Hallmark Movie of the Week" emotion paint brush over this story - these were just the simplier facts - and suffice to say I was really shitty with whatever money I had in my pocket anyway. So then came the chance.
My roomate was successful and older and I lived in his big huge house that we rented from an even wealthier gentleman that lived in Moscow. This roomate wasn't the type you would even consider going to for money out of fear of what type of expectations that may arise. But he was friends with a very well known photographer out of the west coast and whose model boyfriend had barely missed out being Playgirls man of the year (sidenote: this guy was my fluffer for the shoot, that was a perk in this story) and is actually quite a photographer himself these days. So in my mid 20's and in fairly good repair (though crap do I ever look like "anything" but a daddy then) I "tested" to be photographed for Advocate Freshman (I was WAY, WAY to skinny and shaved to be considered for Advocate Men - though a mere 4 years later I was approached to pose for Honcho). Being "tested" means that the free-lance photographer wants to make sure you have what it takes in front of the camera and that the magazine will pick-up the costs of the shoot and he'll make his cash too. So I agreed to meet him at a friends house when he was in town for another shoot. He warned me not to over think it - just go business as usual, stop by and take your clothes off. Now at this stage in my life I didn't drink, didn't do drugs and wasn't sleeping around - so excluding the privacy of my bedroom or a boyfriend - I wasn't taking my clothes off much in front of strangers. I showed up at the appointed time after hitting the gym for an hour or so of anxiety weight-lifting wearing Umbro soccer shorts, sneaks, my favorite ASU sweat shirt and a very nervous smile. He took me in the garage and had me strip off piece after piece until I was down to a jock strap. I will be the first to tell you I look like shit in a jock-strap - it pushes and lifts me in all the wrong ways (it's like when you shove a pillow in to a pillow case and it sticks out in all the wrong places). So I was actually relieved to remove it. But so then there i was trying to be sexy next to this Jeep Wrangler in a cold cement-floored garage, hoping my dick looked big enough, my ass tight enough and oh yeah - your supposed to smile and look like it "really, really" turns you on to strip next to a Jeep Wrangler in a cold cement-floored garage, hoping your dick looks big enough, your ass looks tight enough and your smile -real.
I forget how many weeks went by (crap, are you still reading this or did you get bored and scroll back up to the pictures ?), maybe one, maybe two. The photographer called and said "Freshman" was really happy with the shoot but there was one problem - I didn't look very happy and I looked older then my age. To have someone mistake your age is one thing - but to have a national skin magazine that looks at boy after boy after boy stop and say you look old is well - not personally reassuring. So he flew back and took pictures of "just" my face, concentrating on better "natural" lighting and a little make-up (oh how this must be what it's like to be Liza Minelli - though NO lighting would make that muppet woman look natural). So the pictures went well and a shoot was approved which occurred on a fairly brisk May afternoon in the backyard of the home I was renting in. I begged my roomate to stay far - far away - i watched several porns stroking my cock, but not coming - hoping it would give me that healthy flacid girth. I did sit up after sit up, push up after push up, squats, a facial, a mud mask, a steamed rag - it was embarrasingly akward. I tried on speedo after speedo finally feeling best in a little black one I tanned in. When they arrived - the were pleasant but harried - it was getting late in the day and we only had so much sun - and oh that speedo I was wearing just wouldn't do -
HIM : "Here we brought you a red and yellow one to match the yellow swim cap your going to wear"
ME: "Oh - I didn't know I was going to wear a swim cap?"
HIM : "Well your hairs kinda thinning in the front - we're going for a boyish look here"
ME: *whimper*
I pulled the swim cap on which immediately put a red crease in my forehead - so when I pulled it off trying to look drop dead sexy - I looked ok sexy with a huge red line across my forehead...
HIM: "Ok we're gonna have to keep the cap on - go ahead and jump in the pool"
ME: "Um - it's like 40 degrees?"
HIM: "Ok - we'll hose you down"
ME: *yikes-shake-brrrrrr*
And so it went - me lavishing my shivering body in strange poses (like the "throw your head over your shoulder while your on all fours like an animal, then grabbing and pulling on your butt cheeks - which animals constantly do - all the while feeling "very natural" and did I mention "Drop Dead Sexy"?) around the pool as we began to lose daylight - and after a couple of hours - it was done.
Months went by and nothing. I would keep hearing it was going to be in the next magazine and then the next magazine and I would run to the local gay book store full of trepidation to find some well known porn star - far more attractive and exotic looking on the cover. So slowly it faded from my mind - the money spent on summer school, my graduating, my first job in marketing, my first love all moving it further and further from the list of "Important Things to Think About Today".
It was over a year later. Late July and I was attending a friends, a couples, anniversary party with my boyfriend. At one point in what was a charming evening I found myself standing with a group of six or more party goers chatting about our jobs, our common interests, our boyfriends - when a casual and not terribly liked aquaintance weasled his way into the group:
HIM: "I saw some pictures of you today"
ME: honestly, innocently - "Really - where?"
