tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-91250521002692393842024-03-13T01:03:49.196-04:00David W.ritesMemoir, thoughts, musings, and observations of a gay life lived in Brooklyn, formulated in Phoenix, and experienced in travels around the world.David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-90536203474599510202021-01-02T16:59:00.001-05:002021-01-02T17:05:11.389-05:001st Things 1st for a New Year....Face the Fear!<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>January 1st 2021, Brooklyn NYC </i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I did something very very brave today.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I got out the scale.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I stepped onto the scale.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I looked down at the number.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It was not a magic number (or a magical thinking number).</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">It was a number I could accept without defeat!</span></div>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-74427215589619826222020-11-29T12:52:00.007-05:002020-11-29T16:08:54.758-05:00<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Transgressive Paranoia: Thxgiving 2020</span></h2><p><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Brooklyn NY</i></span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">(Names removed to protect the narrowly deviant innocents.)</span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">D called C. Calling without first texting is transgressive and bold. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">Our annual Slothsgiving needed a go or no-go call. </span></p><p><span style="font-family: arial;">[Slothsgiving = friends and lovers and friends of friends who gather to eat what we want when want while wearing comfy clothes and watching serviceable and comfortable movies old and new until the collective stupor is so strong the evening and people attending drift away.] </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">D: Are we doing this?</span><div><span style="font-family: arial;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: arial;">C: Yeaaaaaaah. Right? We should. It's fine. When is Thanksgiving again?</span></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">D: NEXT WEEK!!!!</span></p></div><div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">C: We'll keep it small.</span></p></div><div><p><span style="font-family: arial;">D: Cap it at six!</span></p></div></blockquote><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">From the <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/holidays/thanksgiving.html">CDC Thanksgiving 2020 guidelines</a>: </span></p></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Gatherings with family and friends who do not live with you can <br />increase the chances of getting or spreading COVID-19 or the fl</i>u.</span></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i>Bring your own food, drinks, plates, cups, and utensils.</i></div><div style="font-family: arial; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div><span style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;">...but also...</div><div style="font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><i><br /></i></div></span><i style="font-family: arial;"><div style="text-align: center;"><i>Limit the number of guests.</i></div></i><div style="text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i>Have conversations with guests ahead of time<br /> to set expectations for celebrating together.</i></span></p></div><div><p style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: arial;"><i></i></span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">So it's a binary choice with options?</span></p></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">C: G wants to invite is German tutor.</span></p></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">D: That's fine. I trust you. We live our lives cautiously. </span></p></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">C: and his friend B.</span></p></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">D: You're good people you have good friends. I'm going to invite A.</span></p></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">C: Oh that's totally cool. I've seen his Facebook posts. He's exactly the right level of COVID safety vigilance plus outrage for me to feel comfortable with that. </span></p></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">D: What are even the right questions to ask? Before <a href="https://www.truvada.com/what-is-truvada/understanding-truvada">Truvada </a>we asked each other "When did you last get tested?" and still wore condoms and that was safe. Asking someone when they last got COVID tested seems less relevant when we're dealing with something airborne. Wearing a mask isn't the same as a condom. </span></p></div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">C: I'll get a COVID test before Thanksgiving. That covers G too cause we're the only people we see or spend time with.</span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Who was the last person I saw? </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">G's tutor dropped out. C says she felt duped because there would be 6, not 4 people. Without her, we were 5.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Thanksgiving Day warm weather made it just comfortable enough to open a few windows. I bought a second air purifier with a HEPA filter; also a box of disposable masks from Duane Reade ($30!) which sat mostly unused next to the <a href="https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1021628-cacio-e-pepe-cheese-puffs?action=click&module=RecipeBox&pgType=recipebox-page&region=all&rank=1">Cacio e Pepe Cheese Puffs</a>. Ceiling fans lightly moved the air. I live in a loft that was once a factory - large space, high ceilings. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">My neighborhood, however, could give one pause. South of South Williamsburg Brooklyn abutting Bed Stuy. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">November 8th the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/nyregion/williamsburg-jewish-wedding-coronavirus-covid-masks.html">Satmar sect of Hasidic Judaism held a 7,000 person wedding nearby, shoulder-to-shoulder, maskless</a>. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Elsewhere <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2020/11/nyc-underground-nightlife-covid-19.html#_ga=2.213752662.391035845.1606683513-353504002.1606683513&_gac=1.253055483.1606683517.Cj0KCQiAqo3-BRDoARIsAE5vnaLSLUObfEsnAy8fCu3dwxx6odvfxl8oJ73nn-UUS4xl1ROt3gTkv-gaAtniEALw_wcB">in Williamsburg/Bushwick ravers pray tell have been raving</a>, although 200-500 people is not 7,000, and from the pics some of them are really making masking cute. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">The Hassidim's COVID prevention abstinence has been strong and consistent since mid-March. Their anti-masking has been largely non-confrontational (and totally unchecked by NYC). Earlier that week I looked at the NYC cluster map and it was yellow near me. (I would have thought at least orange.) The red zone in Brooklyn is south and west. That is the Ocean Parkway Cluster. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">C G with B arrived first. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We hugged the way we hug now <b>before removing masks </b>- brief, arms up to our shoulders akimbo with heads strenuously in opposite directions with a light back pat and done.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I waved at B.</span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">D: (to B) I'm not going to mask indoors today. I'm not saying that as an anti-masker. I want you to know that you don't have to wear your mask to make me feel comfortable or safe.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">B: Thank you for saying that. I'm going to wear mine for a bit.</span></p></blockquote><p><span style="font-family: arial;">It sounded to me like "I need a minute and probably a glass of wine." </span></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">G: It's fine. We're fine.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">C: My mom is an epidemiologist and she says we're fine.</span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">D: I called my mom this morning. She said to "be safe today." Be safe how? By doing what? </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span><span style="font-family: arial;"> </span></p></blockquote><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We scattered ourselves at a consistent distance from each other instead of glomming around the kitchen island. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Person-to-person spatial distancing feels instinctive now; how we adjust and shift when someone moves to maintain the gaps between us.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We chatted while laying out many platters and pans of foods. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A arrived. I gave him a quick pandemic hug after he washed his hands. He jazz handed waved at everyone else. It used to be that the /difference between saying hello to a friend, acquaintance, or new friend was the distance between kisses on the check and air kisses. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We ate a bit of this and that (what we want, when we want!) but even on Slothgiving the eating doesn't ever really get serious till the Turkey came out of the oven.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We scattered onto bean bags and an armchair and a sofa with the middle seat vacant. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We watched <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10627548/">Dolly Parton's Christmas in Square</a> which was nonsensical bonkers. Perfect. Next up was the Kristen Stewart starring lesbian Christmas rom com <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8522006/">Happiest Season</a>. Between the wine and the tryptophan and...the movies melted into one another. I can't recall how either movie ended and neither made sense.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I fell asleep on a bean bag. Woke up to G and C and B washing dishes and packing up and heading out. They masked up. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I slept more while A watched <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6394270/">Bombshell</a>. <br />I had already seen it. <br />Just last year. <br /></span><span style="font-family: arial;">In. a. movie. theater!</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">A left.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">I masked up and walked my dog named H.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">Anxiety never really left the room during our 2020 Slothsgiving. Our uneasiness did get fuzzy and took a few naps.</span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">We weren't 20 people traveling and gathering. We also weren't alone. We weren't a dedicated bubble. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: arial;">This is not a defense or rationalization. Or is it? </span></p>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-78768835627079587842020-05-17T17:49:00.006-04:002020-05-17T17:53:26.141-04:00Zoom: She Will Not Be Muted<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><i>Brooklyn & Ahwatukee. May 2020</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I was assembling a cherry bourbon pie from <a href="https://www.sisterpie.com/cookbook" target="_blank">Sister Pie</a> when my Mom called me in need of Zoom. She’s wants Zoom out of spite. Not to connect with other people. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The manager of the housing association in Ahwatukee Arizona is an idiot. Said property manager will not unmute my mother when she uses the dial-in option only so my mother wants Zoom in an attempt to override that constraint. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The next 10-15 minutes were spent on the phone together </span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">moving through together</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> confusion about how to find Zoom and how to download and was it installing. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Success. No wait. It’s gone. It’s not. I helped her find the Zoom software and pin it to the Windows taskbar. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">My parents are social distancing though Mom said Dad is bored and so he’s gone to the local YMCA to see if he’s comfortable with the setup enough to go back. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“Is that okay?” I ask. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“He mostly just does the treadmill. He’ll be fine.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Will he? He will. </span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-29807906289001656192020-04-12T15:43:00.000-04:002020-04-12T17:21:51.259-04:00Why Ask If You Can Help Me When What You Want is to Scare Me?<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><b>Saturday April 5 2020 4:40 PM</b><br /><i>165 Spencer Street at the corner of Willoughby in Brooklyn NY</i><br /><br /><img height="158" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/9n0nSR2H_OBAnc-HTBDk1ZMsnzB81uFl3rUpIqb-m5pdtMn7AtSt9L9qNJixP8bUfRQBJ_QPwpQbP1w3J_hq2J7NR_bhlwtZqVTEkI7QFsTpFVX6o1OI8lBqc3dqVyD6xtTuxwGu" width="200" /><br /><span style="text-align: center;">A friend translated it...</span></span><br />
