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| Perspective.One of the things I like most about the circle of folks I hang with is that I have friends of all ages. One of my favorite people turned 60 this year. Now, I have friends his age for-sure, but this man is different: He's been self-identified as a gay man since about 1966.
I had dinner with him tonight, and were discussing our various coming-out experiences. He doesn't always, but sometimes, you can get him talking...
What I can't get over is what it must have been like to come to terms with being gay back then, three years before Stonewall. Think about it... you know you're into other men, but you don't have any framework or context about what that means... there's no bars, no role models... no nothing.
As if that weren't difficult enough, there were laws against it, families were seldom so accepting as they are now, and you were likely to lose your job if it became public knowledge that you even WANTED to have sex with another man... it was VERY taboo.
I know that some people will argue that it's not easy nowadsys, either, and that's true. But when people my age were coming out, we had people like him who had written about what they went though, we had clubs to join and switchboards to call and radio shows to listen to (which, incidentally, my friend was hosting when I was listening, just as he hosts it today.)
So I don't really have a point, other than how happy I am to have a good life, and I really do think that the life I have is owed in a large part to people like him, who were not afraid to live their lives on their own terms, way back in 1966.
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| Perspective.In 1999, I lived in Corpus Christi, TX. I had a good job and made decent money. Lived in an apartment that was across the street from the beach. Corpus is not an expensive city to live in and so I lived well. I was miserable. It is not a time of my life that I think fondly of. In the last nine years, I've done a lot of work on myself. There is no question that I've come a long way. While I certainly made some friends in Corpus, I only lived there 10 months, so I didn't keep in touch with anyone. This weekend, I went to Corpus for the first time since I moved away. As luck would have it, I was to attend a function in a bar that I once frequented (if by "frequented" you mean "drank away his life every night.") A few times this weekend, I ran into people I hadn't seen since I left. They all, each and every one of them, told me that I looked happy. I mean, I am, and there's no doubt that I was far from happy when I was here, but the perspective is nice. I was quite happy to run into friend of mine, a tell-it-like-it-is lesbian friend of mine. She was and is a person I respect very much. And she, too, told me that I looked good... younger... and... happy. I was glad to hear it, but asked her, "Was I really so miserable looking when I was here?" She told that it wasn't that I LOOKED bad (hell, in your mid-twenties, who does?) but that she always felt sorry for me because she knew that I wasn't happy... wasn't well. She told me she prayed for me when I lived there, and sometimes when she thought of me, she still did (which was... touching) and that laying eyes on me, seeing me "at peace" gave her joy. I was quite moved by all of this. So here I am: happy (mostly) and healthy (mostly) and grateful I survived that time in my life and found the peace I worked so hard for. I know it's a process, and I know it can be fleeting, but I'm going to continue to work on it. I deserve that. In the meantime, I'm not waiting another 9 years to visit Corpus. I found out that I had friends there after all. And it's a beautiful city... you should visit sometime. | | |
| Save the Earth, Pollute your lungs?So from time to time, the tabacco company reps will circulate in the bars and give away cigarettes to anyone who shows an ID and fills out a form. I have friends who smoke, and since a pack of smokes is somewhere north of 8 bucks these days (I guess, I don't know for sure how much they are) I thought I'd be nice get some for a friend. So now, I'm on the Evil Cancer Vendor's mailing list. They send me tons of stuff, mostly coupons, which I pass along to my friends. A few months ago, I got a huge cardboard thing in the mail that barely fit in my mailbox. Inside were more coupons, which was odd, and I recall thinking, "wow, this is a real waste of paper." But that was the end of it for me. Well, it must have stuck in lots of people's craw, because I got THIS email today: I don't know why, but I find this VERY ironic. I mean, I know that you can't generalize, but why would a smoker be so concerned about the environment? They SMOKE. Their nasty habit pollutes the indoors so much it's not legal to smoke there anymore and the damange they do to their own bodies... well, why would they care about an ecosystem if they don't even respect their own? Perhaps saving the Earth is much more important than saving your own life. Who knew? And frankly, I'm a bit scared about living in a society where a TOBACCO COMPANY, a PEDDLER OF SOMETHING THAT KILLS has to be politcally correct. It's almost unsettling. | | |
| Current Obsession
Thought I would share the progress on the patio outside my apartment. My irises are transplanted into the pretty planters, and I think things are looking awesome! I think this is a nice way to say, "Welcome to Tim's." 
The lava rock was a nice touch, I think. Just as a history, I lived in my apt for 2 solid years with nothing outside... no so much as a cheap lawn chair for my smoking guests to sit in... I don't tend to do things until I'm prepared to over-do them and the real catalyst for this is some fag moved into our building and went apeshit buying furniture and plants and such for HIS patio, and suddenly my bare porch became my BARREN porch, and we were off... also: who knew this outdoor stuff was such big business? I swear... I'm gonna go broke... | | |
| Flying...In Terminal C of DFW Airport, you can have your shoes shined. You can order a Dell laptop from a kiosk. You can buy porno mags and shot glasses with a map of Texas on them. You cannot, however, find a goddamn Diet Coke. Pepsi. Fucking Pepsi EVERY SINGLE VENDOR has Pepsi. I can only imagine the damned agreement somebody signed with the Soda Devil to make this happen, but when I have to leave my damned house at 6 in the morning in order to make a flight, you do NOT want to fuck with my access to Diet Coke. And there, as I rounded another corner, I spotted it: A McDonald’s. McDonald’s ALWAYS has Coke products, but would the Evil Pepsi Agreement trump the McDonald’s corporate Evil Coca-Cola deal? Would it? I have NEVER been so relieved to see a Diet Coke logo. I ordered the biggest one they could pour me. I now feel human. The second leg of my journey is going to be just fine. We are saved, and now… I need to pee. | | |
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