| On Beauty ... come on people, come on! |
[11 Jul 2008|01:54pm] |
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When you break so many of the culture's stereotypes, can you help but question those stereotypes?
There are the models, the models, the models, everywhere. They are exemplars by which to compare oneself. They have just the right weight, the right height, a properly placed and correct portion of hair, proper facial symmetry. They are proportional and they represent what is most beautiful (for how can anything ever be considered more beautiful than a human being?).
In the society, one's appearance is judged by others, and this is considered normal, commonplace, expected. And these bodily appraisals would feel natural and even unremarkable were it not for the gross injustice, flagrant and extreme, when it comes to the distribution of beauty. How many people, forced to compare themselves with the models, are then left standing with a deep-seated feeling of being flawed and inadequate?
Such was my feeling as I stood in front of the mirror eying my reflection.
This description of beauty is especially true of the gay community, which -- according to stereotypical legend -- takes the philosophy and emphasizes it, underscores it, so that, girl, of course you must do something about your penis size, duhhhhh (all eyerolls and pursed lips). And though it has its fair share of lumberjacks and bears, the gay community is well known for its plucked eyebrows, carefully matched outfits and general taste for the "pretty" things in life.
Were I to fit in with this exclusive group of fashionable models, I would probably not be writing this. Feeling like Cupid, a god of love and beauty, I would revel in my superficial divinity, completely satisfied and totally comfortable with my physical appearance. However, due to various failures to "measure up" to the popular ideal, I have been relegated to a lower position on the beauty scale.
This knowledge is painful and degrading.
The feelings of pain and degradation are mostly buried and unconscious; just ever so slightly sensed within the deepest recesses of a numbed out soul. The feelingss reveal themselves only in dreams, or fleeting thoughts while in front of the mirror, or in quick moments of wishing that I could look normal and sexy like him.
Nevertheless, the secret, buried "knowledge" of my flawed appearance cuts hard and deep. It fuels an underground process of self-hate, causing me to loathe my whole body. I sum up other men in terms of their appearance. A part of me is dissatisfied with being physically inferior. A part of me aches with the desire to be physically beautiful.
Do I seek out men who I think are physically beautiful so that, when they pay attention to me, I can begin to feel like maybe I am beautiful after all?
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| More on sex and, too, love |
[05 Jul 2008|10:46pm] |
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When I was younger and attending summer camp up north, Gil and I would sneak out. We had preplanned it all. Late at night he would come to Ainsworth, the oversized cabin which housed the twenty boys who were in the fourteen to fifteen-year-old age range. I would be waiting on the back steps, eager for him to appear from behind the Pine trees. He would always come at midnight, smiling a mouthful of white teeth as he saw me, his blue eyes aglitter from the light of the moon.
As we walked uphill to his car, he would put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me in closer. He would talk excitedly in an audible whisper, sharing stories about the simple joys of his day. On the long path to the dirt parking lot, the trees loomed over us -- Oaks, Weeping Willows, Spruces -- and there was silence except for the endless screeching of the crickets.
The love between us was pure and real.
I thought of this memory as I was shopping with Rex, who eyed each young man that passed us in the mall, judging them with unbridled lust. His eyes went up and down as he quickly summed up the men according to their height, weight, lack of baldness, facial symmetry and other bodily characteristics.
Rex nudged me, asking, "How about the tall one? Dude, I bet that he is hung like a god damn porn star. I bet that his dick is so big. I would definitely suck his cock."
I was only fifteen, but Gil was seventeen and so he could drive. He was proud of his car, a 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse with shiny black paint that glinted in the cool July air as we sped down back country highways, jamming out to loud music in the sports coupe's low bucket seats. We were headed to his parent's house, where we would set the alarm clock in his bedroom for 5 a.m., just before sunrise.
Between us, there was a relationship. At night he would share with me lines from his favorite poems by Whitman and Frost. I would tell him about concepts that I had read in Plato's dialogues and ask him questions. During the day he would teach me what he knew about tennis and we would explore Round Lake together in kayaks.
My attraction to Gil ran far deeper than his physical appearance. There was present between us a feeling of connection that was exquisitely human in its nature; it could be felt when we laughed uncontrollably together, cried together, or when we gazed intently into eachother's eyes, telepathically conveying a true understanding at the end of a story. I knew then that sublime concepts of spirituality, elevated in both thought and language, must have been borne from such human experiences.
When Gil and I did have sex, it was pure and unadulterated in form.
In the mall, it seemed to me that sex had somehow become corrupt. I wondered, did it feel right for Rex to sum each man up based solely on his external appearance? In his mind, were each of them being compared to Michelangelo's David? I thought back to conversations he and I had, conversations that before had seemed natural but now made my soul recoil in disgust.
It reminded me of my visit to a truck stop off of an interstate in Massachusetts. When I was first told about this place, I found it difficult to believe that throngs of gay men actually waited around at the side of a highway for casual sex with strangers. My daredevil, venturesome friend Joey wanted to prove it to me. Once there, after parking my Jeep, I didn't have to walk very far before encountering a group of men on the sidewalk, one of them down on his knees, the other four with their dicks out getting orally serviced. Pulling out our cellphones for light, Joey and I explored the backwoods area, causing a couple of gay men engaged in anal sex to grow irritated that we were intruding upon their truck stop liaison.
I observed such scenes with a mixture of disbelief and curiosity. Were these men really happy with what they were doing? Was it truly fulfilling to be invaded by a "reasonably" handsome stranger's big cock? More importantly, was this what I wanted for myself -- and what role would I take on? I certainly had the option of getting down on my own knees and sucking off a stranger or two. After that I could seek out someone to suck me. Then, perhaps I might thoroughly enjoy a nice gang bang back in the woods.
There was, however, something that felt more pleasurable and gratifying about my sexual experiences with Gil. Blowjobs and butt fucks from "hot" guys with big cocks seemed to be a cheap imitation of the ecstasy that true love-making could provide. Later that night, as Rex found his hookup for the night [ the fifteenth or sixteenth person whom he would be having sex with this year] I wondered if, while his body was gratified, his soul remained hungry.
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| On a Brief Exploration of Certain Parts of Hell |
[01 Jul 2008|10:45pm] |
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 curious |
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... and then, there I found myself, sitting in the basement with Goo, Daren, and Dee. They chain smoked cigarettes and puff, puff passed around the bong.
Desperately, she wants to find love; and she has vested her hopes in a man who, deep down, she knows is incapable of loving her back.
Goo took swigs from a 40oz bottle of Budweiser. His hits from the bong were strong and deep, his reaches for the cigarette pack frequent. At 32, this was his lifestyle: up by 6a.m. for work at the bagel shop where he would sell bagels, wipe tables, and then come home to unwind. Usually he will sit for hours in front of the computer playing World of Warcraft until the early hours of the morning, enraptured, but always with one eye on the clock, eagerly awaiting 4:20 a.m.
Then Daren, still yet tortured and haunted by his past and still yet tortured by his face, which was made unsightly from congenital birth defects.
Such dens of Hell, I find, are all too easy to stumble upon. And Satan's sufferers are always eager to show you the way.
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[28 Jun 2008|02:18am] |
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The "relationship" with Joey was very similar to all former "relationships" with guys -- short lived and then, in retrospect, not even qualifying for being any sort of relationship at all because there was never any genuine relating going on.
It is recorded in my manu scriptus journal about how this very recent relationship with Joey was uncannily similar to the 4 month long one that was shared with Carkner. How very appropriate then, that I would see Carkner on the bus -- for the first time in about two years -- on my way back from a tennis lesson. This happened just days ago. Sitting in my seat, I happened to glance up at the line of people who were boarding the bus and I saw, and instantly recognized, Carkner's face through the window.
