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That's what he said to me when he told me we weren't lovers anymore. We were just going to be friends.
He had every right to come to his decision. Our relationship was mostly non-sexual. I blame myself for that mostly. I think I've been sexually solo for so long (basically since 1994) that I find it tough to deal with someone on that level. Fear of not measuring up, performance anxiety, whatever you want. For me, sex does not equal love. Sex isn't even a form of love. It's playtime, or a quick nut at the park with some guy who may or may not be married. Or a form of power. Maybe that guy on craigslist will be desperate enough to actually come over to my place and do what he's only been fantasizing about when his wife's away.
- Mood:
sad
I got there and noticed two guys behind the counter. I'd seen them there before, and by their actions, they looked to be the owners of that particular location. They were also obviously gay. Both about my age (50-ish), one slender and more 'worn' looking, with a mustache. He sat in the back corner on a computer either doing the day's books or surfing for porn. The other one thicker, clean shaven, and Hispanic.
The Hispanic one came to the counter where I was sitting and took my order, and while he wasn't flitting and flaming, he was a little effeminate, but not obnoxiously so. He was also a little flirtatious. Well, as flirtatious as he could be without knowing my sexual tendencies, but he made it a point to continually walk by me, asking how everything was. And being as it WAS a full moon, I decided to indulge in a little flirtation myself, but my way. Every time he walked by, I made it a point to be staring at his crotch. He seemed to make a point of doing this, perhaps just to assure himself that he wasn't just imagining things. When he set my salad down, I got up and said, 'I'll be right back. I'm going to go wash my hands." and proceeded to the men's room.
- Mood: restless
I am bringing the urn containing my first husband's ashes with me. Some of the ashes will be placed in a large urn containing other memorials, etc. and burned at the end of the procession. I am hoping that my long-held guilt will be burned away at this ceremony. Let me try and explain.
This is Bert.
We met in Phoenix in 1983. I was very young (22), and pretty desperate to find some stability in my life. He offered that. He was my Daddy, I was his Boy. I moved in with him 4 weeks after we met, and we moved down to Tucson a year later. It was not an easy life, honestly. He had left a decent job in Phoenix, and we moved down here with very little, except the support of our friends in the gay community here. We had gotten involved in the community quickly, working in several gay bars, becoming community organizers, and joining the local MCC church. The LGBT community had been very supportive of us when, after a fire destroyed our home and belongings, they turned a regular drag show at a local bar into a fundraiser for us. We returned the favor by continually doing what we could to help other people in the community. It was a good way to live, I thought.Bert had dealt with some health issues off and on, but after he had a triple-bypass, things went downhill. First, the owner of the bar that he managed (and where I was a bouncer/bartender/janitor) let him go 3 weeks after the surgery, and then fired me too. (This is a LONG, involved story. Suffice to say, ask me if we meet and I'll tell you more). I found new work, but Bert battled with getting on Disability. He finally succeeded, but his health was never quite the same. My role soon changed from being taken care of to being caretaker. We had talked about Living Wills, but had never followed through.
In the beginning of 2005, Bert was dealing with abdominal pain, but was trying to be stoic about it, and decided to see if it would pass. It didn't. On Feb 5, we finally went to the ER at University Medical Center. He was moved to the ICU. We still didn't know what the real problem was, but the doctors assured us they'd find out. I remember the look of fear on his face when he looked at me. We said our 'I love you's, and I watched the sedative do it's job.
I came back the next afternoon to find Bert in a medically-induced coma, having just returned from emergency surgery. Apparently what we thought was just pancreatitis was much more. His pancreas was inflamed to the point where it cut off the blood supply to his spleen, killing it. This caused an infection which became septic. They had removed his spleen, and had to keep the incision open to try and drain the rest of the infection. He was hardly recognizable as the man I loved and cared for. The doctors didn't know when, or if, he would get better. They just had to wait and see. And so I waited too. For five weeks, daily after work, I'd check on him, sit with him, talk to him while he was in a coma. He never woke up. The infection was too much. I had to make the decision to turn off the ventilator. I watched his heartbeat slowly dwindle. He died just before midnight on March 11th, 2005.