HIM: silence, instead opting for a incredibly classy "jerking off" hand motion
ME: "Pardon me ??!"
HIM: "Advocate Classifieds"
ME: "Classifieds ??"
HIM: "Yeah - it's one of the Advocate magazines - but it doesn't have alot of articles - just a lot of hook-up ads and stuff...your on the cover and the centerfold"
ME: *gulp*
So with jaws wide open and all eyes upon me - I began my fifteen minutes (or one month) of fame. When I snuck in to purchase a few copies with my boyfriend at the local Obelisk, the guy behind the counter told me "Yeah these have been selling like hot cakes - apparently he's a local guy" - since I wasn't wearing a tight yellow swim cap I didn't have the heart to tell him it was me. So then it began - those wide open jaws began to be flapping jaws. I was now a "Porn Star", some heard I was a "Male Prostitute", people would stop me at bars and in public to tell me "they had enjoyed jerking off to me', even close friends would inquire "your not really doing movies too are you??", my picture was thrown on party invitations, scanned into computers and used as chat room bait with someone else professing to actually be "me", and suddenly many people I had never even batted a drunken eyelash at were confiding to their friends "yeah - they had slept with me and I wasn't all that". Even years in to the future it would creep back into my life - when a prospective boyfriend would hear from someone about my "sordid" past, or even more alarming - when a gal from my HR department in my first Marketing Manager job told me at work that she had seen the naked pic of me in the "Ladies Room" at Pinkies Pool Hall.
So the lesson in this tale (and I know you may not have even made it this far) is that every action begets reaction - not always at that moment - but over every moment in time there after.
You'll be surprised when and where that moment will find you.
When I was 16 I was many things. Foremost was stupid. I lived outside myself - thinking by hovering somewhere beyond the realm of mediocrity, ornamental fruit trees and small single-family ranch homes in Mesa, Arizona - that I would evolve into Jack Kerouac, JD Salinger, Kurt Vonnegut - in short - brilliant and tortured by my own exceptional mind. I craved experiences - I romanced danger. I looked for trouble.
This is a story, I don't brag to my friends.
I met him at a party. He was strong, athletic, Hispanic boy of 17 - a compact muscular frame of 180 lbs and Five Foot Ten. He was a 2nd string QB on our high school team. He had grown a mustache because he could, he dropped out because he didn't know better and he was in many ways everything other boys envied: tough, intimidating and reckless. How odd it seems all these years later I can't even guess at his name. I stood waiting, leaning against an unopening bathroom door for what seemed like an eternity, I had never met him or even known of him, as he stood behind me - watching me intently. I grew weary of the wait and my bladder begged for release as I hurried out back and began to pee under a stair well of the back-side-of-the-tracks apartment complex. I became aware of someone standing behind me - I stiffened - they came closer and flanked my side. He stood next to me and pulled out his thick, uncut cock. My heart raced and my palms sweated - he slowly pulled his head up - his smile catching in a sliver of light coming from a neighboring window.
"Feels good doesn't it?", he questioned.
"Pissing ??" , I asked, feeling embarrassed and akward.
"Yeah, pissing, holding your dick in the air", he laughed. I quickly realized he was several beers past fine.
As I began to close up shop, he quickly reached over and grabbed my dick - embarrassingly a bit of pee releasing in his hand. My body jerked - forcing his hand to drop away. He spoke:
"Hey, hey - don't sweat it - I like dick too"
"Too ??", I stammered - too defensively, infused by terror and teenage horniness.
"Yeah - Melissa told me you suck dick" He continued, "So how gay are you?"
I can't remember my words at that point - I started phrases and dropped off - I neither denied or comfirmed. My mind was reeling. Was I being set up ? Was this being watched ? Fuck - no way this guy is gay ! Is he gonna beat the crap out of me ?
He started buttoning up his pants and started to walk away. I felt lost, desperate - standing there in the darkness, the unexpected, my dick still hanging out of my trousers - somehow feeling that it was a moment I had hoped for - but felt so uncomfortable now that it was here.
"Hey - wait up", I choked out. Somehow wanting to find a way to keep the moment alive.
He turned and held his index finger to his soft lips in a gesture requesting silence.
"My girlfriends inside", he whispered "I'll get your number and we can meet up tomorrow night"
My heart pumped at the rate of a speeding Ferrari. I barely slept that night - eaten alive by hope and excitement.
