Twenty years

The “till death do us part” component didn’t work out as planned, but it’s still pretty cool to have been there twenty years ago today for this major event that was a direct precursor to marriage equality in the U.S. I’d actually forgotten until I found myself having to type today’s date a few minutes ago.

So happy anniversary to all four thousand of us!

New Year’s Eve

New Year’s Eve:

  • 1979-1980: I get drunk for the first time. I also get caught by my parents getting drunk for the first time.
  • 1981-1982: Someone hits my car just as I’m getting started on what turns out to be the last heterosexual date I will ever subject myself (or anyone else) to.
  • 1984-1985: I spend the night with a boy I have a major and obsessive crush on. Nothing happens. Sigh.
  • 1994-1995: I’ve just broken up with someone. I go to a quasi-legal party at a warehouse down the street in San Francisco. It gets raided.
  • 1999-2000: Millenium party with accordion accompaniment.
  • 2008-2009: On a very cold night, the ex and I find ourselves on the wrong side of downtown Pittsburgh for the fireworks.
  • 2010-2011: Most depressing New Year’s Eve ever. Enough said.
  • 2012-2023: Done with this shit.

Other than 1974-1975, when I was ten years old and at Disney World, I’m hard pressed to think of a single New Year’s Eve that was memorable for actually being enjoyable. Maybe that’s why I pretty much just say “fuck it” at this point. I never liked New Year’s Eve. It’s nice no longer having to pretend to. I was even sort of faking it in the photo above from 35 years ago…and who the hell are those people?

For the record, this year I invited a Spectrum tech over for an early date at 4PM. His repair didn’t “take” and now I get to see another Spectrum tech at 9AM on New Year’s Day. Good thing I won’t have a hangover.

I do have collards, Hoppin’ John, and pork things for tomorrow. Nothing changes New Year’s Day (to coin a phrase).

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

 

 

R.I.P.

I found out about two weeks ago that one of my oldest friends (and my backyard neighbor as a child) was killed in a car wreck recently. We were pretty good friends through high school, which was a bonus for me because I didn’t have many. We worked together at McDonald’s (hold your tongue) and I had both my first beer and my first cigarette with him. We had not stayed close over the years but I would run into him once in a while since his mother still lived across the yard from my parents. He had sort of a rough childhood, with an abusive, alcoholic father and a very sweet mother who always seemed a little “off.”

As it happens, I also introduced him to his first wife. She was a high school friend and they married probably right as he graduated from college. They were among the first few people I ever came out to. I was in their wedding. I also sort of new it was not going to last, and I was right. I liked both of them, but they were not a match made in heaven. I think they split up after a few years; I was living somewhere else at the time and we’d sort of lost touch. He remarried twice after that and had three daughters.

Anyway, I was looking online to see if there would be a memorial service and I was also wondering if anyone had told his first wife. When I looked her up, I found that she had also died about four years ago (cancer, I think).

So that made for kind of a depressing day. A lot of my good friends have died young, and most of them not from the causes you might expect.

Sigh…

Ancient history

I did this over at the other site (you know, the one that actually still gets traffic) and I thought it might be fun to do it here too. This is what the site looked like twenty years ago this month, with all its typos and turn of the century elegance. I don’t think it looks too bad in retrospect.

 

 

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.

 

 

Otherstream at 26

Having arrived today at its 26th birthday, this site has now lasted more than twice as long as my relationship with the city it was originally about. To say that it has changed my life would be a tremendous understatement. To say that it’s as big a part of my life as it once was would be a tremendous overstatement.

In that spirit of laziness, feel free to look at older retrospective (and often self-indulgent) tributes as I cannot be bothered to create a  new one this week:

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.

A productive pandemic

When I get overwhelmed or start wondering where the last year went, I remind myself that since March I have:

  • Co-authored a book that should be published later this year
  • Migrated one of the largest library digital collections in the state to a new content management platform (link later)
  • Participated in the salvation of American democracy
  • Added a bunch of new cities to Groceteria
  • Eighty-sixed Facebook
  • Rebuilt a friendship that had been dormant for almost thirty years
  • Watched at least a hundred vintage episodes of “What’s My Line?”
  • Become disturbingly conversant in the MODS metadata schema as well as several new XML tools
  • Supervised three student capstones and independent studies
  • Managed to avoid getting a COVID-related illness
  • Done a few pretty good media interviews (radio, national magazine, well-trafficked blog)
  • Read many good books (and bought way too many more)
  • Never hoarded toilet paper and also never run out of same
  • Managed three big grant projects simultaneously and remotely
  • Only gained about five pounds and actually ended up with better labs than last year
  • Stayed reasonably sane

Try it yourself. It helps!

Silver anniversary

1996. Damn, was I ever really that young?

I thought about letting this post be my farewell to a site that’s long past its “sell by” date. My web presence is officially old enough to have graduated from college and to have lived on its own for a few years. I should probably think about turning its bedroom into a den or a library or a dungeon or something. Otherstream (or its predecessor) has outlasted six cars (sort of), five computers, four addresses, three area codes, two years in grad school, and one husband. All the other blogger kids stopped doing this years ago. And honestly, I mostly stopped doing it years ago as well.

In the past 25 years, I’ve gone from being an underemployed retail manager in San Francisco to a tenured university faculty member and librarian in North Carolina. I’ve successfully negotiated two major medical crises and many major financial crises. How we’ll I’ve navigated the several personal crises depends on your perspective. My hobby is travel now rather than sex. I spend my money on books rather than beer. I like to think I’ve becoming a more interesting and pleasant person to be around even though I was becoming much less social even before it was mandated by the current public health environment.

Most of my creative energy now goes into work and into Groceteria.com, though you can still find my random personal and pop culture sharing on Twitter. I’ve made lots of really good friends here, some of whom are even still around. Thanks!

Anyway, I’m not committing to updating in the future. But I’m also not committing to not updating in the future. I no longer have several hundred people checking in every day like I once did, so I imagine there will not be much anguish and distress either way. It’s pretty much just down to what I care about at this point. And I’m now old enough that I don’t stress over things nearly as much as I used to.

I did the big nostalgia thing five years ago. But I should probably do something to celebrate this time too, right? After all, it is still McRib season…