During the 22 years we were together, I will admit, we fought sometimes. What couple doesn't? We battled drug abuse (mine) and alcoholism (ours), and just plain frustration. Sometimes he was too controlling, but that was his personality. But we both made the commitment to stick together. And I will admit that during some of the times when Bert's health was making him especially hard to deal with, I thought, 'God I wish you'd just fuckin' die already, and get it over with.' Sometimes I imagined what my life would be like after he was gone. And when it actually happened, it was nothing like I had imagined. I had no idea what to do, and for some reason, I didn't ask for help. I figured I had to take care of everything myself. I had to be the grown up now. Well, I didn't handle things very well. I didn't take much time to grieve (3 days), and never got around to holding any kind of memorial service. A small obituary in the local gay paper (that I wrote) was the only announcement of his passing.
I have always felt guilty for not letting all his friends say their goodbyes, for not giving him the tribute he deserved.
Don't get me wrong, I know he wasn't a saint, and there were some people that he rubbed the wrong way, me included, sometimes. But everyone deserves a fitting memorial. A chance for others to say, 'This person made a difference, and we miss them'.
Of course, as I say that, I think the best tribute I can give to Bert is me. He essentially raised me in the community, taught me that we have to take care of each other, because there's a lot of people who don't give a damm about us. He told me what it was like in the early days of Gay Liberation. He was literally AT the Stonewall Rebellion and worked in the gay bars in New York during those days. He helped start one of the first gay pride groups in Phoenix, and he helped instill in me a real love of community. We worked with others to start some of the early AIDS service organizations, and did our best to create goodwill in the community.
But I still need to make this gesture. So I'll carry his picture and his urn (which I made myself), and I'll show everyone there that he made a difference in my life, and I am a better man for it.
If the Republicans have taught us anything, it's that fact. It should be their motto: 'CRAZY WORKS!'
Movie Reviews of Not Great Movies
100 Feet – Released in 2008, Starring Famke Janssen and Bobby Cannavale.
I picked this up in the sale bin at my local Zia Records, as is my preference. I had pretty low expections, and that’s pretty much what I got. I knew the general premise: A woman is released from a long stay in prison for killing her husband. The final year of her sentence is to be spent under house arrest, with an electronic monitoring bracelet on her ankle, that doesn’t let her get further than 100 feet away. Of course, the twist is that her husband is haunting the house, and he’s not a very nice person.
You immediately get the sense there’s some real tension between the wife (Janssen) and the detective taking her home (Cannavale). It takes place in Brooklyn, so Cannavale is right at home with his heavy New York accent, and Janssen does a passable job as a middle-class cop’s wife. Turns out, her husband happened to be Cannavale’s partner on the force, and he never really believed her story of abuse at the hands of her husband, and her self-defense killing of him.
So, she’s stuck in this old 3 story house, and it isn’t long before she’s being tossed around by invisible hands. She figures it out pretty fast that it’s the ghost of her abusive husband, but she seems to fall into old habits of explaining the bruises and black eyes as falling down stairs, etc. With the help of the cute grocery delivery boy, whom she later fucks (of course), she gets some books on ghosts and learns how to get ghosts to leave your house (getting rid of all earthly possessions of the deceased, smudging the house with sage). She figures it’s all done, until she realizes she still has her wedding band, and the ghost is back beating the crap out of her. Meanwhile, Cannavale’s character is camped outside her home keeping an eye on her, and when he hears her screaming he accuses her of hiding the identity of the real killer of his old partner, and that’s the one who’s beating her up. When she admits it’s the ghost of her dead husband, he says she’s crazy and walks out.
She calls the pretty delivery boy one night, to talk, and he ends up coming over, and getting in the door, and they immediately start screwing. And while the teenager’s pumping away, she looks up and sees her dead husband’s ghost hovering above them watching. At first she’s a little scared, and then she looks like ‘Yeah, I’m screwing him and loving it… you like watching this don’t you?’