The whole thing reminded me of Alanis' song "Flinch"
What's it been, over a decade?
It still smarts like it was four minutes ago...
... where've you been, I heard you moved to my city.
I'd be paralyzed if I ran into you.
My tongue would sieze up if we were to meet again
Since Carkner did not speak to me upon boarding the bus, I did not get a chance to see whether or not my tongue would actually sieze up. Our eyes met when I first saw him outside waiting to board the bus. He noticed me before I noticed him and I was looking up to catch him staring. I instantly broke the gaze, looking instead at the floor of the bus, barely getting a quick glimpse of his sneakers and jeans as he walked by.
I was shocked as I suddenly felt flushed. Butterflies in my stomach turned into a tingling, burning sensation that engulfed my chest and ran up into my esophagus. My head felt light and dizzy. This entire reaction, which lasted all of 30 seconds, was involuntary and took me entirely by surprise. From a quick glance of Carkner's face, a glance that had lasted just a fraction of a second, and there I was having the beginning symptoms of a panic attack!
As I calmed down, the thought occured to me that maybe it was not him, perhaps I had been mistaken. But from the back of the bus came his characteristic laugh -- an obnoxious, high-pitched cackle -- and I knew then that it was certainly him. Inside, I fought back mild urges to gawk at the back of the bus, looking for him. No, no, I told myself, do not do that.
From there, my self-dialogue became self-depricating, as I tried to view myself through his eyes. I had not shaved in over a week, was he turned off by my bearded face, I wondered? Perhaps I would come across as more attractive smooth shaven. God damnit! Why hadn't I shaved? And -- ugh! -- my outfit! What a crappy outfit to have on for this occasion. The surf shorts are alright, and the sneakers aren't too bad, but the shirt is wayyyy too baggy. And how bad are the circles under my eyes?
I eyed the young man next to me. He seemed reasonably attractive. I tapped him on the shoulder and mumbled "Hey, I was wondering do you have the time right now?" Maybe Carkner will think that this is my friend, or perhaps he will speculate that it could be my latest boyfriend. That is, if he could even see me from where he was sitting. At least he can see the tennis racket. That's pretty obvious. Maybe he will think that's kind of cool, that I would be out playing tennis.
The whole scene was absurd. And if there were any doubts that it was him, all of them were expelled as I stood up to leave and heard my name being called out from the back. I ignored his summoning, never looking back, and finally I exited the bus at my stop.
From this experience it should be clear that my self-esteem and self-image is disturbingly poor. Not that I needed this experience in particular to recognize that fact. I have been writing about it for years.
Why would I wonder what Carkner -- a person who I find to be perfectly shallow, insensitive, and both emotionally and intellectually unstimulating -- thinks about me? And not about my soul, my writing, my values, my hopes, dreams, goals, feelings, etc., but that I would cater to his level of interacting: namely, a shallow one. Suddenly it's all about the clothes that I have on and whether or not I have shaved and how my hair looks. Even my fucking tennis racket gets dragged into the whole thing, as I pray to some inner god that, oh, please, it would be so nice if he was extremely attracted to me right now.
Why would it be nice if he was? Because that way I can ignore him and then go home and rejoice knowing that he is feeling some sort of painful regret over having dumped me. What was I going to do? Look in the mirror and say, "Forget about those starving kids that you read about in Ethiopia. Now is the time to feel good about yourself because Andrew Carkner thinks that you are attractive!!!" Weeeeeee. Off of the bus and onto the crazy train! My self-image roller coasters up and down. I'm attractive. No, I'm ugly. No I'm medium, oh my god i'm deformed, no i'm alright, no i'm hideous ...
I am not quite sure how my poor self-esteem developed, but I have it. And now begins the process of healing it.
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[26 Jun 2008|01:04am] |
I would, right now, love to be in the writing studio with Ray, laboring over prepositions and transitive verbs and adjectives and the appropriate placement of commas and semicolons and just generally analyzing the concepts within my journals and the words and grammar held therein.
I adore Ray, I truly, truly do. I admire him as I admired Laura all of those years ago. There is an intuitive feeling of connectedness present in our relationship; one that wasn't laboredly cultivated, but rather was present from the get go. Conversations with him fill me with excitement and delight! So many of his comments fill me with a flavor of glee never quite experienced theretofore.
I marvel over his persona and am often fascinated by his essence.
And I anxiously await his return from vacation.
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| cash money! yes! |
[23 Jun 2008|04:31am] |
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distressed |
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It is very early in the morning, 4:30 a.m., and I am feeling -- among other things -- fortunate to have the opportunity to ... well ... stay up until 4:30 or 5:30 or even 7:30 or 8:30 in the morning, as I have been up all night and am not obliged to be awake at any particular time. This is freedom of which is apparently a precious and rare commodity during this time of the capitalistic dog-eat-dog rat-race to pay the bills.
This lifestyle that I have been leading has been, in many ways, sponsored by my friends. So far I have been able to travel around with food and housing accommodations often provided and, beyond that, even gifts along the way: $500.00 from M.R., a laptop from Tim, and so forth. And I am very grateful for these things. ("You've brought water to me, making sure my bloom rebounds; you know best of what my special care allows.")
Embedded still in my memory is the nightmare of a book titled Nickel and Dimed. In it was told the story of the common people: waitresses, retail associates, building cleaners and the like, with the bottom line being that most people in America are barely making ends meet and, in order to do that, work a wage-slave job (or, in many cases, multiple jobs) that they dread.
As Michael Moore points out in "Our American Life" -- public schooling here in America is clearly substandard. News reports 'classrooms with 40 students' , 'schools with no Science labs' -- making it no surprise that the majority of our young adults can't find Britain on a map. Of course, there's always college: though by the time we graduate, we are deep in debt before we even have our first job. ("I'm at about 35,000 in debt and that's for my 3rd year of college," reports one student). Then again, this way you are the kind of employee that employers are looking for-- namely, one who NEEDS this job. What employer wouldn't want to employ someone thousands of dollars in debt? That way you won't cause any trouble. In addition to having to pay off your college debt, you need a job with health insurance -- and it would be just horrible to loose that kind of job, wouldn't it?? And if that one job doesn't pay off the bills, don't worry! cuz you can get another one. And another one. And another one. Tired from working so much? Cuz if you're not getting enough sleep, then just take pharmaceuticals (Ambien can help you fall asleep. Also, do you feel tired all of the time? Sad? Hopeless? Irritable? Excessive worry? Muscle tension? You could be suffering from generalized anxiety disorder. ... or it could be adult ADD ... talk to your doctor.) Yes, ask your doctor, ask him for more drugs. (Rozerem, Prilosec, Nasonex, Ambien, Lunesta, Prosac, Zoloft, Plavix, Vytorin, Viagara) That should keep ya pretty doped up until it's time to retire. Oh, did I say retire? Well, if you do make it to 80, I'm sure your pension will still be there, unlike the new employees for companies like Nissan, Motorola, IBM, Lockheed Martin, Circuit City, GM, Coca Cola, FedEx, Hershey's and Sprint who will never see a pension. Though I am sure our kids will take care of us, considering the great life we have given them. Oh -- and remember, let's defeat the terrorists over there so that we don't have to fight them here!"