The next night we met at the local community college and wandered around the grounds. I gushed about my hopes for a life filled with fame and money, I spoke about how different I felt from the kids at my high school, I rambled on and on wanting desperately to make a connection to another man/boy. He lead me to the stadium, dark and ominuous at night without lights on the field and fans in the stand. He took me to a stairwell, not visible from the street and pulled me close to him. His lips and mustache brushed my neck, his arms larger and more powerful ensnared me, he pressed against me - into me - with force. He pulled my shirt aboove my head and rubbed his hands over my stomach and ass, he turned me around and ran his lips down my boyishly smooth back. He pushed against me as he undid my pants and let them slide to the concrete. I felt intoxicated, alive, sexy. His pressing and pushing strengthened, his hands slipped from my naked hips and pushed my arms over my head as he slowly pulled the crook of one arm against my neck. I felt a sharp pain as he hit my head against the wall, I felt quickly aware of how much bigger he was then me. My 140lbs at a 40lb loss to his strength - his fury. Suddenly it wasn't sexy - it was terrifying. I felt my larnyx bruising, I could hear myself gasping, tears welling in my eyes. His cock stiffened as he forced it between my legs - sloppily he jabbed left and right as he tried to force it in. I struggled, I screamed to let go of me. A second flash of pain as my head hit the wall.
"FUcKing SHUt UP, FaGgoT!!" he menancingly breathed into my ear. All traces of charm evaporated.
This time he found his target. A tearing feeling, a horrible burning pain, a moment filled with humiliation - as his rock hard cocked ripped into my flesh - opening up a place I had never let anyone go. I cried, I tried to fight - crap, CRAP - no, no, no, no, no, please GOD no...don't do this to me - please, oh, please, don't do this to me....what have I done - am I that bad, am I that unforgiveable - not like this, no, no, no, no, no, no...........
Suddenly there were white, blinding headlights. A car - other teenagers looking for a space to 'park' - flashing upon us, this horrific spectacle. He jumped off me - his cock ripping out of me more feircely then he had forced it in. He had barely pulled his pants up as he began to run, I had barely hit the ground before the people in the car began to scream:
"FAGGOTS - SICKO, FUCKING FAGGOTS!!!" as they drove away.
Devastated.
Crushed.
Ashamed.
I touched the pain, the burning heat and found I was bleeding. I started bawling, sobbing uncontrollably - shrinking away into the stairwell corner - wishing, praying, believing I was dead. Waiting for silence to offer my escape.
Later, as I crept into the quiet shoebox house, my sister was the only one still awake.
"Why are your crying?", she asked in a mixture of sibling suspicion and concern.
"Nothing, just a bad date", I numbly responded.
"Must of been - are you sure your ok ?" she asked
"Sure.", I said - not sure at all.
I went and hid in the bathroom for what must have been an hour, unable to clean the blood and shit off my underwear - I took them out to the garbage, ashamed to explain to anyone - especially my parents, what happened. I crawled into bed and cried some more - I had lost something I couldn't put my finger on...
hope,
innocence,
trust.
Finally after a session of tossing and turning, staring into space, I fell into a deep, deep sleep.
Beginning, trying, hoping to forget.
It's times like these that the "real world" with it's face-to-face, tactile, man-handling, hugs and kisses on the cheek, seeing what I look like at 8am on a Saturday morning fresh from bed (well - actually skanky from bed) or drunk at 1am searching the bar for self-assurance, self-recognition and self-confidence, wins out. The friendships I build in that world still come with those wonderful red velvet museum ropes - you know the ones that keep you from ever getting to close to the art - allowing you to see the beauty of the painting (whether it suits your personal taste or not is a different matter) - but not every brush stroke, every color, every detail. I can be guarded and I have some control.
In that "real" world I still risk building friendships with people who may find jobs in other cities, move across town to a bigger house with their new beau or even reach the expiration point of their lives (thank god we don't come with those damn freshness date stamps they now have on beer - wouldn't that freak me out - I EXPIRE when ???!!!!)...but if they do - I still am giving a chance to say goodbye, go to the going-away party, or drive across town (because I would) for the housewarming party or come to the wake and look down at you, tears filling my eyes, but a gentle smile curling across my lips as I think of a private joke.
You see in the real world - even if there is not always warning there is still more time to say goodbye. I don't flip through my links one day to realize that some people went away one day and never came back. I don't just show up at a web page to be confused by a cryptic message or a goodbye note. Leaving me somewhat wounded - a little hurt - and saddened at your loss.
I'm not slamming anyone here. Writing these things is an extremely personal issue for most - and for many it needs to serve a cathartic purpose and just like therapy of any form - sooner or later - it may not be needed. One day all of my jigsaw pieces: Work, Home, Family, Love and Sex may fall effortlessly, perfectly and wonderfully into place...and if they do I hope to write about them...and maybe at that point I may go away. But for me this blog has journaled over a year and a quarter of my life - I have walked back through every entry (some clever, some depressing, some lame, some wonderful) and been enlightened to the good, the bad and the ugly of who I am - and it is the people who have read me, and written me, and cared for me - that have made me feel so very alive - so incredibly connected to something so much bigger than I - the WORLD.
But it is easier in the real world and that's where I think I'll spend the rest of today - with my dog, with my friends, with my thoughts...
...though I promise you I'll be back.