Then the husband/ghost starts throwing the kid around and if you like the graphic gore and bloodspatters, this is where it gets ok. The ghost twists the kid’s arm out of socket, smashes his head against the fireplace and repeatedly headbutts him, covering his ghostly form with the kid’s blood. Then he just disappears, leaving her screaming with a crumpled dead body in her bedroom…again.
The cop actually believes the ‘real’ killer is the cute delivery boy, and knows he’s in her house when he shows up with a warrant for his arrest. She stalls him long enough to dump the kid’s body under the bedroom floorboards where she had discovered a big garbage bag full of money earlier. Oh, yeah, on top of it, her husband wasn’t just abusing her, he was a dirty cop. Cannavale must not be a very good detective, because he doesn’t find anything suspicious. They stand downstairs and he tells her he’s looked back at all the old reports she filed about the abuse, and he apologizes. Meanwhile, the ceiling above them both is cracking and crumbling. Dead bodies tend to weigh a lot, I guess. She’s trying to get him to leave so she can deal with the dead delivery stud. That problem is solved when the body drops through the ceiling onto Cannavale’s head. He promptly arrests her, but that’s when the dead husband starts tossing him around too. Cannavale immediately recognizes his old partner and begs for mercy, but to know avail. The ghost tosses them both into the basement and then starts a fire. She tries dragging Cannavale out, gets out the basement window herself, goes back in when she hears him calling her, helps him get out, but gets pulled back in by the ghost. They have another tussle until she throws her wedding ring at him. The ghost catches it, and turns into the nice looking guy she remembers, then disintegrates as he whispers her name. She scrambles out as the place explodes some more, and Cannavale tells her to run. She does. The next thing you see is a bus leaving the city and a passenger reading some headline about a ‘cop killer wife dies in fire’ and ‘partner says she saved his life’. Just behind the passenger is, guess who...the wife. Credits roll.
Definitely not a big movie, and the DVD had nothing extra to it…
I have to confess to a little bit of pride. I have had a only a couple major relationships before 1983, one lasting just 2 years, one lasting less than a year. But my marriage to Bert lasted 22 years, just one year shy of my parents' marriage. In comparison, my 5 siblings (all heterosexual) have had at least one marriage and one divorce. Does that say something about 'traditional' marriage, or about me? Thought I’d just put that out there…
There is a something I learned rather early in my gay adult life. You have the family you were born into, and then you have your ‘chosen’ family. The friends and loved ones you build relationships with, the ones you can truly count on to be there when your biological family turns their back on you, when your being an open, honest adult gay person becomes too much for them to handle. A few people in my biological family have reached that point. And it happened in a rather shallow way – through Facebook.
Now I don’t want this to seem like a condemnation of ALL my bio-family, because some of them have been beside me through thick and thin. Considering we don’t see each other very often, that’s saying something. (The last time all my siblings and I were together was our mother’s memorial service in 2000) But it seems that tolerance and acceptance might just skip a generation, at least in a couple cases in my family. Here is the story…
I had recently found out that my brother and his 3rd wife had profiles on Facebook. I had already friended my niece, my brother’s daughter from his first marriage, and enjoy keeping in touch with her. I am genuinely proud of her and her accomplishments. Not many people in my family went on to higher education, and when she graduated from ASU, I was very proud. But Annie also had a rather distant relationship with her father. I think I understand now, a little better, the reasons for that distance.
And I’m not coming to this conclusion completely ignorant. My brother and his 3rd wife were very ‘compassionately Christian’ with me when I revealed to them I was HIV positive. I could tell they were thinking the whole time ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’ which is hypocritical bullshit of the highest order. All my interactions with them have been strained at best.
But I also thought we had turned a corner back when our father passed away, and I attended the funeral with Bert. Everyone in my family seemed genuinely nice, treating Bert as an equal member of the family. By that time, Bert and I had been together over 12 years. And when he passed away, everyone seemed saddened by it. But who really knows what lurks in the dark heart of conservative Christians?