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<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"> Tent of Leah<br /> [2nd line is Yiddish slang for women] </span></div>
<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I took this photo while out walking our dog, a cocker spaniel named Honey cause she looks like honey. (I went home and Google translated it.)</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">The entrance doors are opaque mirrored. A week ago, midday the Hassidic woman and children were picking up boxed meals from a folding table. </span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I took the photo. It was Shabbat so it seemed like an okay time to be curious, suspicious.</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">A man came out in full Hassid drag (yarmulke, curled sidelocks, under garment with fringe exposed, black vest, pants) and a face mask. He yelled after me.</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“HELLO. CAN I HELP YOU? DO YOU NEED SOMETHING?”</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I walked the dog up Spencer Street. “No I’m fine. Thanks."</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“IS THERE A PROBLEM?”</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“No. I’m good. Good. Thanks.”</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Honey stubbornly stopped to obsessively sniff something. </span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“DO YOU NEED SOMETHING?”</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I yank the dog to be honest. </span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">“No thank you. I’m fine.” I didn’t look back. Maybe he’s operating out of a protective purpose from his perspective that may have embedded into it centuries of trauma and suspicion.</span></span><span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">He was still a creep. And a bully!</span></span><br />
<span style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">[From my</span><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"> post walk, Google search: Bnos Square of Williamsburg is a School Based Child Care in BROOKLYN NY. The provider does not participate in a subsidized child care program. Pre-K. Categorized under Synagogues. Our records show it was established in 2006 and incorporated in New York. Current estimates show this company has an annual revenue of $656,171 and employs a staff of approximately 4.] </span></span></span><br />
<span style="clear: left; float: left; font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-73143668076443988812020-04-12T15:20:00.000-04:002020-04-12T15:46:42.123-04:00New Job / Curious but Good Circumstances<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><b>November 2019, NYC NY</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I started working for the company(a) that had a majority interest in the company I used to work for (b) and paid for the acquisition of the company I worked at before that (c).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">That feels right. </span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-71335460819490133472018-10-31T21:09:00.002-04:002018-10-31T21:09:19.825-04:00Someone Made a Big Mistake. Huge. HUGE.Sorry I've been absent. My current company bought the company that laid me off. So now 85 of my former coworkers are my new coworkers and I'm a hero at my new job for my knowledge of my former job! If I really stopped to think about it I'd get twisted.David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-60293885554601160282018-07-08T16:35:00.000-04:002018-07-08T16:35:03.326-04:00Nap Rooms and Small Acts of Survival<i>I need to sit down for a bit,</i> I said.<br />
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<i>You know there’s a nap room? </i>my friend replied.<br />
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<i>Glorious!</i><br />
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I followed my friend thru a door down a short hall. Sharp left. There is was. A long and narrow room. Four bean bags. Lighting not dim but not bright. The base beat from the main room of the club below came up thru the floor. The brighter disco music from the bar down the halls permeated lightly as well.<br />
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Whoozy. I felt whoozy. It wasn’t as bad as I’d worried it could be. I laid down on the bean bag. I thrashed about a bit first like our dog does sometimes before settling into a spot. I’m big. Six foot three and more than 200 pounds. So the bean bag was disproportionate. I didn’t want to be greedy by taking more than one. <br />
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This felt safe. Like a place I could be for a while. My molly was peaking. Cresting. Overwhelming. <i>Why doesn’t every club have a nap room?!</i> I’d thought I’d thought that but I said it out loud. I said it out loud many times that night. Any many times after. <br />
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Tonite will be different. Tonite this whooziness will pass and I’ll stand up and rejoin the party. The party downstairs. Down the hall. Up on the roof. I just need some time. Some time in this nap room.<br />
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People rotated in a checked on me. Sat on a corner of the bean bag and talked or just sat. Other partiers came and went. <i>Mummer mummer prattle tattle bahaha</i>. I closed my eyes and listened.<br />
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<i>Do you want an Adderall?</i><br />
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<i>YES! Please. </i><br />
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My hope hoped that addy would be like a life preserver tossed out to me on a line. The addy will pull be back to land and I will be able to stand without the whoosh and the whoozy and rejoin the party. <br />
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And it did. I did. I leaned forward off the bean bag and my thighs and quads found my knees and my calves and my feet and I was upright again. Sturdily standing I put one foot in front of the other and left the nap room.David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-45579210908114603712018-02-20T16:31:00.000-05:002018-02-20T16:32:08.120-05:00August Wilson Wrote 10 Plays that Chronicle the 20th Century African-American ExperienceThis is a short piece I wrote about <a href="https://www.biography.com/news/august-wilson-pittsburgh-cycle-century-cycle-plays-summary">August Wilson Century Cycle</a> published at <a href="https://www.biography.com/author/david-robinson">Biography.com</a> this week. Wilson wrote ten plays, each set in a different decade to tell collectively thru different stories the 20th century African-American experience in America.<span class="ember-view" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255 , 255 , 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.75); font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "hiragino kaku gothic pro" , "meiryo" , "hiragino sans gb w3" , "noto naskh arabic" , "droid arabic naskh" , "geeza pro" , "simplified arabic" , "noto sans thai" , "thonburi" , "dokchampa" , "droid sans thai" , "droid sans fallback" , ".sfnsdisplay-regular" , "heiti sc" , "microsoft yahei"; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>
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<span class="ember-view" style="background: 0px 0px rgb(255 , 255 , 255); border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; color: rgba(0 , 0 , 0 , 0.75); font-family: , , "blinkmacsystemfont" , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica neue" , "fira sans" , "ubuntu" , "oxygen" , "oxygen sans" , "cantarell" , "droid sans" , "lucida grande" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif , "apple color emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui emoji" , "segoe ui symbol" , "hiragino kaku gothic pro" , "meiryo" , "hiragino sans gb w3" , "noto naskh arabic" , "droid arabic naskh" , "geeza pro" , "simplified arabic" , "noto sans thai" , "thonburi" , "dokchampa" , "droid sans thai" , "droid sans fallback" , ".sfnsdisplay-regular" , "heiti sc" , "microsoft yahei"; font-size: 14px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background: 0px 0px; border: 0px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-91873967776592018602018-02-20T16:06:00.001-05:002018-02-20T16:07:33.001-05:00Playwright Lorraine Hansberry's 'A Raisin in the Sun' as Black Activism<br />
The first of my articles for <a href="https://www.biography.com/author/david-robinson">Biography.com</a> was published earlier this week. The assignment was to 800-100 words on the artist (<a href="https://www.biography.com/news/lorraine-hansberry-raisin-in-the-sun-summary-black-history">Lorraine Hansberry</a>) and the work (<i>A Raisin in the Sun</i>) - the cultural and historical context and continuing legacy and relevance.<br />
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<i>...The Younger family is waiting for a $10,000 life insurance check resulting from the father’s recent death. The windfall represents a kind of liberation to the family with the central conflict over how to spend the money...</i><br />
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<a href="https://www.biography.com/news/lorraine-hansberry-raisin-in-the-sun-summary-black-history" target="_blank"><img border="0" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1066" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-EKSDXyDVFjgY_3bzfcCN1BrUb_pcuMxFnv6fYBuJbaNS7f7o2W3rZUMXhI7Jja9N7_7upuOou10LkjS-CDnvAJO2yxpCMwUEnQ_9lx85nHlxQ2G97lNH7LFYCPzCyHXk2EI_8XSepYY/s320/BIO+Raisin.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-79039380681539530242018-02-19T11:52:00.001-05:002018-02-19T11:56:13.588-05:00Drag - Rid the Id and Let the Ego Run WildSomeone reminded me recently that while roaming the merch and seen-and-be-seen pathways of RuPaul's NYC <a href="http://rupaulsdragcon.com/">DragCon </a>2017, my boyfriend managed to opine for <a href="https://www.facebook.com/mashablescreening/videos/10155695853754705/?t=0">Screening by Mashable: Day Jobs of Drag Queens</a><br />
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I ended up closing out the video with things I don't mind being quoted as saying.<br />
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"I hate to say something completely cliche but it's all drag."<br />
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"And at the end of the day we get to put on costumes and get rid of some of the id and let the ego run wild!"<br />
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<br />David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-67108426982266535632014-09-06T10:57:00.000-04:002014-09-06T10:57:46.411-04:00Defenseless (Salt Lake City, Utah - 2014)<br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I just needed to point my skis down the hill and go.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN THE HILL AND GOOO!” my instructor shouted up at me. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He didn't shout at me like a coach encouraging little leaguers. He wasn't Burgess Meredith bellowing and berating at Rocky. He instructed me. Loudly. Forcefully. Relentlessly.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We stood apart on an empty slope on “green” run in Snowbird, Utah; 20 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City. It was mid April and the snow was good, the air cold, and the sky a pervasive gray. The sun was nowhere to be seen though it back-light the sky leaving that “bright clouds” effect. This was my third day of skiing. Ever. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN THE HILL AND GOOO!” he </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">instructed</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> up at me again. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The really shitty thing about mutherfucking skiing is that the only real way to get back down to sanity and safety is to ski down the cocksucking run. It’s a billion times harder to hike down the hill in the vices, er boots, you wear that pitch you ever forward. If I had wanted to quit and march down to the lodge I would have passed out and died on the way from sheer exhaustion. And I didn't want to quit. I wanted to ski down the hill. I was paying a lot of money to learn how to do this.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I looked down at my feet and gathered my intention to move.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“DON’T LOOK AT YOUR FEET. LOOK AT ME. LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOOOOOIIIIIIINGGG.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This guy never let up, for Christ's sake. He was a good guy. He was ruddy, rough, and humorless. He was a big man with a raspy voice and a red face from all those days on the slopes. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On the lifts, going down the runs, in the cafe, the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">instructing </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">never stopped. If I tried to articulate my fear or get clever about my tiredness, he wouldn't allow it...or even acknowledge it. He was the single most earnest and inexhaustible teacher I had ever met. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So I was left bare of the sophisticated defenses I employ to diffuse intense moments. And I had never faced fear like this before. Paralyzing. I stood at the top of that hill, a 43 year old man, with my beginner lessons giving me a pretty good foundation. I should have been able to go and I couldn't. I had never had that experience; the feeling that I don’t know how to move forward. I live my life at a breakneck pace, with boundless confidence. There I stood with none of that.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“LOOK AT ME. YOU’RE FEET ARE UNDERNEATH YOU. TRUST THAT THEY WILL TAKE YOU WHERE YOU NEED TO GOOOO. LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOING. THAT’S HOW YOU WILL GET THERE.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I looked up. Shimmied my skis straight. I looked down the hill. Never a more perilous drop had anyone ever seen. I tipped the skis down the slope and moved forward. Then I turned, shifted my weight so that one heel pressed hard and I moved horizontally across the run. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">‘THAT’S RIGHT, DAVID. TURN. SLOW YOURSELF DOWN. STOP IF YOU FEEL OUT OF CONTROL. LOOK AT YOUR DESTINATION, NOT AT YOUR FEET.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN. TURN. SLOW DOWN. POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN. TURN. SLOW DOWN.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In what felt like 20 minutes, but what was no time at all, I arrived at the flat part where my instructor stood. I wish I had felt exhilarated but the experience was more like shock; a disbelief that I had been up there and now I was down here. Looking up it was neither as far nor as steep as it had been when staring it down. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I didn’t die which is insipid to say. I never thought I would die. I didn't even really think I would hurt myself. At the top of that slope I just had no idea how I would move forward and get down the hill. And now I was there. Or at least that much further. There were still a half dozen stretches to go and then we would just go up and ski down more.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Good,” he said as a matter of fact and not as praise. “You did that. You looked where you were going, right? When you’re walking in New York City do you look at the ground or out in front of you. You don’t worry about your feet taking you where you want to go. You trust that they can do that, right?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Well, I do look at the ground a lot. The sidewalks in New York can be treacherous, filled with cracks and potholes.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He interrupted me, “So you’re that guy; looking down, bumping into people! You’re the guy I have to look out for when I’m walking in that city!”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I gave up then for good. He was right. Even if he was wrong about walking in New York City which requires looking up down and sideways and behind you at all times. My arguing with him was an equivocation with myself. His lessons were right and profound. To really get somewhere I must look out at the destination, or at least in the direction of my intentions. Looking at my feet gives false comfort. Trust instead that my feet will take me where I set my intention. If the feet fail then I would have fallen onto soft snow and then got up and went again. If I would feel out of control then I could slow down or stop without leaving the experience or evading my emotions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was an extraordinary experience that day to face paralyzing fear. The advantage of aging is confidence. A sureness in yourself, in your capabilities. I knew for myself that the things that might have brought me down - like a divorce, a job loss, a housing crisis and a recession, did not break me. I was battered and bruised but resilient. Or so I thought. That fortitude also somehow managed to bury my vulnerability. But that day on the slope, the challenge and that instructor laid me bare. And that felt…..terrifying and exposed. I didn't overcome that fear. I went straight through it all the way down that hill. </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Did that feel good? No. Satisfying. Perhaps. A part of myself, the part that </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feels </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sad, scared, angry, was rescued that day. Pulled back to the surface. Emancipated, but just a bit.</span></span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0Snowbird, UT40.5818948 -111.6552024000000140.3892703 -111.9779259 40.7745193 -111.33247890000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-41109475584172234302013-01-05T19:19:00.000-05:002013-01-05T19:22:00.807-05:00Blog Post - Daddy Got Weepy at the Leatherman (NYC & Chicago, 2011 & ‘12)
<b id="internal-source-marker_0.9458722337149084" style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was the Sunday before Memorial Day. I was standing in </span><a href="http://www.theleatherman.com/"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Leatherman </span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">booth at the market at </span><a href="about:blank"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">IML (International Mister Leather) </span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">in Chicago deciding on which paddle to buy. </span></b><br />
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That’s when the bewildering tears came, creeping out of the corners of my eyes at first. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">First let me explain to the uninitiated IML takes over an entire convention hotel in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend every year. It’s a competition where the crown princes of 2012 leathermen contests around the world come to compete for the literal title of “International Mister Leather.” </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Concurrently thousands of men to come to gear up in leather, rubber, neoprene/, puppy play, and/or wrestling singlets or whatever else makes those men feel good and empowered. Fetishes are played out between parties with always readily available sex. It’s a good community of sex positive guys letting their freak flag unfurl and fly. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was 41 then and looking pretty good, fit, in jeans, boots, and my leather vest; sort of an afternoon leather daddy casual approach for midday fetish and gear shopping. Already tall, my boots added an inch or two and then my leather trooper cap created some imposing height. And there I stood shocked by the tears falling lighting from the corners of my eyes.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The proprietor of The Leatherman asked me about the boy who had assassinated my heart over the past 36 hours. As soon as I said his name, tears crept out like water moving through the cracks in a stone. The emotion welling inside found the fissure and took that opportunity to travel to the surface, no longer willing to stay subjugated.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, there I stood, buying a paddle, a leather daddy crying like a menopausal woman. Or like a man shocked by emotions forgotten for lack of exercise, who had been inspired by a little bit of love. My unintentional defenses were pushed out of the way. I didn’t feel at all embarrassed. It felt good.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">There was also some sadness, anger, and regret mixed into those tears. They felt like they had came from broken hear that had refused to fail. I was divorcing and still separating from my estranged-future-ex-husband who had moved out of our home almost a year ago then. Our five-year marriage ended several months before that. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Divorce, as a process, is not quick or easy even when it’s amicable. Dissolution of a marriage is an incomprehensible miasma of paperwork. It’s a lawsuit where one spouse is forced to sue the other for divorce, even when they both agree on how they want to separate and divide the assets. Then add to that a home with an upside-down mortgage during a recession. The severing of that presented only options that went from bleak to dismal. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Friends, people who, I suppose, are concerned kept asking, “Are you and (he) still friends?” The question always perplexed me. Why should I have been friends with the man I was divorcing? </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s just one of those questions that people ask. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also get asked, “Are you getting along?” and “Are you talking?” These are variations. It’s so automatic, like one of those things that people just...say. But why? It seems to come out of a sympathetic interest in my well being. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Is it a roundabout way of asking if our breakup was acrimonious? Perhaps the real question is </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">do you hate each other? Are you so angry at him that you cannot tolerate the sound of his voice? </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I would prefer those questions because at least they’re honest. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Were we </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">friends</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">? That question confused me. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, in case you’re wondering, I did talk to my ex. The logistics of the divorce and separation of property kept us </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">talking</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> for months and months</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I never asked him how he was doing, though, or how he was coping. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I would say I didn’t care but that’s tin. The truer thing is that I deliberately severed my concern. And I remember the moment when I made that willful break. It was conscious and probably cruel. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">He and I decided to end our marriage after a couples therapy session </span><a href="http://davibey.blogspot.com/2010/11/change-in-weather.html"><span style="color: #000099; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">where that suddenly felt unavoidable to me</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. After that I cut-off a simple, sincere ritual; an innocuous daily act of reaffirming our love for each other. When we left or came home, when we hung up the phone after talking to each other we would say, “I love you.” In person we would punctuate that with a kiss. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Within a week of our decision to separate, months before we would physically leave each other, I said to him, “We can no longer do that. Or say that.” </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If we were going to end our marriage then our actions had to follow our intentions. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In that moment he looked so sad. Tears welled up in his eyes fast. He paused and took a determined breath. “Okay,” he said, “I understand. I get it.” It was as if the loss became palpable to him in that second. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was part of my project management approach to problem solving. When someone presents me with a problem, I propose a solution. Then I break it down into phases and start assigning resources - mental, physical, emotional. I don’t even pause when something awful happens to me. Instead I react with an action plan and then immediately implement. It’s so intrinsic that when someone asks me how I’m feeling as I go through something awful, I’m quite surprised by the question. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Acknowledging the end of our marriage and terminating my everyday care and concern for him. Done. That, to me, was a tangible step in separation. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s a hyper-functional coping mechanism and it served me well. I lost my job in mid 2010, as part of the detritus of a corporate merger. That was about four months before we decided to end our marriage. The mortgage needed to be paid so we lived together, slept side-by-side, for months after agreeing to end our marriage, until I found a job. Only then could we could afford to separate. That kept us living together through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years of 2010 into 2011. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During those weeks and months after that, before he moved out, I marshalled my acuity and spirit into finding work. My severance was paying the mortgage. His salary could not alone. I couldn’t accept the failure of my marriage </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">losing my home to the bank. Or selling it at a loss so that I would be over 40 and carrying mortgage debt for a home I had to abandon. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I found job at the start of 2011, and he moved out a month later. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Living alone after a long term relationship took twice the effort because I was used to doing only half the work. Buying groceries, laundry, dry cleaning, paying bills, walking and feeding the dog happened with the same frequency but now I had half the “staffing.” And new jobs require effort learning and meeting and trying to impress. Layer on that the refinancing and divorcing went on for another two years until they were done.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What I didn’t do until that Memorial Day weekend in 2012, was cry, or feel sad, or miss what I had lost. It hadn’t occurred to me to mourn the loss of a love. My ex and I had wanted to have children. We were going to adopt. We had even registered with an agency. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But I could cry at the mention of a </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">boy</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> I had just really met the day before. Those tears were stealth but also fierce. At that improbable time and place, while trying to buy an instrument to deliver corporal discipline, a compassion overcame me. It defyied want or logic or even any awareness that I had subjugated my love, hurt and loss. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">What was it about this boy that called forth this warmth and capability for loving, if not yet love? </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I call him “boy,” because that’s the play. The </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">boy</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is submissive to the </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sir</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> who is dominate. Really they are both equal partners in that relationship or even if it’s only for sex. The sub gives his service to the dom who controls and guides the boy. Perplexing at first, I found trust and caring in that exchange that was profound. That boy gave me the opportunity to allow myself be dominate without self-judgement, to let that part of myself off the leash with someone who wanted that from me.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This was all new to me. This boy was guiding me through the code and protocols. He was a sexy, beautiful guy still in his twenties with a shaved head and a scruffy beard. He was a bit shorter and more sinewy and slender than me. A boy really. And a total dork. He would yammer on about his knitting and then tell me about the St Andrews cross he has built in his apartment so he could be restrained and flogged. He went on about rollerblading and then his dog and then asked if I would be willing to use him as a footrest some night while I watched TV at home. (There is a surprising intimacy in that domestic scene he proposed, isn’t there?) </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was charmed. That I knew as I looked around for a paddle to use on his naked ass. Why thinking of him made me cry was perplexing but so great. It was like letting out a breath that I had been holding onto for more than a year. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The manager of The Leatherman man put both of his hands onto my shoulders and squeezed them. “That is a beautiful thing, man. It really is.” That simple grace </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and humanness</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> almost sent me into delirious sobbing. I recovered and wiped away the tears. I bought two paddles - one that made a provocative snapping noise on impact and another blunt one that was sure to leave more red and sting on a bare white ass.</span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wish I could write that this was the start of the next big romance of my life. That I’m writing this with the lovely, eccentric boy under foot. When it comes to my alter ego as a dom leather daddy Sir, I’m a dilettante at best (though my play is sincere and earnest when it happens). And the boy...evaporated. Post-IML he wasn’t ready for dating or for dating me. Who knows? I don’t. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That may seem like a sad ending to this story, but I don't’ see it that way. A submissive boy helped his Sir rediscover the heart he had been too busy to see that he had lost. </span></b>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-84048717943706570642011-11-21T23:23:00.000-05:002011-11-21T23:53:24.359-05:00Blog Post - I Am a Sex Tourist Pig (Berlin, September 2011)<span id="internal-source-marker_0.9147631893865764" style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">The social code between a man and his </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><a href="http://www.manhunt.net/">Manhunt</a></span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> tricks can get murky. This became apparent to me two months ago in Berlin as I sat stunned, on the receiving end of an assault of text messages, trying to understand my obligation and assess my blame. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">My phone had been vibrating and chiming at intervals that day, or at least since I had woke up at 2 o’clock in the afternoon to announce text messages from Brad. By 4 o’clock his pique had escalated to this...</span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">WTF? Is this about your cock on your terms on your schedule??...Are you really a prick?</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">By an equivocation made up of white lies and delayed text responses (which I blamed on AT&T routing to the German carrier), I had tried to diffuse our one-sided dust-up. I</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">’m sorry I missed you</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> and I</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> just got your text,</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> sort of things. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Throughout the day the idea of sex with Brad again, for a second time in many, many months, had started to give me a dread. I wanted to creep away from my promise to meet up with him again. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">By early evening, I had decided not to keep our “date” although I had not been that direct. I had suggested he come meet me at the bar rather than his flat. As I walked to <a href="http://www.prinzknecht.de/">PrinzKnecht</a>, an unpretentious Berlin gay bar, to meet some new friends (friendly Parisians), Brad fired a fusillade that hit my phone as five separate text messages:</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I am trying to hook up with yiou now. But the point is you dont want to meet now, right? Lets try some honesty here.</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">--2 seconds later--</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Ok. You are a fucking prick. You send me a text telling me you are in a 3some! Then you want to blow me off tonight because you need to recharge. Then yo</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">--3 seconds later--</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">u only offer to meet on your time and your terms. And you lie about not seeing the text i sent you earlier. I dont think i've ever been so disrespected</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">--4 seconds later--</span><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">by a stranger. Guys should reduce you to your cock. Because you behave like a royal prick. Shame on me for feeling bad that i had to work last night and</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">--5 seconds later--</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> couldnt meet you. You are nothing more than a sex tourist prick.</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I had met him in NYC many months prior through Manhunt, while he was in the States on a work trip. He was an American ex-patriot living in Berlin. He was an attractive man: forty-something, lean, sinewy, handsome, white, middle-American type of man. We had some good sex and light conversation in his hotel room one evening after work in the middle of a week. I added him to my “buddy list” so that we could hook up again should his work bring him back to Manhattan.</span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><a href="http://www.folsom-europe.info/">Folsom EU</a></span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">prompted our near reunion. Folsom in San Francisco is an annual celebration of leather and fetish that gives license for men to gear up and meet and play. This is the European sister event in the capital of Germany where kink is already unhinged at any time of the year.</span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">After I had booked my travel I hit up Brad on Manhunt to try to reconnect. He jumped at the opportunity and, this is the moment when my sense of ick emerged, he insisted on having my first two nights in Berlin once I arrived. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I was going to Folsom EU alone and had no agenda other than to gear up and drop into the rabbit hole like a leather clad Alice. Not having plans or people binding me, it was difficult to defer to his pre-booking the two evenings. So I said </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">sure. </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Hookups planned in advance always go into the calendar as </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">tentative</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> anyway. That’s the online sex experience and I don’t hold my tricks or my self to the standards I keep with friends or even acquaintances.</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I arrived in Berlin the morning of September 7</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 9px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: super; white-space: pre-wrap; ">th,</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> which coincidentally was my 41st birthday. Brad was MIA that night and that was a minor relief. The next morning, </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">er</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> afternoon, when I woke up I popped open <a href="http://grindr.com/what-is-grindr">Grindr</a> (an app that uses GPS to establish proximity and immediacy at the moment of horniness) and it started to light up like a switchboard. A compact, muscly German with a shaved head and a goatee chatted me up: “Looking?” And soon after, “I’ll be at your hotel in 20 minutes....and can I bring a buddy.” I hadn’t been awake 20 minutes at the point. I dissolved a Viagra under my tongue for faster effect and showered and then my </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">guests</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> arrived. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">They stayed for a couple of hours of sex with a few substances in the mix. The whole scenario was so debaucherous and immediate that it still pleasantly shocks me. In America there is a lot of negotiating about when and where (“host” or “travel;” everyone wants their sex delivered to them in NYC). The gay sex stateside just didn’t happen that easily. It could be easy but not completely without effort. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Maybe the European gays took their sex in stride or it had been a by-product of Folsom where kink and sex and fetish went to mingle and celebrate for a week. Also, Berlin was a city of non-stop sexual availability and indulgence. The bars all had backrooms and in many places it was more backroom than bar. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Brad re-emerged by text as I was “taking a break.” I told him how I was preoccupied, figuring the context of our acquaintance and the spirit of Berlin and Folsom would make that acceptable, treating us like members of a </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">fucking</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> brotherhood. Turns out he didn’t find my high-jinks amusing. Later when I tried to worm out of our meeting he let me know...</span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><p dir="ltr" style="font-family: arial; text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: small; margin-left: 36pt; margin-right: 36pt; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 13px; font-family: 'Courier New'; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I moved heaven and earth to make sure I could be free for fucking tonight.</span></p><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 13px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">But I was sexed-out and he wanted me to travel to his place. I invited him to meet for a drink at PrinzKnecht and take it from there. He balked. (This was all by text. Never once did we <i>talk</i>.) And that’s when his condemnations went over-the-top. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Was I “nothing more than sex tourist prick?” Did I deserve that condemnation? I had tried to be polite albeit indirect. Folsom EU is sex tourism. It’s not </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">just</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> sex tourism. What is the norm where a week is spent dressing in leather; going out to bars and clubs where sex and fisting is not just available but anticipated and expected? Add to that excess depravity, apps on iPhones and iPads that made men available immediately in the intermission between sleeping and going out again. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">To receive that kind of vitriol was upsetting to experience regardless of my culpability. To then feel mostly blameless somehow made the whole episode that much more confusing. I suspected that I was getting the sewage from other disappointments in his life. Still, I was rattled that night and intermittently for a few days after. Although I didn’t feel responsible for his bile, I did assume some guilt for having inspired the fury and hurt palpable in those messages. Instead of being </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">nice</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> I cold have been forthright, </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">honest</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">. Maybe that was my fault. I kept pondering about the etiquette and integrity we owe to each other in a realm that is purely or mostly </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">just sex</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">, largely virtual, and transitory. </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">The next night I saw Brad, across a bar, the next night at </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 153); background-color: transparent; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><a href="http://www.lab-oratory.de/">Lab.Oratory</a></span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">, a sex club spread out through a cavernous, abandoned factory building. The number “950” had been marked on my arm. It was meant for me to use when claiming my clothes later that night as I had stripped down to a leather jock strap. The club suspended admission at 1,000 men that night despite a queue a ¼ mile long outside. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">We saw each other for a second before I could avert my eyes and look away. Lab.Oratory was large and crowded so avoiding each other was possible and, I felt, rationale. I turned around a moment later and there he was talking to a new </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">friend</span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> of mine who was standing next to me. My new friend then turned around to introduce Brad us!? I didn’t know if they knew each other or whether Brad had maneuvered this awkwardness. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">“Do you know....?” my friend said to me.</span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">“No. I can’t. I won’t,” I sputtered out and walked away. I suspected that Brad wanted a reaction and I refused to satisfy his bad behavior. I spotted him again again that night, once-or-twice, but he kept a distance; lurking in corners and staring, or at least that’s how I experienced it. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I did not see Brad again the rest of my week in Berlin. </span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span><br /><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Two months later the episode nagged at me. A hook-up, a </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">no strings attached </span><span style="text-align: -webkit-auto; font-size: 15px; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">tryst, was not a situation where I would have expected a blowup of ethical relativism. In the vapor of Manhunt and Grindr what do we owe each other? Nothing, except to enjoy each other and endeavor to please one another in our fleeting moments together. And everyone should have a pleasing orgasm if he wants one. Pleasing. Pleasant. Sexy. Fun. That is all we can expect and nothing is guaranteed. That’s all I will agree to...in this context. That is my social contract with the men I meet for sex through the Internet. </span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-22087601884488103792011-07-24T20:00:00.000-04:002011-07-24T20:49:36.946-04:00A Willful Act of Obfuscation<div>Gay pride was ecstatic this year. The crowd was dense and joyful. New York's legislature had accomplished the impossible and legalized gay marriage the Friday before, just before midnight. </div><div><br /></div><div>On that gay pride Sunday, my friend Eric and I stood behind a police barricade on the east side of 16th Street watching the flag twirlers, fags, fairies, and normal Joes and Janes parade and pageant past us with the thump-thump of a distant boom box creating a pulse for this extra ebullient gay pride march. There was a cloudless periwinkle sky above us with a warm, summer breeze adding to the perfectness of the day.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eric and I have been friends for almost 20 years through boyfriends, lovers, and husbands. He can provide a dose of whimsy when I'm maudlin and sober advice that sets me straight (so to speak) even when I'm not sensible enough to ask for it. </div><div><br /></div><div>In the midst of the reverie we were having a semi-serious sidebar.</div><div><br /></div><div>"I had to do it. I 'hid' Mark on <a href="http://www.facebook.com">Facebook</a>. I just couldn't see it anymore," I confessed. </div><div><br /></div><div>Eric laughed. "I turned to Bob last week..." (Bob is Eric's partner and now his fiance thanks to Cuomo.) "...and I said, I'm going to 'hide' Mark. Then Bob got quiet for a moment and admitted, 'I did that a couple of weeks ago. I just couldn't take all that bear stuff. ' And then he shook his head." </div><div><br /></div><div>Now there was moral support better than a hug. When a friend hides your ex-husband before you do, that's a gesture of love and loyalty. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm getting gay divorced soon. My husband moved out earlier this year. The persistent memory from the last year of my marriage was my husband on the sofa, watching TV in stupor. That was how I left him when I went to work and that is where I found him when I got home. That's how we spent our evenings. </div><div><br /></div><div>Post separation, Facebook revealed a man I couldn't recognize or had forgotten. Checking in at an art exhibit, status updates from bars, "Mark is now friends with..." </div><div><br /></div><div>"It's unbelievable," I said to Eric, "I couldn't get him to go anywhere, to do anything. Now he's everywhere, doing everything. I can't see it. Where was that guy last year?"</div><div><br /></div><div>Eric had a theory: "Maybe its just post-breakup stuff. Where you just run around wild doing all this <i>stuff</i>."</div><div><br /></div><div>I interrupted, "I wanted him to do things, make his own friends, have his own life." </div><div><br /></div><div>"I know. I know. But maybe he couldn't give himself permission to do that while you were together."</div><div><br /></div><div>A roar from the crowd brought me back into the present. A float rolled past with <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynda_Carter">Linda Carter</a> at the helm. It looked like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wonder_Woman_(TV_series)">Wonder Woman</a> was <i>texting</i>. Or posting her status to Facebook. Or adding a friend. The gesture can be so easy, innocuous and fleeting.</div><div><br /></div><div>My last marriage was in Massachusetts. I want my second marriage - with whoever that will be - inaugurated in New York City. For me, this happy advance in my civil rights means that I can get married again. Married. Divorced. Married. That's equality, baby!</div><div><br /></div><div>Now I need to go notify my "friends" about this blog post. :) </div>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-31716611270874887642011-07-01T11:13:00.000-04:002011-07-01T11:39:02.573-04:00Is This Romantic?Netflix has lumped some of its recommended viewing into a category named "Romantic Comedies About Marriage." This is based on my having recently watched "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082405/">The Four Seasons</a>" and "<a href="http://www.imdb.com/find?s=all&q=money+pit">The Money Pit</a>."<div><br /></div><div>That I have seen these movies in recent proximity reveals, perhaps, a certain masochism as I'm nearly divorced and trying to figure out how to keep my underwater mortgage afloat. </div><div><br /></div><div>Netflix suggests that Love Hurts and Send Me No Flowers. Are these representative of the <i>romance</i> in marriage? This is what the algorithm has learned about marriage based on the collective input of subscribers. </div><div><br /></div><div>There is/was romance in the routine struggle to keep a marriage going. It's difficult to see that, to remember that, from my current vantage point. </div>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-85572822447677181652011-05-07T11:58:00.000-04:002011-05-07T12:01:53.989-04:00Learning to But Out<div style="background-color: transparent; "><p id="internal-source-marker_0.33866181084886193" style="text-align: left;margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last October, after ten interviews over four weeks I did not get the job that had started to feel like it couldn't go any other way. At that moment I had been severed/unemployed for 3 ½ months.</span></span></p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">So I redoubled my effort and hours spent looking for a job. That included a 6 PM networking round-table for IT (Information Technology) professionals in early November. </span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">These types of events all tended to follow the same format at the start and this was no exception. There were about sixteen men and women in business drag seated around a long, long conference room table on the 26th floor of the old MetLIfe building. (Or perhaps some people still remember it as the old PanAm building.) </span></div><div style="background-color: transparent; "><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; "></span><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">A flip chart at the front of the room had the drill:</span><br /><p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Name</span></p><p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Target job and industry</span></p><p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Former job and company</span></p><p style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; text-align: center; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt; "><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Target companies in your job search</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "></span></p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">If anyone around the table had any insight or connections in your industry or ideas about target companies, they were asked to interject on the spot.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">When it got time for my elevator pitch about myself, a fellow across and down the table offered some ideas: “Have you considered...” (I do not remember the specifics.)</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I replied, “Yes. I had thought of that, </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">but...</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">”</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">The moderator, a tall women who sat upright in here chair at all times like she was ready to leap up, stopped me with her forceful, sand-papery voice, “No no no no no no no no no no no! Did everyone hear that? The ‘but.’ He was offering you a gift, David. Instead of interrupting him, you - we all - need to sit back and </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "><i>accept the gift that is being offered to you.</i></span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> Hear him out; with an open mind.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I sat their stunned; momentarily, mentally slack jawed. The fellow repeated his intended advice fully while I sat and listened. When he finished I said a simple, “Thank you.”</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">I have lived in New York city for 20 years. Someone taking a breath is an opportunity to interject yourself into the conversation. We anticipate the end of the other person’s sentences because we rush through many things here including conversations. So this piece of wisdom can feel counterintuitive although it runs adjacent to many other zen like principles that can lower your blood pressure rather than amp it up: Listen. Be present. Stay in the moment.