Earlier in the month, I decided to poke my nose around town to see what sorts of jobs are available to the common worker. After all, working hard is the American way. Why would I want to spend this Summer of my resplendent youth hiking, camping, strolling through town or lounging around the pool discussing politics and the possibility of God's existence with my friends? Sitting around classrooms and further educating myself? ha! Much better to put my youth to good use -- namely as a wage-slave so that I can pay for my cell phone bill, wireless internet bill, internet music download bill and, you know, that hot pair of $85.00 blue jeans from Abercrombie and Fitch! Like, hellooooo...
There was 'Save A Lot', the grocery store where I was informed to ignore the modifier at the bottom of the giant HELP WANTED sign saying cashiers are needed. "Here at this store," the manager explained to me, "be prepared to be bone tired by the end of your shifts. We are going to need you to do, well, basically whatever is needed. This could be anything from stocking shelves to mopping floors to collecting carts to bagging groceries to lugging around 50 pound boxes on the loading dock. Shit, I'm the manager and I just got done cleaning a toilet!" How much does it pay? NYS minimum wage, which is $7.15 per hour before state and federal taxes are deducted.
There was the shampoo/hair supply warehouse, located in a run down 3 story brick building. I stopped by after seeing an ad in the newspaper. I was turned off by the discombobulated receptionist who came to the front desk from some backroom area. She was wearing a crappy old, stained T-shirt, cotton running shorts and a look that said, whaddya want? Tagging along behind her was a 4 or 5 year old girl, who turned out to be the woman's daughter. When I explained that I was here to apply for the job, the woman stepped into the backroom, muttering audibly to her coworker, "Will ya believe it, Patty? Sue put the ad in the paper and left us with no applications. That woman is such a moron!" The receptionist eventually returned with a photocopied application, showing off her dirty, ripped up sneakers and lack of dental work. "There ya go, hun, okay? Just fill it out and bring it back, sweetheart."
Yeah. Right on, lady.
And then my personal favorite: HOLLISTER Clothing Company, formed by its parent brand, Abercrombie and Fitch, and inspired by the laid-back, Southern California beach bum/surfer lifestyle. How hip, and trendy -- especially the part where they even pay a whopping EIGHT DOLLARS per hour of your time spent folding, displaying and selling their wildly overpriced T-shirts and shorts! Is this the next best thing to working in a California surf shop? And how can you possibly go wrong when the application for employment begins by asking whether you are a 'dude' or a 'chick'? I was invited to a group interview at the store. "Oh my God, dude, like, you guys might wanna hire me? That's dope. Sick shit, man." Yeah, duh, it's HOLLISTER ... and it's in the mall, bro, you know, the mall, where every cool young person works! Unfortunately, I did not want to fold away my Summer vacation while admiring my reflection in Hollister's full-length mirrors, wondering under the fake palm trees: Am I really sexy enough for the male models who are displayed on giant posters all over the store to want to make out with me on the Southern Cali beach under the stars at night? "Mmm, Hayden, slide your hand up my Hollister cotton T-shirt and feel my abs, babe."
Meanwhile, I pondered whether it would be possible to do some travelling of my own. Nothing too fancy like a trip overseas to France or Greece (how many hours of work at Hollister would that take?) but just something basic right here in my own country. Then I remembered an excerpt from an article written for The Nation by Barbara Ehrenreich,
"I took a mirco-vacation last week-- nine hours in Sun Valley before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multi-star restaurant, and "opera-house." What luck-- the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale!
But things started to get a little sinister -- maybe I had wandered into a movie set or Paris Hilton's closet -- because even at a 60 percent discount, I couldn't find a sleeveless cotton shirt for less than $100. These items shouldn't have been outdoors; they should have been in locked glass cases.
Then I remembered the general rule, which has been in place since sometime in the 90s: If a place is truly beautiful, you can't afford to be there. All right, I'm sure there are still exceptions-- a few scenic spots not yet eaten up by mansions. But they're going fast."
Yes, folks, competing in today's world involves so much more than "hard work" for even 9 or 10 bucks an hour, let alone the insulting amounts of $7 or $8 being offered up by corporate America.
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| a bit ON SEXUALITY |
[21 Jun 2008|08:59pm] |
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What was dating like for you initially?
There was a point when I was desperate about attaining a relationship. Memorable and signficiant portions of my day would involve signing into gay.com, finding someone whose picture looked, you know, reasonably attractive, and then sending them a private instant message which asked, 'hey, would you like to be boyfriends?' A lot of people were shocked by that kind of question, (*smiles) um ... they thought that I was nuts and they were like, 'well, gee, I don't even know you' or 'you are taking things too fast'. And I remember being kind of shocked myself by such responses because on that internet website I was getting propositioned by people who were also strangers for things like, 'let's go give eachother blowjobs' or 'let's meet up somewhere and fuck'. I knew that people actually did hookup in that way, having sex on the same day that they met eachother, and so it didn't seem like such an outrageous concept to say to somebody, 'Hi, I'm Damian and I think you're hot, would you like to try and be boyfriends?' People just didn't seem to get that. But it was very acceptable and understood why someone on day one would ask you to suck on their dick.
Now, I had always been told, time and again -- it was like some ages old tried and true understanding -- that, um, ... when it comes to your boyfriend, you have got to find them to be physically attractive at least. You have got to think they are hot, and then after that you figure out whether or not you are compatible in other ways. And this was because if there wasn't a physical attraction then the person was just going to be a friend.
So, such a concept of love seemed logical to me, which is what lead me to take the aforementioned approach in the gay chatroom. I am the kind of person who does not like to be indirect or discreet or beat around the bush, so to speak; I just, in general, try to be very transparent about things and get right to the heart of the matter as directly as possible. As far as I saw it, the gay men in the chatroom were there either because they wanted to have sex with someone or because -- in an Eharmony.com sort of way -- they were looking for a long-term relationship. So I expected people to either say, "no, thanks, i'm not interested in a boyfriend because ... fill in the blank ... I'm looking for a friend or I'm looking for a one-night-stand, or for them to instantly relate and say, you know, "Yeah! I'm looking for the same thing. Let's find out if we work."
You have spoken and written a lot about your sexual molestation as a preteen. You think that it had a big influence over your dating life?
Yeah, definately. You know, I have written a lot about, mostly about, ...uh... the strange sexual fantasies that I have had, which have been, I think, entertaining in different ways to different people.
There were nights of long dialogue with other "perverts" about, 'oh wouldn't it be nice to suck a dog's cock' or a few times I would, like, steal my classmates underwear from their dorm rooms so that I could sniff them, or I was jerking off with a friend and talking about what it would be like to be with a 3 or 4 year old, stuff like that.
The common theme was always humiliation or degradation. In all of my fantasies someone was always feeling degraded or feeling in some way that what they were doing was wrong. And, I don't know about other people, but my fantasy life is invariably an inner expression of what I would like my real life to be like, and so, inevitably these things started to spill out into real life. People were telling me, 'Oh, don't worry about it, it's just fantasy, it's only fake' but, meanwhile, I was meeting a guy from Boston at a hotel room so that I could wear a diaper and get treated like a baby or I was talking to a guy from Texas about how, 'oh, gee, we both love surfing and california and so let's date and eventually get a place there and pretend that you are my big brother and I am your 7 year old little brother..." This stuff was real.
Sexuality within the culture that I grew up was confusing enough to begin with. So at times it was like, 'hmm, well, the country is repressed and some people think even giving a rim-job is disgusting and immoral so maybe it's really okay to have sex with my dog? At times I wondered if I should join NAMBLA (*smiles). I think that it can be difficult to know where to draw the line when it comes to sexuality.
How did you sort through your sexuality?
