Category: Personal

When I was seventeen

 

When I was seventeen
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for tearoom sex at Four Seasons Mall
Hands under the stall
Sometimes faces unseen
When I was seventeen

When I was twenty-one
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for new wave boys with big trendy hair
We’d make a lovely pair
Till the weekend was done
When I was twenty-one

When I was thirty-five
It was a very good year
It was a very good year for backroom sex on Folsom Street
There was often a treat
Though the bar was a dive
When I was thirty-five

In observance of the day, I’ll be skipping the final verse about how old I am, thank you.

Sincere apologies to the Kingston Trio, Frank Sinatra, and Homer Simpson…

 

 

The state of the stream

Social

I swore off Facebook almost three years ago. I’m pulling back a lot on Twitter nowadays too, using it for what it does best: providing me with a reading list of material on other sites. I do still use Twitter to push the other site, but that’s mainly reposted photos from flickr and pushes from the RSS feed. I use Mastodon for that too, but let’s be real. No one seems to care that much about Mastodon. That said, no one seems to care that much about Twitter anymore either except as argument fodder. Response to my stuff is way down over the past six months since the Muskrat came into power.

I don’t really use social media to forge relationships or (Great Pumpkin forbid) get into arguments. I use it to stay updated on topics of interest and to find other things to read.

I probably won’t be posting much on Twitter going forward, but I will probably keep using it as a reading list as long as it serves that purpose well.

Personal

All in all, things are good. I had my annual physical recently and my fat, sedentary butt remains far more healthy than it has any reason to be.

I’m having, um, a milestone birthday next year and I’m thinking of taking a really huge road trip in celebration thereof. Maybe cross-country even. Or something that would knock out those last three states I’ve never visited (Idaho, Montana, and Alaska). Then again, there’s a reason I’ve never visited them.

Work is good too, though budget cuts, declining university enrollment, and the current political climate in my home state are a little terrifying. I think tenure will protect me for the six or seven more years I need it to. We’ll see on that.

Almost three years in, I’ve managed to keep on maintaining my daily (private) audio journal. My life will be well documented when I die, though I’m not sure anyone would (or should) care that much. But the archivist in me feels like it’s required.

I continue to hate spring.

Writing

I want to write about things, really, but it just ain’t happening.

Last but not least

Does anyone want to buy a slightly used house?

 

Another year closer to the “sell by” date

Another birthday celebration for Rosanna Arquette and Herbert Hoover is complete.

This year I celebrated the big day with schnitzel and beer at the Black Forest Inn in Hamilton, Ontario, as part of my first visit north of the border since the Before Times. It was a nice if uneventful trip. I opted to explore Hamilton and environs because I’ve been wanting to spend more time there and because I still plan to make my big Thanksgiving trip to Toronto in October. I explored, I bought books, I saw good friends along the way, and I even had some actual down time.

I think my “sell by” date will arrive when I no longer have the ability nor the desire to explore. Losing one of the two might even be sufficient.

That doesn’t mean I won’t stick around anyway. After all, look at this site. Its “sell by” date was years ago and yet here it still is…

It was 40 years ago today…

… that I first had sex with a man in a bed.

I’d had sex with men before, generally in sleazy cruising spots that were really the only option available to a queer teenager in North Carolina at the time, but I’d never gone home with someone and done it in a nice respectable apartment with a nice respectable bedroom.

I was 17 years old and was coming out with a vengeance. We met, as was the custom at the time among those of us too young for bars, at a tearoom at Four Seasons Mall. He was 23 and was (I swear) in a fraternity at UNC Greensboro. His apartment was actually just a couple of blocks from my house. I don’t remember a lot about the sex, but it was an important moment for me because of the location and because I actually had time to talk to the guy for a while. It’s one of the first times that ever happened for me, actually conversing with a fellow sodomite.

This encounter obviously made a big impression on me as I’ve never forgotten the date, and as I kept having sex with other men (many, many other men) over the years. I’ve seen many apartments and had many conversations. I even picked up another member of that same fraternity a couple of years later, quite by accident.

I’m happy to say that I don’t do frat boys or tearooms anymore, but I do still have sex on occasion. It usually happens in a bed now with someone I already know, so that part of the novelty has worn off.

 

 

2021 sucked…

…but not as much as 2011 did.

At least for me.

For sheer misery, that will be the one I remember till I die. I’m way past it now, but just thinking back to how miserable almost every day of that soul-sucking year was for me makes me cringe. As bad as it seemed at the time, I really don’t think I quite realized just how fucking dark a place I was in (for 2012 and part of 2013 too). It’s kind of scary in retrospect and I’m glad I finally got some help.

I like myself and my life a whole lot better now. In fact, I think I’d like myself even if I weren’t me. Mainly because no one else could parse that last fucking sentence. But also because I’ve now re-learned how to enjoy life and prioritize the important stuff. Usually, at least.

Anyway, if you have to make a New Year’s resolution, asking for help when you need it might be a good one.