</span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">In the months since, I have made an effort to banish the </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">buts</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">. I listen to myself speaking and will try to edit myself on the spot if the “bbbbbbut” creeps in. It’s tough backing out of a point/count-point statement in mid-execution. I have tried to eliminate it from my everyday email. That’s tough because it prevents one from using the let me tell you about something I like before qualifying it with constructive criticism. </span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">It feels like a worthwhile endeavor. The </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">but</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> not only disqualifies and dismisses the other person, it prevents me from discovering something I </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">didn’t already know</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> instead of interrupting with my pre-conceived knowledge. If I just shut up and listen I may find something new that I hadn’t considered before. </span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">Looking for work required stalwartness that created unnecessary defenses. In that moment, I was reminded that I needed to invest in some humility so that I could get back to work. The moderator’s firm rebuke broke through that calcification. The rest of the meeting was uneventful </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">but</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; "> the lesson learned felt profound. </span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">The continued application of this wisdom has been a work-in-progress. I still hear myself interrupt and sometimes talk right over someone like a bulldozer in action, enamored with my own opinions or feeling an urgency to be heard at that moment. (In the clusterfuck of conference calls, it’s nearly impossible to resist the urge to barge in.) </span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; font-size: 11pt; background-color: transparent;"></span><br /><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; ">No great revelation has come of it. At least, I am no longer oblivious of courtesy. And I find that, when I listen and wait and respond, I feel calmer and I may find something new in myself that I had not considered before.</span></div>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-38964183869537677182011-02-27T11:54:00.000-05:002011-02-27T12:06:39.478-05:00Sick of Sorry<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">John and I met at a bar in Gramercy, not far from Union Square, on a prematurely dark December evening at the end of last year; a typical black-box kind of place.<br /><br />I hadn’t seen John - a big jovial grizzly-bear of a fella - in months; not since I had been laid off at the end of July. The company we had both worked for was sold. John went with the acquiring company. I was <em>severed</em>.<br /><br />At the moment we bear hugged hello, I had been out of work for a little more than four months.<br /><br />“How’s it going?” he asked.<br /><br />I assumed he meant my job prospects so I listed companies I had been targeting and the many interviews that showed positive progress.<br /><br />As I talked I kept my tone and manner buoyant. That was intentional. Self pitying was not allowed. In order to stay strong throughout my job hunt I had assumed the position that I was stalwart so as not to admit those doubts and fears creeping around the corners.<br /><br />I had also begun to anticipate other people’s well intentioned sympathy and so I reinforced my self esteem every time I entered a “hello, how are you?” conversation.<br /><br />“So, how’s Mark?” he asked,.<br /><br />“We’re separating. Planning to divorce.” I made a little smile. I had taken the stance that the unraveling of my marriage would have to wait until I landed a job. At that time, divorce would have been a dangerous distraction from finding a job that would pay my mortgage. I needed my focus and energy soly fixated on finding a job to pay the mortgage. For every interview I wanted to portray myself as strong and confident so I played that part.<br /><br />John paused before replying. “Shit. Please at least tell me that your health is okay?”<br /><br />We laughed and I patted him on the shoulder.<br /><br /><em>How are you? So what's up?</em> I had dreaded those questions every time I heard it over those six months of unemployment. When I answered it in any detail, in any number of ways, the response was almost always: I am so sorry, accompanied by a slump and a sad sack look of compassion.<br /><br />The good intentions were obvious and kind. That had not been missed. I just didn’t want any fucking sympathy. I didn’t need it. I didn’t want it.<br /><br />A week or so after seeing John, a friend-of-a-friend laid another “I’m sorry” on me. And then these words popped into my head was: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don"><em>Don’t cry for me</em> <em>Argentina</em></a>.<br /><br />So I said that back to the friend-of-a-friend: “Don’t cry for me Argentina!” I said it with so much attitude that I almost snapped my fingers like a sassy black woman.<br /><br />He just looked back at me baffled.<br /><br />In that moment I found clarity and, in the weeks that followed, I ran the song and its lyrics through my mind and sometimes sang them out loud. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><div align="center"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Don’t cry for me Argentina<br />The truth is I never left you<br />All through my wild days<br />My mad existence<br />I kept my promise<br />Don’t keep your distance. </span></div><br />The lyrics make no literal sense, even in the context of the musical (“<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evita_(musical)">Evita</a>”) when <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Per%C3%B3n">Eva Peron </a>sings it to her adoring mob. They have been chanting “Eva! Eva! Eva!” She comes to the balcony of the Casa Rosada and answers them with this ballad.<br /><br />As I wrote this I began to realize that the “cry” wasn’t boo-hoo, weeping, but rather calling out. The crowd is crying out her name so she sings to quiet them while laying out some personal actualization as political theater.<br /><br />It made no difference. The abstraction of the lyrics and killer melody allow anyone - me, for example - to project themselves into the song. As I puttered around my apartment, unemployed, yet defiant and rueful, I sang these lyrics again-and-again and I felt coherent and empowered.<br /><br />Losing my job and looking for another had been aggravating and tedious, but it was also <em>thrilling</em>.<br /><br />I found something clarifying. As I looked at my profession, my experience, and my value, I began to sell myself like a goddamn gold standard!<br /><br />And more, I didn’t like the job I lost. The only thing that was going to make me quit was being asked to leave.<br /><br />As for the end of my five-year marriage, that sucked. And I had a mortgage where I now owed more than the apartment was worth after it devalued. And my severance had dwindled and I was dipping into savings.<br /><br />As each woe piled on top of me, I kept thinking that I could not take on one more problem and yet I did. I did not panic. I did not cry. Oh no, not I! Handling that level of responsibility in the face such adversity made me feel like a bad-ass. From the depths of my soul, the guts of my being, I felt like a Phoenix rising out of the ashes.<br /><br />I had a plan:<br />1. Get a job<br />2. Pick the least terrible option for condo<br />3. Separate and divorce<br /><br />By the first week of February I had accomplished #1, when I started a good job after fielding two other offers. Now my husband and I are working through tasks two and three.<br /><br />I changed my Facebook “relationship status” to “It’s complicated.” That, without intention or malice, became a public declaration resulting in comments and messages from concerned friends.<br /><br />What really tickled me was the friend who “liked” it with the wee thumbs up icon. Some people might think that bad taste or just a bizarre by-product of the Facebooking of our lives. I appreciated it. I <em>liked</em> my new relationship status too. It’s forward moving and leaves opportunity for someone new.<br /><br />I appreciate every one's concern - friends, family, strangers.<br /><br />“I still need your love after all that I’ve done,” but “don’t cry for me Argentina.”<br /><br />Please like my status.<br /><br />I’m good.</span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-8878397978152249922010-11-23T11:33:00.000-05:002011-02-27T12:06:19.305-05:00A Change in the Weather<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">My marriage is ending.<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The “ing” jumps out at me because ,not only does it place my predicament in the present tense, but it also puts me in the middle of a continuum rather than at the beginning of the end.</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><br />That statement - “my marriage is ending” - is a declaration and also a realization. The relationship didn’t just crumble one day. It weakened until it broke irrevocably. Sadly it is also not the end of the break up because - logistically, financially, emotionally - separation takes much, much longer than anyone can stand. But here I am; having to cope with life as it happens, rather than how I’d like it to transpire.<br /><br />My husband, I believe, suffers from wanderlust - the impulse to wander, to leave. It is a gut feeling that a better, more exciting person or life is somewhere out in the world. Your present set of circumstances prevent you from finding it with an imaginary set of shackles; the old “ball-and-chain,” if you will. He longs for a more “passionate” partner and existence.<br />This is where musical theater comes to my aid with a song from a failed musical, “<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baker%27s_Wife">The Baker’s Wife</a>.” The score boasts an exquisite set of songs by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Schwartz_(composer)">Stephen Schwartz</a> (Pippin, Godspell, Wicked). It tells the simple story of an older man - the baker - and his younger wife. She leaves him for a sexy young man only to return, wiser, to her husband. She had wanderlust and recovered.<br /><br />Late in the show a song comes along as a poignant counterpoint to wandering and as a beautiful cautionary tale: “<a href="http://www.sendspace.com/file/i9qmz2">Where is the Warmth</a>?”<br /><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;">Since I grow feverish with the flush that comes every time he holds me,<br />naturally you'd suppose I'd be warm when I'm hot.<br />Well, I'm not.<br /><br />But oh, where is the warmth?<br />The fire is there<br />But where is the warmth?</span></div><br />These lyrics have been looping through my mind a lot lately, especially “...naturally you'd suppose I'd be warm when I'm hot./Well, I'm not.” That plaintive conclusion comforts me. Don’t get me wrong. I like the burn, the fever that comes with some new couplings. We have had an open marriage so I have felt that rush and excitement that comes with inexplicable chemistry. I did wonder, in those moments, if one of those men held the promise of a better life than my man at home. Then my rational, reasonable self would kick-in to remind me that the <em>heat</em> is not sustainable.<br /><br />But, ah, the <em>warmth</em>! That’s hearth that heats the home. It’s the concern and care you keep for one another, the dinners together, television watching side-by-side, planning for your shared future, telling your husband about your day, collaborating on what towels to buy, saying “I love you” at the end of each telephone call and before you go to sleep. The expression of that warmth can be subtle and easy to miss, or discounted as the “business” of running the relationship. Whenever I felt the heat with another man, I tried to remember the joint history of my real relationship so that I would not become tempted to squander it to chase a fleeting flame.<br /><br />There are cold winds, too, that blow through a relationship: misunderstandings and miscommunications, hurt feelings, jealousies. Days pass with little said to one another. Or others when all that passes between us is the business of the marriage. He would retreat into himself to worry and fret and I no longer tried to get him to talk it out. Sex was had more often outside the marriage than within it. And there were a whole slew of real life hardships that two must either bear up against and traverse together. That quiet, creeping chill can cause the space between two people to erode, separating them further and further away from each other’s good will.<br /><br />As my husband’s wanderlust metastasized, in that cold space that grew between us, my own imagination began to wander. I allowed myself to envision a happier, more simple, less complicated future - without him.<br /><br />So what do you do when your spouse tells you that he wants to leave and you are also not so certain you want him to stay?<br /><br />If my grip on the relationship is tenuous as he pulls away, then it’s not so hard to let go. </span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-86442175359683423622010-09-15T16:31:00.000-04:002010-11-05T16:05:00.690-04:00Looking for a Disorder<div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">"Perhaps we should explore David's drinking. The conscious and unconscious reasons for it."<br /><br />So said our - my husband Mark's and mine - couples counselor Tony. I like him. Natty and trim. He uses his hands like an orchestra conductor to slow, start, and pause our dialogue. He has the kind of haircut that looks like it gets a weekly trim and he peers out at us through glasses with prominent black frames.<br /><br />Mark and I sit close to each other, side-by-side, on a small leather sofa-ette, which I tend to slip lower and lower toward the edge of the seat. The room itself is carved out of an old New York building without any symetry in the walls, like an aimless parallelogram.<br /><p>His statement was both a cross-reference to another session and also a nonsequiter within the session.<br /><br />For context: Tony and I had a one-on-one session two weeks prior, as part of our course of couples therapy. He had brought up drinking then, which had made me uncomfortable.<br /><br />"If we talk about this, I feel, it then becomes a problem and I don't see it that way."