Part of it was the therapy that comes from writing. I almost always write autobiographically. And there is no way for me to feel fulfilled unless I am writing the absolute truth of who I am onto the page. I remember the first time I sat down to write about my sexuality. I knew that this particular piece of writing would be published pubically and I felt very uncomfortable writing sentences like, "Last night I pissed my pants before lighting up a cigarette and jerking off while at the website www.smoking-boys.com". And from these uncomfortable feelings sprang questions like, 'Do I believe that people will think this stuff is sick and twisted because it actually is or just because society is so ignorant and unenlightened when it comes to sex?'
And at the end of the day, it was like, no, I don't think I believe that I want to defend child molestation or sniffing fecal stains on briefs, or whatever. No, I don't want my boyfriend to view me as a 7 year old little kid. I don't want to be in relationships where I am being related to as a dad would relate to his infant son, you know? It just felt like it wasn't how I wanted to engage with life, it was not what I wanted to be writing about.
And I always had a sneaking suspicion that these were sexual after effects of being molested. When I was coming to terms with being gay, that was something that I was able to shrug off and feel like it was defendable and possible and healthy. But when I would finish getting off and acting out -- whether in my mind or for real -- one of these bizarre sexual fantasies, it was always like, "Was that really okay?"
I decided to see a sexual abuse therapist who gave me a book titled The Sexually Abused Male. In it there were a lot of stories about young men who, having been molested themselves, went on to find molesting other little kids pleasurable. I thought about myself and I was like, "You know, I can see how I would find that to be pleasurable..." and I extended that concept to a lot of the other shame and humiliation based fantasies I was having.
It made sense that such an experience could have those kinds of sexual consequences and it left the responsibility up to me to make intentional, willful, conscientious sexual choices . . .
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| Back here. |
[16 Jun 2008|12:23am] |
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Sitting across from the Keenans’ old apartment I remembered an incident that occurred about eight or nine years ago, when I took great pains to sneak out of my Mom’s apartment well after midnight so that I could meet Erica Keenan in her back alley. Being outside long after dark was strictly forbidden back in those days of my early youth, and so it was an exciting thrill to roam around town with Erica – who was a couple of years my junior – hiding behind cars to avoid the police, making our way across the 112th street bridge, eventually through the woods so that we could swim together in the cool waters of the Mohawk river at 1:00 in the morning. I recall being surrounded by the high cliffs and trees, the moonlight glimmering on the water, its shine illuminating our deviant smiles of blissful victory. Afterwards, there was the excitement of visiting 16 year old Ashley Dodge (one of my ‘idols’ at the time). “Heya! Just thought, ya know, that 2:30 in the morning would be a good time to catch you. Ha! Ha!” We were sopping wet. Finally, we parted ways, feeling entirely fulfilled by the success of our adventure. We each bid the other goodbye, nervous that our respective guardians would have discovered our late night transgression. I spent so much of my youth trying to recapture the feeling elicited by such adventures. When word got around of my foray into the night with Erica, a group of 5 or 6 neighborhood kids wanted to try it out for themselves. Overhearing their plans, I made them promise to pick me up outside in my alley at around midnight. I waited for over an hour, sitting on the ground, playing in the dirt. They never came. I later heard that they had a grand time without me. As was usually the case, I felt alienated from and rejected by my peers. To my disappointment, most of my time was spent alone where I would wander through the woods or along the riverbanks. Because there were no real adventures to be had, I very often resorted to fantasy. A small, abandoned building isolated in the brush behind Catholic Central High’s football field became a grand gymnasium, built in the 19th century, then forgotten about and unused since the 1930s. Inside of it hoards of us young teenagers would sneak at night, taking advantage of the spacious, high ceiling interior. There was loud music combined with mind altering drugs and libations; screaming out-of-control girls having overwhelming personal realizations; making out in the old bleachers; and always some dramatic scene involving me and my lover: “Korbin, my god, I never realized that our spiritual connection was so deep until we both went to this amazing place tonight while on acid combined with ecstasy.” Passing by the site a few nights ago, I became aware of the total and complete unreality of such imaginings. I had always known that this particular fantasy was not feasible, but it was at that moment that the full extent of the impossibility hit me. The building was almost as small as a shed, was missing parts of roof and walls and it was most likely infested with rodents. What’s more, it is only feet away from nearby houses. A white haired old lady eyed me suspiciously from her kitchen window just for being on the street – how the hell were 15 or 20 kids ever going to slip through the weeds and have a party in some ratty old shed? And why would they want to? More realistically, I longed for a posse. We could have fires along the riverbank, down beers, be barefoot in the sand. At night, on Friday the 13th, the group of us would travel deep within Oakwood or Pinewoods cemetery with our Ouiji board, convinced that we saw ghosts or contacted the dead as we returned back to watch old horror flicks at the local movie theater. On full moons we would break into the old insane asylum. There would be baseball games and boating trips and precious moments alone with my boyfriend, sitting under the giant oak tree and talking about the future. Alas, such memorable, gratifying ventures were relegated only to my imagination as I sat – alone – appreciating the beauty of a flower or a waterfall solo. Now, back in my hometown, I am reminded of such a disappointing and isolated childhood.
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| damian pic post [recent snapshot.] |
[19 May 2008|02:05pm] |
will hopefully be inspired to write more here soon...
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| Brief thoughts on a few guys |
[08 May 2008|05:30pm] |
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anxious |
] |
In my non-cyber life, there have been a few real guys who've popped up. One of them was Chris, from Saratoga. I made some mistakes with him and I'll have to learn from them. I knew that I was not attracted him, but that he was attracted to me and I let him pay for a few dates without ever taking the initiative to say, hey, look, dude, I like you as a person and I would be interested in continuing this as a friendship, but I have a feeling that you want more ... or something very simple like that. Instead, I told him I was interested in hanging out with him and his friends last weekend and then just left him hanging online. I blocked his AOL Instant Messenger screen names only to receive a message from him in gay.com Saturday night.
Where the hell was I? He thought that this was heading in the direction of some sort of relationship or maybe at least a friendship? (yeah right -- friendship my ass)
I tried to keep up the lies. I don't have a cell phone, so I told him that all of the computers at school died. It was a no go. He said that he felt 'hurt and embarrassed as fuck'. I should have addressed the situation sooner. Oopsie. :-/
Calvin has just stopped communicating altogether. I think that he is an arrogant son of a bitch. One night I called him from Juliet's cell phone and asked him if he would like to get together. He said he would call me back on her telephone and never, ever did. Two days later I get a message in my email from Calvin saying exactly,
"Re: Tonight
yooooo
u so need to join us for some drinks tonight
im thinkin oh bar.... tonight some time
LET ME KNOW!!!!
hehehehehe"
When I apologized, explaining that I had plans with my friend Shawn [who would later ask me on a date], Calvin was rude about it. Forget about your friend, it will be way more fun at the bar with him, he said. I declined the invite and I could tell that Calvin was irritated. I'm sorry, I said, but I had made these plans earlier before I knew anything was going on. Well, he replied, it's so FUCKIN' hard to get a hold of you. (it's really not that hard)
The next day I invited him to have drinks with Phil, Kirnan and I and he pulled his same bizarre (not to mention annoying) habit of saying something like, "Who are those guys?" and asking for a few details and then ... ... ... ... nothing. No reply. Hello? Do you want to go? This time I just signed off and we have not chatted since.
When I first met Kirnan I wasn't impressed with his looks -- and he was made further uglier when I began to realize just how many people he was having sex with. Conversations with him about how he doesn't really like to read books, but when he does it's not far past the 8th or 9th grade reading level, did not help to make him more attractive. Neither did his "keep this a secret between us" comment on Sunday or Monday night about how if Phil hadn't been near the computer when we made plans, he would have wanted it to be just me and him. However, that was just a foreshadowing of the comments that were to come later that night from him.