Anyway, back to what I was ranting about. I had requested to add my brother as a friend on Facebook, and had already been friended by his wife. I thought they were both adult enough to handle what I had to share, and how I shared it. I do believe that my life is for mature audiences only, and most of what I share on FB is FAO. (For Adults Only) I make no apologies for that, and will not change my style. Thank you, and have a nice day.
Nothing came of the friend request until a couple days ago, when my brother sends me a message. He said that instead of just ignoring the request, he felt he should tell me WHY he was ignoring my request. He didn’t go into a lot of detail, but what he said was that the majority of my posts were ‘inappropriate’, and that ‘that kind of thing might be acceptable in your community’ but that he wouldn’t put up with it. So he ignored my friend request. And his wife dropped me as a friend. And surprisingly, my other brother back in Wisconsin also dropped me as a friend. Coincidence?
Here’s part of my problem. Yes, it bothers me. Even though I don’t have much of a relationship with any of my siblings, I thought Facebook might be a nice way to try and bridge the gap. But it also bothers me that it bothers me. I should be used to being rejected, and I’m pretty much a grown adult. I can handle someone saying, ‘no thanks, I don’t think we’d be compatible’. I even had one guy ignore my request by telling me I was ‘just a guy online he wanted to fuck’, as if I wasn’t a real person he could get to know.
And what’s this crap about ‘inappropriate’? What, are you 12 years old? If it matters at all, ALL of my FB friends are ADULTS, most WAAAAY over 21. So a little curse word now and then, or a little ‘adult’ humor is not going to make them go blind or make their head explode. I think what my brother found ‘inappropriate’ was my exposing of Christian and conservative hypocrisy, especially if it involved humor. Well, tough nuts. I will not change my style.
Like I said before, this kind of family intolerance seems to skip a generation, because my brother’s daughters, my beloved nieces, all continue to be my friends on FB. They may not always agree with what I post, and they may not always find what I post funny. But they won’t unfriend me over it. At least I hope not. And here’s another little quirk. My brothers seem to have more difficulty with me than my only sister. And even when she was a little uninformed about what my being gay meant, she at least had the decency to open herself up to other ideas, information and people. Even though she lives in a small, rather quiet place, I think she’s a lot hipper than she gives herself credit for.
Anyway, that’s all the ranting I’m in the mood for right now. I appreciate you for taking the time to suffer through my silly self-serving diatribe, and I am SO glad you are a part of my CHOSEN family. You’re the ones that REALLY count to me.
I had a bit of an 'aha' moment a little while ago, concerning me, and spirituality, and the whole crazy mess. I felt compelled to share it with all of you. But first, a little background on me...(Be warned, I tend to ramble, and sometimes my thoughts seem a little disjointed. It was one of the reasons I never gave very good sermons back in the day...)
I was raised, in a small Wisconsin town, as a Catholic. Not the good devoted, fanatical Catholics my mother's sisters were (with one relative having 14 kids), but a little more on the 'I think the Church should get a clue and join the 20th century' side of churchgoing. I mean, my Mom was the first one in her family to get a divorce, and the first one to go to rehab. She was a real 'modern' woman for the 70's. We went to mass on Sundays, sometimes Saturday night. I was reader some Sundays, but mostly because there was this parish priest I had a crush on. His name was Fr. Graves, and he was a former boxer and a big ol' bear. And he never ONCE touched me inappropriately. What's up with that? I was part of the 'youth mass', where we got to sing 'modern' music with guitars and smiles. I enjoyed being up front, participating, giving the readings and such. But the main reason was because I was a theater fag, and I LOVED all the attention, and I saw Sunday service as another 'performance' instead of 'worship'. And when I realized the Church and I differed on whether I could go to Heaven or not, simply because I was honest with who I wanted to love, well, let's just say, I didn't attend the Catholic church much after that.