<br /><br /><em>Look, I drink, but I'm not an alcholic, </em>I thought.</p><p>Tony is adept and empathetic so he'd reframed the discussion (which is something he does well): "Let's not talk about it as a problem. Let's just address it as a <em>thing</em>. Something to explore. Perhaps there is something there worth understanding without vilifying it. You do like to drink</p><p>"Well, yes," I'd admitted. "Some wine..."<br /><br />"How much?"<br /><br />"Mark and I may drink a bottle with dinner."<br /><br />"And cocktails?"<br /><br />"<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">Occasionally and moderately."</span></p><p><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected"></span>(Watching "Mad Men" does give me the urge to pour a few whiskeys on the rocks, while I watch it Sunday nights.) </p><p>"It's funny. I don't drink to get drunk or even to feel anything. I just like the ritual of it. Wine with dinner, unwinding at the end of the day."<i> </i></p><p><i>And...I'm not drinking alone. Mark is there too, so why why am I the focus on this investigation? </i>I ponder.</p><p><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected">"Do you think- and perhaps <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">just</span> consider this - that it serves any other purpose?"<br /><br />I sat for a moment and let the quiet settle in my head to see if something would reveal itself to me...about me. It did: "Perhaps, maybe it is an effort to anesthetize myself, a bit. A little. Just to keep the lid on..."<br /><br />What I then conveyed and we further explored was that the wine keeps whatever anger and frustrations I may have in my marriage depressed. Not <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">suppressed</span>. Let's say less than fully expressed, like a burner turned down to simmer so the pot never boils over. <br /><br />* * * </span></p><p><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected">My dear friend Angela sent me an email this week apologizing for having "one too many" at my 40th birthday party last Sunday. She had given me the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">loveliest</span> of toasts but she'd felt as if it meandered and went on a bit too long. She was also holding a baby - not her own, who (true to his disposition) was named "Cool" - during the tribute and he seemed to weigh her down as she spoke. (To read this from her perspective, go to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/angela-himsel/excuse-me-are-you_b_720423.html">Angela's column on the Huffington Post</a>.)<br /><br />As I read Angela's email, I immediately thought, <em>what is one too many?</em> The threshold is individual and defined by the consequences. If no one gets hurt and you make it to work the next morning without neglecting your spouse and children then you're no drunk in my estimation.<br /><br />That occurred to me again when another friend wrote to tell me that she'd sent her husband of 25 years packing after Labor Day because of his long-term alcohol problem. She wrote that she felt like a pot insulting the kettle because she can drink. We used to work together and we'd go out on outings where she would get blitzed. In those instances she was always more of the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">loveliest</span> parts of herself - more affectionate, more complimentary - and always upright and able to walk herself out at the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">end</span> of the night.<br /><br />It is useful to understand that we were both working in a Sales organization where professional drinking should really be a skill listed in the job description.<br /><br />Her husband has since joined AA for the residue of his past sins will keep him out of their house for the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">foreseeable</span> future.<br /><br />* * *</span><br /><br />In an earlier session, perhaps a month ago, Mark and I were exploring with Tony an interruption in - shall we say <em>- physical intimacy</em>.<br /><br />So there had been a break in that <em>interruption</em>. There was a discussion about whether it <em>counted</em> because it had <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">occurred</span> after a night out on the town where we had <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">imbibed</span> a considerable amount of booze.<br /><br />"Look." Tony paused our quibbling with the flat of his palm. "Sometimes alcohol is a social lubricant right? We do things, or we allow ourselves to do things when we've been drinking that we would otherwise not. Are the circumstances ideal? Sometimes if you wait for the optimal place and time and vibe, you can die waiting. Let's just - and I'm only suggesting that we consider this - let's 'celebrate' this." (And he did make air quotes on "celebrate" god bless him.) "Perhaps alcohol got you to it, but it happened and that's a good thing."<br /><br />We each sat there silent, considering this prospect that alcohol is not always the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">villain</span>.</p><p>* * * </p><p>Wine, beer, cocktails. Alcohol. We pour it out. We bring it to our lips. And we set down the glass when we're done drinking. It can be a balm or an agent for action.</p><p>We are so eager to vilify our own behavior that we go hunting for disfunction or tease it out of the obvious suspects, like alcohol. Marriage can be tough. If I gave voice to every frustration or passing gripe, my marriage would have ended years ago. The danger, however, being that perhaps the glasses of wine leave my thoughts muffled indiscriminately - the mundane and the critical subdued into inertia. </p><p>After all that pot that has been turned down to simmer may never boil over but it is still filled with scalding, hot water.</p></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-64230413814952772912010-08-27T11:08:00.000-04:002010-08-27T14:28:28.238-04:00The Soundtrack of My Severance*<div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">When something happens in my life of any significance - happy, sad, or otherwise - I cycle through the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">iTunes</span> implanted in my brain and play snippets from <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">showtunes</span> to give words to my feelings. I never seem to know any whole song by heart so a few relevant (and remembered) lyrics start playing as a loop in my head. If I'm alone at home or in an elevator perhaps I will sing these bits out loud. I also would extract every recording I have of those songs from my computer to put them into active rotation on my <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">iPod</span>.<br /><br />When I found out in mid July that I would no longer have a job, or that my job would soon cease to exist because of a pending merger with another company, lines from "<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/im-still-here/id287108593?i=287108634">I'm Still Here</a>" started a rotation in my brain that lasted for days.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"></span></span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Good times and bum times,<br />I've seen them all and, my dear,<br />I'm still here.<br />Plush velvet sometimes,<br />Sometimes just pretzels and beer,<br />But I'm here.<br /></div></span></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"><div align="left"><br />Carlotta sings the song in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Sondheim">Stephen Sondheim's </a>"<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Follies">Follies</a>." She's an ex-showgirl and a D-A-M-E. She's been around the block and - although her feet are tired - she is indomitable. She ends the song, which is really a "fuck you" anthem for indefatigable, with a defiant declaration.<br /></div><div align="center"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I got through all of last year<br />And I'm here.<br />Lord knows, at least I was there,<br />And I'm here!<br />Look who's here!<br />I'm still here!</div><br /></span><div align="left">That mapped pretty well to my initial reaction to losing my job - rage. In fact, I didn't lose my job. That makes it sound like I misplaced my employment because I was careless. It was taken from me. Not that I loved it. It frustrated the hell out of me a lot of the time. I had gotten through re-<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">orgs</span>, product blunders, and clueless <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">bosess</span> and I still performed. I'd delivered.<br /><br />To quiet that Eartha <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">Kitt</span>/Dolores Grey/Yvonne <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">DeCarlo</span> ranting in my brain, I came up with a simple mantra: <em>Sometimes you have to be kicked out of something in order to leave it</em>.<br /><br />It's true in work and love. My last bad break up happened about six years ago. The guy dumped me. He was a tool but I would've stayed in that relationship and entertained delusions of longevity. So he did me a painful favor by ending it.<br /><br /><em>Sometimes you have to be kicked out of something to leave it</em><br /><br />A couple of weeks passed between notification and the merger close date where I was still an employee although I had little to do except pack up my cubicle into boxes and shuttle them home. It was at that point that my accompaniment turned morose. That's when I reached out to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggy_Lee">Miss Peggy Lee </a>and her version of a <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/is-that-all-there-is/id77970149?i=77970076">song </a>that starts with a child's house burning to the ground.<br /></div><div align="center"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">I remember when I was a girl<br />Our house caught on fire<br />And I'll never forget the look on my father's face<br />As he gathered me in his arms<br />And raced to the burning building out on the pavement<br />And I stood there shivering<br />And watched the whole world go up in flames<br />And when it was all <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">over I</span> said to myself<br />Is that all there is to a fire?<br />Is that all there is?</span><br /><br /></div><div align="left">I did not know that song very well and I didn't already own it, so I bought it. I made a Bloody Mary at the kitchen counter as I downloaded it. Then I played it. And re-played it. And re-played that song that was a lot like a <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">dancehall</span> dirge.<br /></div><div align="center"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Is that all there is?<br />If that's all there is, my friends, then let's keep dancing<br />Let's break out the booze and have a ball<br />If that's all there is<br /></div><br /></span><div align="left">One might interpret this song as a cry of help. I see it as someone who, like Carlotta in "Follies," remains defiant although depression has replaced the anger. Also a level of acceptance has seeped into the message. If that's as bad or good as life gets then fuck you and pour me another drink.<br /><br />Word got out and people would come by or telephone to offer condolences, which I refused by repeating my mantra to them: <em>Sometimes you have to be kicked out of something to leave it</em>. I said it to them. I said it to myself.<br /><br />Sooner or later, I had hoped, my mantra would convince my emotions that what had happened was a positive thing.<br /><br />The merger closed and I got a short email - pick up your severance package from HR and drop off your laptop with IT.</div><br /></span><div align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;">Best thing that ever could have happened</div><br /></span><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">A good friend asked if, considering that I didn't have to work, if I would be taking August off. It had never <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">occurred</span> to me that I had that option. Meaning that I had the choice of not worrying about finding that next job. Adding up my severance and payout for unused PTO, I had four or five months of income to use up before my unemployment turned chronic.<br /></span></div><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:85%;">There gotta be endings<br />Or there wouldn't be beginnings —</span></div><div align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Right?</span></div><br /></span><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">These lyrics from "</span><a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/now-you-know/id86596454?i=86595761"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Now You Know</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">" (from another Sondheim show - "</span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrily_We_Roll_Along_(musical)"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Merrily We Roll Along</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">") overtook the other songs running through my head. This was when acceptance met empowerment.</span></div><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It's called flowers wilt,<br />It's called apples rot,<br />It's called <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">theives</span> get rich and saints get shot,<br />It's called God don't answer prayers a lot,<br />Okay, now you know.