In a matter of days, I went from being 'Damian' to becoming 'sexy' and 'lil stud'. When I replied nothing much to his question of what's up he typed that I am so cute. Typically I might giggle or say thank you at least, but I had a dark feeling about Kirnan and I didn't like him hitting on me. "By the way, what was that song you liked that we were listening to in my car the other night?" he wanted to know. It was Bleeding Love with lyrics that went:
Something's happened for the very first time with you
My heart melts into the ground
Found something true
... I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you
They try to pull me away but they don't know the truth...
This, Kirnan announced, was going to be our official song. (What?!) How did I feel about that, he wanted to know.
Well, there were a lot of things that I wanted to say, such as, I feel that you are fucking crazy, I feel that it is totally ridiculous, I feel grossed out.
Instead, I said that I thought it was 'nice'.
Nice? Just nice, he wanted to know? I was trying to make you giddy with that one, he explained.
When he said that, I became personally offended. What the hell was this, 6th grade? I'm 22, and Kirnan is nearly 24. We have not even known eachother for a week, never made out, barely embraced, and he honestly expects me to become dizzy and euphoric over his dedication of some chintzy top-40 pop song to us? Besides the fact that the lyrics were totally unrelated to our situation [which one of us was head over heels in love for the other?], the lyrics were not even that well written. We're not talking Shakespeare here:
Dear Damian,
Shall I compare thee to a Summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And Summer's lease hath all too short a date...
Not that I would have ever expected Kirnan to have picked up a book of sonnets anytime recently -- if ever -- but, come on, he was really pushing it by dedicating the love song from the radio to me and hurting my ego at the same time. I told him so. What did he think I was, I asked, did he really think that I was that easy? I continued on, letting him know that I thought he was moving way too fast.
Why did things feel strange now, he asked.
Maybe, I said, because he had said some stuff and I had not responded in a way that he expected me to and now he wasn't sure how to take it.
He typed back that he wasn't really sure -- which, sadly, I think was actually an honest answer -- but that we should meet up when I am back in town because he thinks things were going better in person.
With those three guys crossed off of the list, I don't get to go on dates anymore.
|
|
| A conflict |
[08 May 2008|12:37am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
 frustrated |
] |
I've got to admit that it made me feel irritated and disappointed that my online cyber-sexual relationships are failing miserably.
The first blow was from Justin, the underwear sniffing dude from Chicago. He warned me a long time ago that he was in a committed relationship with some guy who had no idea about Justin's "tighty-whitey" fetish or his recent late-night phone-sex conversations. I met Justin in the Underwear/Briefs/Jockstraps room at a particularly opportune moment when his boyfriend was overseas in Poland for a week visiting family. Between conversations about what it is like to wear white briefs for your whole life (which I lied about), to hump the bed in them, cum in them, get hard seeing that another guy has the Fruit of the Loom briefs band inching just above his jeans, between those conversations, we shared personal tidbits here and there: I'm a student at UAlbany, he's a photojournalist from Illinois, etc, etc.
Then one day, weeks ago, I find myself sitting in the dark, inside of the payphone room (that no one seems to use very much ever since the advent of cheap cell phones) whispering to Justin. He asked, "Were you kind of jealous when I told you about the underwear guy in New York and how you might want to get with him?" "Yes, I was," I replied. "I know. I can understand. I thought that you might. I didn't mean to put it that way. I like you a lot, I really do. I am starting to have feelings for you. Do you have feelings for me?" "Yes, Justin, I do. Do you think about me?" "Yes, I think about you a lot." "I think about you too." "It's just hard because I have feelings for my boyfriend as well..."
Sure, there's something that strikes the common person as a little odd, I'm sure, about someone who would -- and did, in fact -- send their dirty underwear to me through the mail, filled with a few loads of cum, some piss drips and an ever so slight, but still present, skid mark. Yet, in some small way I feel that Justin and I have, indeed, developed -- like the skid mark in the ass end of his dirty undies -- a slight and weak, yet still present, connection. While we still chit-chat here and there, it is more than evident that Justin's real life boyfriend takes some major precedence over me and I was actually a little bit hurt when Justin said that he couldn't talk on the phone tonight because his boyfriend would be home shortly.
Duhh.
The same holds true for Brandon. I met Brandon online a couple of nights ago, only this time the topic of conversation wasn't used underwear but (even better) brother on brother incest. Delicious. Brandon would be my big brother, and I could be his little brother and he is going to sit next to me on the couch and show me how to jerk off for the first time. How does it feel to have your big brother's leg over yours and to be stroking your cock with him? It feels good. ... feels nice. You have a nice dick, lil bro. Thanks Brandon. Turns out that Brandon got molested a couple of times by an older cousin when he was 9 and 12 or 13. We decided that it was cool we had this in common.
The conversation went on. Wasn't that just the hottest phone sex conversation of your life, he wanted to know, because it sure was for him. Seems like one of us is going to have to make a trip to see the other. Shouldn't be a problem though since he was born and raised in Buffalo, New York -- not too far from me -- and he will be there this Summer. I stared at his picture: 24, with a lean, muscular body and blond hair. His voice was sexy over the phone. "I graduate from the University in May 2009," I explained, "if we like eachother, shit, I can just move out to Teaxs." But when Justin failed to return my calls today I started to rethink the realism behind my fantasies of our perfect big brother/little brother pseudo-incestual relationship.
I mean, am I being realistic with myself or am I subconsciously sabotaging myself?
I went out of my way to call him earlier in the evening, experiencing real emotions of nervousness and excitment as the phone rang, which turned into bona fide disappointment when he did not pick up. I was truly elated when he sent me a message online tonight, only to feel a slight twinge of pain when he signed off as soon as I told him that I didn't have a cam.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
This afternoon I was near Kinderhook, lounging on the front porch of my Latin teacher's large, four-story house. I was there for the end of the semester party, only we have developed a connection and now she wants me to stay in her spacious home for 10 days this summer, watching her cat and taking care of things.
I was impressed by her home, by the 5 bathrooms and too many bedrooms to count and the books everywhere and the expensive pieces of furniture. I was impressed by the milk being delivered in glass containers and the refrigerator being stocked with quality food and impressed when we drove to the wine store in her shiny Acura and she dropped $118.00 on a case of merlot and 2 bottles of white wine. "Do you think that will be enough, Damian?" she asked me in a cheery tone, almost singing it.
I loved that moment because of the pure bourgeois decadence of it all. Granted, she wasn't filthy rich; some people spend $118.00 on a single bottle of wine, rather than 10 of them, but the moment was still so much ritzier than what I was used to experiencing. My closest friends would NEVER be able to afford such a thing. I grew up forever hearing the same motto: WE'RE SO POOR, WE CAN'T AFFORD THAT.
Here, at Dr. Marshall's, it was different. She had graduated from Harvard University, her husband from Yale. Both had their PhDs, and both were experienced professors. Highly, highly educated, socially graceful and not struggling to pay the heat bill nor complaining about a lack of health insurance.
"I would like you to stay at my home for 10 days," she explained. "I know that you won't have a car. Do you drive a stick shift? You don't? No matter, you can just use the Acura instead to get around. I'll want you to drive Roger and I to the airport ... and, of course, you'll have to let me know what to order to have delivered from the local dairy. Milk? Butter? Oh, and I do hope that you will be continuing to study Latin this Summer. I'm continuing the course as an independent study with a few students, Cory, Drusilla, Travis..."