But from a very young age, I had an interest in peoples' beliefs. The differences, the similarities, the rituals. I did book reports on Christian Science, on witchcraft, on Lutherans vs. Catholics. But I stopped attending church because it wasn't letting me be me.
And then I found UFMCC. Back in 1982-83, I was living in Phoenix, AZ, and having a tough time getting settled and feeling like I was a part of something. I found out where this rumored 'gay church' was meeting and showed up there one Sunday morning. That's all it took. I was hooked. Services were energetic, enthusiastic and joyful. People clapped and played the tambourines and enjoyed being Gay and being a 'Christian'. I found my people. They spoke about hope to teach the rest of the world that we were good people. That just because we loved differently than the majority of the world, our love was equal to theirs, including our love of God. It was a good feeling. I thought for a long time I, and my husband, could make a good life within UFMCC. And we did, with a few bumps in the road along the way. But it worked for us.
Fast forward to 2005-06. I'm widowed, after a marriage of 22 years. My life collapsed, and I lost everything. My home, my job, all the things I had built for the past decades, left behind. I left behind many of my old beliefs, too. I began a life of just basic survival, with unapologetic carnal pleasures as my goal. I walked away from the church, pretty easily it seemed. But hedonism isn't all it's cracked up to be. I enjoyed a relatively solitary existence for a while, but I missed the fellowship of the church. I tried going back to UFMCC, but my local church had changed, and yet it had kept a very dysfunctional, crisis-driven part that kept me feeling, 'I can't get sucked into their little dramas again'. I looked at other gay-friendly denominations, but nothing worked. So I just enjoyed having my Sundays free again...
And I began to listen to other people talk, and to read about things like 'secular humanism', and I began to see things without the filters of a 'gay Christian' but of a person who wants to see the right things done for the people that NEED it, not just the ones that WANT it, or can AFFORD it. I began to see how 'religion' had distorted arguments about everything, and how people on EVERY side used the Cross, the Star and Crescent, the Star of David, and any other religious symbol as a WEAPON for their cause. I didn't want to be in that fight. I just think it's important to do GOOD, to HELP other people, not out of fear of going to Hell, but because it's the right thing to do.
I've been enjoying learning alot from my current 'partner-in-crime' Ray, an avowed atheist, not of the Madaline Murray-O'Hare variety, but just a great person who exposes the fallacies within major religious beliefs, and a guy who genuinely enjoys butting heads with creationists who think the Earth is 3000 years old (whatever). I thank him for making it ENJOYABLE to make fun of the fanatics. And that goes for fanatics of ANYTHING, from religion to politics to diet and exercise, and especially fanatics of Miley Cyrus. I just want to see her hit by a bus going 75 down the middle of the freeway...
Anyway, back to my 'AHA' moment. I was remembering something god-fearing Christian crazies use as an argument for belief. When you say, 'I don't believe in God' and they reply, 'What if you're wrong? What if you die and stand in front of God to be judged, what do you think God would say to you then?'
This is what I'm picturing. God is like your boss, and you're getting your evaluation. You're both sitting in a small conference room, God's sitting across from you with your personnel file. He's probably got a nice suit on (I mean, he's God, right?), and he's reading through your records. He closes the file, leans back in his chair, looks at you and says, "OK, so you didn't believe in me, you didn't worship me, you didn't go to the churches people built for me. But you made people smile, even laugh when they really needed it. You helped out some friends who were in trouble, and when you said 'thank you' to people, you meant it. Some people still smile when they think about you. I think you did a good job."
What's it all mean in the end? I still don't know. But if I'm wrong about my belief, and God is there with my personnel file, I think he'll find some things to chuckle over. Then he'll put the whole thing in the shredder and we'll go out for a beer together. I think God likes Guiness best...
- Mood:
contemplative
This is an ongoing log of the strange and weird and wonderful and disturbing images I have that sometimes jar me into wakefulness...this is what I dream...