<br /><br />Okay, now you know,<br />Now forget it.<br />Don't fall apart at the seams.<br />It's called letting go your illusions,<br />And don't confuse them with dreams.</span></div><br /></span><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">That day, after considering the question of "taking August off," I began a "sabbatical." After 14-15 years of uninterrupted employment - including two recessions and surviving a half dozen layoffs, I took a break. I have been going to the movies, reading books, and finally watching those old foreign films on my <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">DVR</span>.</span></div><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Because now you grow.<br />That's the killer, is<br />Now you grow.</span></div><br /></span><div align="left"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This last bit reminds me to remind myself that it's the hard stuff that makes you better if you can accept it, learn what you can, and move on. The alternative it that you dwell on the unfairness and the misery until that bitterness calcifies making that sadness a permanent aspect of your thinking. I do not want to hang out with that person, much less inhabit that body.<br /><br />So I got shit canned. That made me angry then sad. Now it is just something that happened to me that has given me the opportunity to rest, relax, reflect, and - soon - find some new job.<br /><br /><em><span style="font-size:78%;">[*NOTE: A "soundtrack" is <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">different</span> than a "cast album." The former is for films and that latter for recordings of theater scores by the original, revival, or studio casts. I only bring this up, as this distinction is very important to some enthusiasts. To me it's the kind of esoterica that is only interesting to the person in the role of correcting another.]</span></em></span></div>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-22702298361228843752010-08-27T10:45:00.000-04:002010-08-27T11:07:56.809-04:00Today on "the View"?<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I'm a bit anxious that I'm missing "The View" at this moment. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I'm concerned that I'm <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-corrected">anxious</span> about missing "The View."</span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I've spent too many days and hours at home. It's time to get out.</span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-3898240439409410982010-06-20T13:16:00.000-04:002011-02-27T12:03:36.978-05:00An All Too Obvious Metaphor<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">This morning I sat down to re-assemble a jigsaw puzzle...of me and my husband Mark putting in the final piece of another puzzle. (Mark's wee nephew Milo was looking on from the side.)</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">In June 2007, my mother-in-law, Helen, had brought together her three sons with two spouses, one long-term boyfriend, and three grandsons to a big house on </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiawah_Island,_South_Carolina"><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Kiawah Island, South Carolina</span></a><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">, to commemorate her sixtieth birthday.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">I found a puzzle in the house and obsessively spent a couple of hours a day, over 3 or 4 days, putting it together. The others would walk through and comment as they passed by or wandered onto the porch, while I stayed dedicated to my self-imposed task. (I like to finish something once I start.) </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZfSoikFyJoeHQCKZgCe4Vby1TWU1UltH1AN112QVp_26GcJRBCF6wNfGWkmGwO-K6xfuv7gRPbnhWXoWX0OJy_GM3GCQjy8QbZ3x9NbhSAZg7FXBAbFUX1dId1k5f4NhcgzObKoNy-mY/s1600/CIMG8273.JPG"><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 200px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 150px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5484910922580105394" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZfSoikFyJoeHQCKZgCe4Vby1TWU1UltH1AN112QVp_26GcJRBCF6wNfGWkmGwO-K6xfuv7gRPbnhWXoWX0OJy_GM3GCQjy8QbZ3x9NbhSAZg7FXBAbFUX1dId1k5f4NhcgzObKoNy-mY/s200/CIMG8273.JPG" /></span></a><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Mark has helped from time-to-time and Milo had often come in and stared on rapt. Someone took a photo to memorialize the finishing it. So we all got into the picture. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">That Christmas Helen had the photo made into a puzzle, which has sat on our dining table in the box, unopened ever since. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Today I scattered the little pieces on the table and started to put it together. "Oh," I thought, "I'll work on this for an hour or so and leave it off." Of course, I'm not that person so I spent the next several hours putting the pieces together. </span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Separating the edge pieces from the others. I started with the most recognizable parts - which were Mark and my smiling faces. Milo came together in fits and spurts. Other parts of the picture began to emerge unexpectedly - like the puzzle within the puzzle. Edges of some pieces would give clues to their destination because they contained the hard outline of some object - a chair, a table. </span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">After putting together the middle and center, the outer edges challenged me. The detail in the photo was fuzzy and the colors and shapes simliar. Then my friend John called to catch up and make plans to meet later today. As I listened to him I still scanned the pieces looking for something to come into recognition. As occasional but close friends do, he asked about the state of my marriage. "It's good. Solid. Sometimes stale. I tend to focus on what needs to be fixed - in any circumstance - so I have to remind myself that a stable, happy relationship is a good one; especially a marriage that is almost five years old." </span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Our cat - Mills - walked across the table, threatening to disturb the unassigned pieces. He was quite likely to nudge bits onto the floor. I picked him up and tossed him away. He returned to the table top so picked him up and set him further away. All the while John listened to me curse the cat - "goddammit Mills!" - as the cat squawked back at me. I said goodbye to John and Mills left me in peace.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">I returned to the gaps in the picture and the scattered, unintelligible pieces. I stared at some and then the fuzzy details started to make sense; not entirely but enough to try them out with the grain in the wall that would line up a row or gradation in color and light that made a piece of the puzzle more appropriate to one place than another. </span></div><div><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Flashes of success were followed periods of staring and seeing nothing. Sometimes I would take a bit and try it here-and-there and - not often - it would snap into place. I finished the last area - of blurry grasses and leaves in a sprint. With fewer pieces to consider each one found its logical spot quickly and in a neat succession. </span></div><div><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span> </div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span></div><div><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">The picture of two smiling men - married - and a little boy looking on had been reconstituted. </span></div>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-21798762621736984482010-06-20T13:07:00.000-04:002010-06-20T13:14:01.498-04:00A Cry for Help?<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">My husband sent me an email last Thursday with a subject line matching the title of my most recent posting.</span> <br /><br /><span style="font-family:courier new;font-size:85%;"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">ok</span> so that made me sad again. We can go somewhere for the summer, just not while I have this job.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It just how passive aggressive a blog can be even if that isn't your intention. I hadn't blamed him or even thought much about him when I typed out my bit of melancholy. </span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">It's nice to know he reads what I've written. </span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-87281781335350125462010-06-16T08:37:00.000-04:002010-06-16T08:55:20.528-04:00Where Did Everybody Go?<span style="font-family:arial;">I boarded the L train yesterday morning with no trouble; at 8 o'clock in the morning. Without having to push myself into the mob inside the subway car or wait for the next (or the next-after-next) to arrive, I walked right on to it.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">The gym has been quiet too. Relatively. Yesterday there were only two people per lane in the basement pool at Equinox on Greenwich. Ah the luxury of it! </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">But I'm suspicious. The men at Equinox are getting fatter and hairier. Or the handsome, fit men have migrated to the next happening gym. It happens. Gay men who work out slavishly move from gym to gym every year or so like birds in search of the ideal nest. <a href="http://www.davidbartongym.com/">David Barton </a>has a live DJ during prime time, so they may have set down their wieghts and relocated there...for now. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">I've never been clued into the next thing. I always seem to pick up on a trend a little late, just as the bleeding edge has already found the next "it." Or maybe the A gays have gone off to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire_Island,_New_York">Fire Island </a>for the summer, having spent the Fall and Winter sculpting the perfect pecs for shirtless dancing in the <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.thepinesfireisland.com">Pines</a>.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">All of this relative emptiness has me feeling left out. I have no plans for the summer. No vacation to look forward to; no summer share. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">I should appreciate the extra room in the pool, on the sidewalks, and the occasional seat on the subway.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Arial;">In a city that suddenly feels deserted when it is still quite crowded, not participating in the summer rituals of sun and fun can leave you wandering around like a wallflower waiting for a dance. </span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9125052100269239384.post-24840094528956801542010-06-07T07:48:00.000-04:002010-06-07T08:10:34.290-04:00A Younger Man in Dublin<span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;">Last week I spent a few days in Dublin; mostly for work with a Saturday for myself tacked on to the end of the trip.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">The last time I'd been in Ireland was the end of September 1997. I tried to resurrect those memories so I could compare the then to the now. My remembrances were more like flipping through a set of random snapshots. "<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">T'anks</span> a million," I heard that 100 times when the Irish would get off the bus. I took a lot of buses back then. The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-Ireland_Senior_Football_Championship">All-Ireland Gallic football tournament</a> had filled the city to overflowing, so I had to stay at a bed & breakfast in Donnybrook, which is a suburb just outside of Dublin proper, but it made me think of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnybrook!">failed Broadway musical based on the "The Quiet Man."</a> (I didn't know any of the songs or even the plot though a vague vision of the LP cover would flash into my mind each time I boarded that bus to Donnybrook.) </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">I met an Irishman in a gay bar and asked him to dinner. I had wanted a proper Irish dinner. </span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">"You'll have to bear with me, but if I wanted to eat Irish food I could just as well go home to my mom and dad." I asked him what he'd like. "Mexican," he replied.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">I remember pints of Guinness that had to sit and settle before getting topped off. It looked like black sludge but tasted piquant and creamy. That hadn't changed in thirteen years.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;">Mostly I had this sense of my 27 year old self compared to the man who will turn 40 this Fall. Dublin had been my third trip out of the United States in 1997, after Warsaw and London. I had a job that had sent me to those cities for a month or more at a time. Dublin was tacked on to the end of the London trip. Those had also been my first trips abroad in my life. Coming from New York I had felt so cosmopolitan, but my almost 40 self knows that I was really a young man, a boy perhaps, wandering into a world that was much, much broader than I had any sense of. </span><span style="font-family:Trebuchet MS;"> </span>David Waynehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730523168013345596noreply@blogger.com0