Bob Dylan played on the stereo as I sipped merlot and sat on the back patio overlooking the pond in the backyard, watching my Latin colleagues chat together over vegetarian baked ziti and salad. I thought of Anne from human resources back at the psychiaric hospital. I had handed her 3 top-notch references from my professors. "Top of the class" "A joy to work with" Professor Cohen's touching comments about how she had enjoyed our philosophical conversations on ethics during her office hours and how she was truly impressed with my ability to follow arguments to their logical conclusions. Anne had hired me on the spot. $13 dollars an hour I would be paid. By the end I would be raking in nearly 10 grand.
But there was a more than good chance that I would be able to spend not just 10 days but the entire Summer at the Marshall's four-story abode, studying Ancient Greek and Latin, writing in my journal, having opportunities to zoom through the backcountry roads in the Acura by myself. I would be able to take trips into Boston with Professor Marshall and stroll through the campus and halls of Harvard University.
Did I really want to spend my Summer with the mentally infirm surrounded by locked doors and the dull, gray concrete walls? The job would eat up 40 hours of every week, with no free weekends, and would involve waking up early every morning against my will, catching two city buses, back and forth on the bus from home to work, home to work, home to work, another bus, waiting at bus stops, home to work. I imagined that eventually the excitement of working in the mysterious wards of the mental hospital would loose its thrill and by then my opportunity at the professors' country home would be long lost. I would regret the monotony of the 9 to 5 work week and would the thousands of dollars soothe my boredom and loss of freedom? Thirteen dollars -- is that a lot? Is thirteen dollars a worthy and respectable exchange for one hour of my time or would I be selling myself short? Would the conversations with the bipolar, psychotically depressed in-patients be as stimulating, influential and memorable as my conversations with Dr. Marshall and her friends?
I have to figure out something to do for cash, but do I really want to be a psychologist?
|
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| damian pics. |
[06 May 2008|10:03pm] |
|
|
| Uhh... |
[06 May 2008|04:04am] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
cold |
] |
I have come to a somewhat disturbing realization.
It began with the guys at school. Surrounded by thousands -- since the student body approximates nearly 17,000 total -- I am able to compare myself to a multitude of guys. I'm 5'3 -- abnormal height for a guy, no denying it. I have been taunted, teased and picked on for my height since Elementary school. Now, I feel that even my dick size is abnormal. Certainly not in an extreme way; I could have been born a hermaphrodite and have partial penis, partial vagina, or it could be 2" or 3" or something like that. It is probably closer to 6", maybe 5", not sure, but the problem is mostly with the width. I have not measured the circumference, but from comparing it to others I can tell that it is much thinner than I would want it to be.
This is the existential crisis. How do I cope with my deep-seated inferiority complex stemming from my stunted growth and thin penis?
Are these thoughts legitimate? Of course.
But why is my life consumed with a never-ending identity crisis? My life is characterized by top-40 pop music lyrics spinning through my head, cigarettes, cheap-ass food, wondering if I want to grow up to be a psychologist (though simultaneously wondering if I actually am about to snap into schizophrenia myself) while constantly mourning the fact that I cannot be an international superstar rocker/recording artist on a worldwide tour all while going through low-quality, slutty boys whose favorite thing to do for fun is drink alcohol. What are we going to do today? Sit in the woods and down beers. Tomorrow? Sit at a bar and down beers. The next day? Hang out in the backyard and have cheap vodka mixed with high fructose corn syrup and concentrated cranberry juice.
I have poison ivy. This sucks.
And then there's Jason. I want J. And we talked tonight. I love Jay because his body is ... like ... a model. He is one of those gay guys who hits the gym all of the time, obsessive about perfecting his god-like physique. He has a tough-guy, almost arrogant personality. And I remember reading in Neurosis and Human Growth about morbid dependency. So Jay was going on, "Well, I'm going to be the top in the relationship and so I wouldn't really care about your dick being small." A pause, and then, "You know, as a matter of fact, I would actually prefer for it to be smaller because when you do want to top me I don't want a huge cock going up my ass."
This conversation prompted by my saying, look, where is this going between us. I know that you say you are not shallow and that you are long-term relationship oriented and beauty is on the inside but I just need to let you know that I think that you possibly might find me to be cute, and I know that I think that you are hot and so can we just address this?
"First of all," he replied, "I am shallow."
Laughs.
In Neurosis and Human Growth, Dr. Horney (pronounced Horn-EYE, no pun intended) explains that there is one loophole for the neurotically dependent person. They can find someone who is flattered and validated by the dependent individual giving them so much devotion and making the partner the center of the universe. In return, she goes on, the other individual, for neurotic reasons of his own, revels in the devotion and attention that he receives and takes on the role of the protective nurturer and this, in turn, brings out of the very best qualities in both. The only down side, she explains, is that neither person ever outgrows their neurosis.
"How often such fortuitous circumstances occur is not in the realm of the analyst to judge," she writes. THE KEYWORD BEING 'FORTUITOUS'.
So J goes on, "So there's one thing -- I want you to know that I can be a very jealous guy."
"Okay," I beamed, thrilled with the chiseled god, validated by his flawless aesthetics, "so what do you need from me, Jason? I'm not allowed to check out other guys when we are in line together at the grocery store?"
"No, I just need to know that you really want me."
"And then in return for my complete and utter devotion you will protect me and shower me with attention?" I asked.
"Hrm... I can see that..."
|
|
| Quick snapshot. |
[05 May 2008|12:35pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
hopeful |
] |
Last night Phil, Kirnan and I went to the Cliffs (for lack of a better nickname of the place) and managed to start a huge fire in a shale cove on the riverbank just as the sun was setting. We unloaded the Budweiser and Corona we had bought at the store and sat around talking for a few hours. The beginning started off quietly but by the end loud screams and laughter echoed everywhere, reverberating into the night as we wrestled with eachother in the sand. Three young gay boys having some beer in the middle of nowhere.
At the end of the night, as we navigated our way up the winding dirt trails back to the car, I felt bittersweet. How many times had I wandered through here as a young boy, exploring the place alone? A million times. Alone. I had yearned for friends to share the place with, a group to go swimming with in the river, start a fire with, joke around with, grill some hot dogs. I wanted to leave the group, wander off alone with Matt Casey, his arm around my shoulders, his tongue in my mouth, hidden behind one of the cliffs under the stars as we made out...
It was nice -- aside from my having a poison ivy rash now (fuck) -- and I had a good time. Kirnan is, for the most part, laid back and fun to pal around with. At the riverbank he made a comment that was something like 'I'm glad to finally have a social life'; but I have a feeling that he would like us to be more than just friends. Back at my dorm room the 3 of us crammed on the futon together and slept in the common room, making it sort of like a middle school sleepover or something. In the morning Phil left for class and Kirnan rolled over, scooping me up in his arms and nuzzling his face into my neck. We slept like that together.
The night before I was in Shawn's bed, his arms wrapped around me. This was after beers and a movie and our bedtime cuddling was innocent. When he dropped me off, as I turned to leave, Shawn grabbed my arm.
He said, "Hey -- uh -- I know you said that you go on a lot of dates with boys, but -- uh -- I was wondering ... I would like to take you on one, if you don't mind."
Eeek.
Shawn, Kirnan, Chris, Phil, Calvin ... none of these guys are right for me. Obviously I don't mind our hanging out, but there is something about their personalities that doesn't feel right.
More later.
|
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| damian pic post. |
[04 May 2008|04:41pm] |
|
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| Boys! |
[03 May 2008|01:50pm] |
| [ |
mood |
| |
hopeful |
] |
Yesterday afternoon, after classes, was (almost, but not quite) unreal because of the sudden, overwhelming wave of boys.