I was just forced awake 5 minutes ago...all I remember is running to meet someone, or a group of people, and I was running late. I also remember for some reason it was in Iowa (I lived there for 2 years, but the images I was seeing didn't look like anything I remember from there). As I was running I looked up and to my right and saw a HUGE microburst thunderstorm about a half mile away. I knew I had to hurry. It was headed toward me. As I continued to run, I looked right down the dirt road I was crossing and saw a huge crashing wave and flood coming toward me. I was gonna drown. Looking around I saw a small farmhouse and I started racing toward that. Chickens and geese were running around the yard, scared and tripping me up. The flood was just inches behind me, and just before I made it through the door of the mud room, I woke up...
Now I need a little time to calm myself down and go back to bed. Damm melatonin...
I sometimes wonder how much of my life I really want to live through the internet. A LOT of my time is spent checking Facebook, to see what my other 'friends' are up to, and I currently have an adults-only x-rated blogpost I share with my boyfriend. I have this wonderful vehicle for sharing my thoughts, feelings, and activities. It seems that the majority of my life is experienced, or at least shared through the ether known as the internets (a series of tubes). Sometimes it feels very amorphous and foggy and not very real at all. And other times it feels like these people I communicate with are the only solid things I have. I'll probably always feel that way, until I get the chance to meet more of you face to face.
Anyhow, I just wanted to kinda update you on my life & stuff, although I don't feel like much has changed. In a couple weeks, the remainder of the E-comm employees for my company will be ending their employment, and I'll say goodbye to them for the last time. After that it will be just the small handful of loss prevention staff and I.T. to pack up and close up and ship off whatever equipment, etc. the big bosses back east tell us to. And therein lies the main problem. No one from our corporate offices back in PA have really given us any concrete direction as to what we need to be doing to prepare for the end of it all. All I know (and this is only because we're inferring alot from what little communications we do receive) is that I'll be out of a job by June 1. In many ways it still feels like it's not real, because they've told us we'd be closing down in December...then it was January...then it was April. All we're really asking for is some definitive guidelines as to what to do with all our 'stuff'...our equipment, paperwork, furnishings, etc. Everyone here agrees that, as has happened in the past, corporate won't tell us anything until the last minute, and then we'll be scrambling to get it all done in time. Right now, we're kinda sitting on our hands waiting for something to happen...anything to break up the boredom. I want to be able to go out and find other work, but I find it hard saying I can't start til June 1 if something's available right now...I have this stupid sense of loyalty to my supervisor who kept me when everyone else in my department was let go.
Then there's the whole deal with my personal life, which is really pretty swell. Ray and I are having a gas when we get together, which isn't much, considering I'm working 56 hours a week, he's in school through the summer, and neither of us has our own transportation. We have been having a great time on public transit, our PDA either giving everyone the willies, or showing them that two masculine gay men can be openly affectionate without it being dirty. (However I'd love to give him a blowjob in the back of a bus sometime, in case you're wondering). And Ray's dealing with his own issues at home, with his roommate's recent job loss, the possibility that he might have to move in with his ex again is in his mind.
Speaking of PDA, it seems very natural for us to hold hands while we walk down the street together. It's really not a big deal, and occasionally we'll get a honk or two from passing cars (I assume it's in support), and a couple times we've heard 'faggot' yelled as someone drove by, but we've never felt in any danger. And we frequently go strolling down a nice fun, artsy, hippy area of our city, 4th Avenue, hand-in-hand. The other night, we got some VERY supportive comments from some of the local 'colorful characters' that inhabit that area of town. It is kinda fun to see the occasional looks of fear, shock, and mild revulsion from some of the less evolved members of our species, as well. I do exhibit PDA with my boyfriend because 1) I love him and enjoy being close to him, and 2) I hope other GLBT people will see us and be emboldened to be a little more open with their loved ones in public. We treat it like it's no big thing because...it's no big thing. It's just natural (for us).
Well, I think that's enough of my ramblings for now. I may just set up my camera and do this on video next time, and see if that gets a different reaction.
My best to you all, and I really do appreciate you. You help me be a better man.
Ernie