Chris had been on me the entire week with his all-too-frequent reminders that he wanted to spend the weekend together in Saratoga wining and dining me and introducing me to his friends. "Will the overnight accommodations be comfortable," I asked him? This was my circumlocutory way of asking, "Where am I gonna be sleeping?" "Ohh, of course," was his cheery, innocent response, "my bed fits two very nicely."
'nuff said. The last time Chris and I were in a bed together -- the King sized, no less, in Easton -- his arms were around me when I didn't want them to be, and he insisted on sucking me off despite my protests of being too tired. Sure, I passively allowed him to give me oral while I lay silent and motionless, but I did not want to have a repeat of the pesky incident. On our previous date, the eighth one, which began at 1 p.m. and lasted well into the evening, after drinks, dinner and a movie, my goodbye was a halfhearted hug and a quick kiss on his cheek. Didn't he get the goddamned point? I mean, I'm sexually prude, but this isn't the Victorian times. By the eighth date, I would want to engage in some making out and heavy petting... or, if not that, at least a somewhat explicit conversation about our 'feelings for eachother' and 'where this is going between us' ...
Chris and I never had the 'where this is going' conversation, leaving me to resort to getting advice from Justin, my online underwear sniffing friend. "So, like, do friends buy other friends drinks and food on a consistent basis?" I asked him from YAHOO chat. He said no, only validating my own thoughts on the matter. "So basically," I postulated, "he is making an investment in me as part of the courtship process..." "Yeah," typed Justin, "he's trying to woo you..."
Chris was sending me instant messages on AIM: he is just about to finish up work. I'm still hanging out with him and his friends, right? He's really, really looking forward to it. All that he has to do is go home and take a shower.
I stalled Chris with the news that I just needed to finish up this essay for finals...
Meanwhile were the instant messages from Phil. After our initial encounter (where I learned that he had recently been released from a psych ward for cutting) I agreed to hang out with him again. This time I started to wonder if maybe Phil really was crazy. Over dinner he discussed a naked squirrel named Joe who comes to the foot of his bed to talk to him. There was talk about naked Joe's squirrel friends and lots of baby talk like, "ME SO HUNGRY! ME HAPPY THAT YOU WANT TO HANG OUT TODAY. CAN I'S GIVE U KISS ON YOUR FOREHEAD?" He was (hopefully) kidding around and being funny with the naked squirrel talk, and apparently he thought that his little boy talk was cute. I thought of www.aby.com and the adult-babies that I had known. Phil seemed like a good candidate for infantilism. I could see him diapered up and asking his daddy for a ba-ba, "as wong as I bes a real good boy, pwease?" But when I mentioned that he might enjoy being a baby he recoiled with a slight wince. Hmmm... I wanted spread my arms out and scream, THEN STOP FUCKING ACTING LIKE ONE AROUND ME BECAUSE IT IS FUCKING ANNOYING, DUDE! But I didn't want to scare the poor boy.
He obviously wanted to hang out with me, practically begging me to have dinner with him and then following alongside me to the cafe and playing on his laptop while I studied Latin. Later that night we went swimming together in the university's gigantic in-ground swimming pool. Staying true to form, he wanted to play Marco Polo -- just the two of us -- and, I admit, I found myself back in touch with my inner-child, aware of my high-pitched giggling as he almost caught me in the pool. "HA HA You're it!" "Marco." "...Polo" "Marco." "Polo." "Marco. ... ... hey! You have to say Polo!! C'mon, don't cheat!" More giggling. I had one eye on the lifeguard. Was he checking my body out earlier? He was hot. What did he think of this game between Phil and I in the pool? The lifeguard looked way too cool to ever be caught dead doing something like this. Back in the colossal shower space of the locker room, I sang loudly, looking down, admiring the bulge in my bathing suit. I also lamented over never having the chance to bond with other boys in a locker room like this after a game of soccer, tennis or rugby.
Despite Phil's bizarre demeanor, I liked the fact that he was actively down for having a good time. Walking back to the quad together, towels slung over our shoulders, we discussed all the stuff we could do together. "We can take the bus tomorrow!" I said, "We can get my tennis rackets. We can kick around a soccer ball in the field ... play Man Hunt in the woods..." But when he messaged me looking forward to the trip into town for the rackets, I blew him off. Maybe tomorrow... It wasn't that I didn't like him. But he's going back to Indiana in just a couple of weeks anyway.
Yesterday, Phil was back, messaging me at the same time as Chris and Justin asking if maybe we could hang out today. But, by that point, I was way more focused on Kiernan (formerly Johnathan), the 23-year-old boy from gay.com who was asking what's up?
3 guys, I thought, and I could FUCK any one of them by just saying the word.
"I'm at the mall," Kiernan typed, "waiting for you to let me know what's going on. I can be there in 5 minutes."
And he was. I hurried over to the plumb colored PT Cruiser he told me to look for, taking one last puff off of the cigarette I had bummed and tossing it off to the side before opening up the passenger door.
"Sorry if I smell like cigarette smoke," I apologized.
"Don't worry about it, I'm a cigarette smoker myself."
Great.
The first thing that I noticed about Kiernan was his face and his less than smooth skin. I eyed the pockmarks on his right cheek. It bothered me a bit and then I thought of my own less than perfect skin. How bad were the blackheads on my nose? How scarred was my forehead from my high-school bout with acne? How visible were my pores?
Then I realized: it wasn't Kiernan's pock marks that bothered me as much as an overall sense of who he was that I picked up, both consciously and, I'm sure, unconsciously from subtle cues. There were the piercings; the many, many piercings. A bar through the top of his nose, a gem in his nostril, six or seven piercings in each ear. Even piercings in unlikely, least expected places like the skin between his thumb and index finger and underneath each clavicle bone. It was like an Easter egg hunt, only with piercings -- where would I stumble upon one next? "I started getting them one by one," he explained. "Whenever I was feeling angry I would get a piercing." Let's not analyze that, I thought. Then he proceeded with an analogy: "My sister is to tattoos as I am with piercings." Then, he said, "And my Mom just started getting tattoos. She has all 3 of her kid's names down one side, her name and my father's name down another side....." Was I being shallow and uncultured, or was the piercing and tattoo conversation creepy and weird? I had not shaved or showered in a few days and may have looked a bit hippy in appearance, but I definitely wasn't this kind of alternative. When I was younger I experimented with a lobe piercing, and later with the cartiledge of my ear, but the thought of getting 15 or 20 piercings was too much. In my mind I envisioned the faded black ink on a woman's arm reading JOAN + BOBBY 4 EVER N ALWAYS, only BOBBY was now crossed out and ROGER placed next to it.
As we drove to the mall, Kiernan touted over his attraction to down to earth guys. He told me that his favorite colors were green and brown, explaining very seriously that those were Earth tones, natural colors of the earth. "Your sneakers," he said, pointing to my own, "all of the bright colors, the orange and pink and blue, I like them, but I wouldn't go for that." He pointed to a pair on the shelf at Zumiez, "See, I would go for these because of the Earth tones."
Later on, when we visited my home town, I brought him into the woods, to the high cliff next to the powerfully gushing Mohawk river. He seemed to have no appreciation for it, saying, "Remember how I told you that I fell out of a tree and lacerated my liver and kidney? Yeah. Well, I don't like these heights, buddy."
Fair enough. We left the cliffs and headed for a spacious field where I marveled at the simple beauty of some deer, their black silhouettes visible against the white light of the big moon as they lept away, disappearing over a far off hill. At first I thought there was only one. Then there were more. "Oh, wow, there's 3!" I whispered.
"Ehhh, no, there's actually 4," Kiernan replied flatly, turning to go.
He did not seem very impressed by the place and he didn't seem even to fit in. The bulky chain making a U against his thigh as it dangled down from his belt buckle to the wallet in his back pocket was all too cumbersome and was it really necessary? The front of his hair was carefully geled, the long strands sticking up in a million places. When I told him about the Radical Faeries -- and their dwelling in the woods of Vermont, he scoffed, not at all impressed or interested in hearing more about my week spent in the woods with them.
So much for his down to Earthiness, I commented.
Well, he said, he didn't want to have to wipe his ass with pine cones.
ha ha. very funny. a playful shove.
I was confused about Kiernan, and I had a feeling that he was confused himself. When I met him he gave me two names -- John, his birth name and Kiernan, his chosen name. Also, he had made references several times now to his penchant for changing looks, like he was some kind of superstar keeping his image up with the times. Were these unconscious expressions of his confused identity?
Or maybe I wanted to change him into something that he is not. I had an urge to throw him the shower, wash the gel out of his hair, rip out his piercings, throw a T-shirt and jeans on him and push him down in the dirt. NOW you're down to Earth, bro. And what was up with his dead-end job-juggling act? He is currently working retail at the mall, activities escort (e.g., wheeling reluctant old farts to Bingo) at a nursing home and making sandwiches and coffee at a local cafe. Sure, he's making money, but he says that he's dirt poor even WITH his three jobs. He and I did not discuss his visions of the future, though. No time to squeeze that inbetween talk of the tattoos and piercings.
We departed company at about 2 a.m. I gave Kiernan a pair of my pants to mend, the Khaki's that lost a button on the front ....
|
|
| Same old shit! (with a comment on the insane) |
[01 May 2008|10:56pm] |
The movie 88 minutes inspired me to check out the biographies of a couple of infamous serial killers: Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. Bundy had an obsession with killing women and -- most interesting to me -- a knack for escaping out of police custody. He managed to escape not once, but TWICE -- the second time crawling out of a vent and leaving prison to continue his psychotic killing spree.
Then there's good old Jeff. Super cute as a youth, in his later years, during his interviews from prison he looks gross and nerdy. Though his mugshot isn't too bad:
 >> too cute!
Jeffrey was quite a character. Consider this eerie excerpt:
"In the early morning hours of May 30, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested) was discovered on the street, wandering nude and under heavy influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Reports of the boy's injuries varied. Dahmer told police that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the teenager's protests, police turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent, but did not investigate it. It was later found to be bodies in the back of his room. Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir."
Now that's a scene you won't find in even the creepiest depths of the Stephen King novel that you are curled up by the fire reading after midnight.
Dahmer was gay and he killed a lot of boys. ...something about how he was just so much more turned on if the body he was having sex with was, you know, dead. And as I skipped cheerfully to meet up with my Latin teacher today, it dawned on me: Paul, the man who I had spoken with on the phone. He was turned on by raping infant boys and, as he put it, "cumming deep inside of their dead bodies." **shiver**
I mean, geeze, at least Dahmer gave 'em a few years to live, allowed boys to experience the joys of adolescence before he went in for the kill. "I'd never do it for real," Paul had said, but now I wasn't so sure that I believed that line. Like Paul, Dahmer had started off with "just" sexual fantasies that had grown stronger and stronger and stronger until one day, at 15 or 16 he found himself waiting in a ditch for a local male jogger in the neighborhood to run by so that he could knock him over the head with a baseball bat and just lie with the man's unconscious body. Mmmm, nice.
Many thoughts travelled through my head. I thought about how exciting it would be to be the psychologist who interviews a man like Dahmer or Bundy. I pretended that the long hallways of the lecture center were actually hallways in a maximum security psychiatric hospital. I was wearing a suit. Tap, tap, tap, the sound of shoes on the hard marble floor. The security guards opened the door to the interview chamber. How would I address a psychotic killer? Deep voice. Dramatically serious, "Hello, Mr. Dahmer." or would I add a little flare? "Hey, Jeff, what's up, hun?"
Then, I thought, well, jeepers, what if I turned into a Jeffrey Dahmer! Oh, the horror! Would I slowly sink into psychosis and then, before I realized, SNAP I'm shamelessly murdering people and scrambling to dismember and hide the burdensome corpses? Maybe not quite like that, but do I fit the profile for someone about to go mad? No close relationships, abnormal sexual fantasies, doing homework by pretending to teach a classroom filled with no one....... Am I just creative and geniusly unusual? Or am I actually about to join Bundy on a path to the electric chair?
And was I unwittingly having conversations with serial killers (e.g.,Paul) at night over the telephone?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Lately the disappointment has been culminating. Only I do not anticipate a thunderous climax like some wild, possessed murderous rage. Rather, I foresee a continual blah blah blah blah blah blah, all ending in me murmuring "same old shit, different day" over the quiet hiss of the oxygen being delivered to me through a nasal canula as I struggle to push my walker through the trash-filled park. "Look at those agile boys," I will mumble, "such nice bodies. Playing baseball. I'm slowly dying, unfulfilled......."
Oh jeeeeeeesus.
Meanwhile, I'm totally flirting with Tim:
who is all dirty here from pressure washing the sidewalk. He lives nearby and ... yeah... I could see him fucking me hard in the woods -- which he would need to be ALIVE in order to do. (ha) Grrrrr, tiger.
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| Yesterday |
[30 Apr 2008|12:37pm] |
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mood |
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hopeful |
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I met up with Juilet yesterday afternoon, after skipping classes to begin the process of emptying out my dorm room. I took the city buses to my Mom's apartment and dropped off the pile of books that I carried in my backpack. The trip was for the few hours of riding the bus more than anything else -- I loved travelling.
Juliet and I walked downtown together, enjoying the warm Spring weather. We talked about our future as she chain smoked Camel filters. At the beginning of the semester we had attended the same university until Juliet had soon dropped out early on in the beginning of her freshman year. I asked her about the waitressing job she had taken up since then. They hadn't asked her to work in about two weeks, she explained.
She reported that much of her days were quite boring.
"I just need to find something to do with my life, I am so bored most of the time," she said.
When we had talked the previous summer, in 2007, she had said the same exact thing. At least since then, at long last, she had attained a boyfriend, Scott.
"I feel like all of my time is spent fidgeting around, occupying myself until Scott gets home from work."
There was a part of me that was growing frustrated with her matter-of-fact tone of voice, as if we were merely discussing a mildly interesting news story. Didn't she sense the urgency of the matter?! We were talking about our LIVES here! Our lives! Of which were too rapidly slipping away before our very eyes as we accomplished nothing, silently suffering as we made these remarks on the street regarding our cursed future.
"I almost got a job at a cafe," she went on.
I started to respond with some sort of optimistic enthusiasm, shouting, "We need some great adventure!"
The scene around us was hardly inspiring for such a speech. We had walked these blocks a million times together amongst the large, old row houses turned into drooping, sagging overcrowded apartment buildings, some of which were boarded up. Trash was strewn across the sidewalk, old wrappers, empty beer cans. Small businesses were everywhere, struggling to survive, faded HELP WANTED signs beckoning from the dirty windows.
And I yearned to whisk us away from this awful Hell. Maybe, like an Indiana Jones flick, we could go on a secret government mission deep within the Amazon rain forest. Once there we would battle anacondas, float on dangerous, crocodile infested waters. I would point my gun at the enemy. "Dr. Peters, watch out! He's right behind you for Christ's sake! Move out of the way!"
"... a great adventure," I trailed off.
Juliet gave a polite, uneasy smile and a look which conveyed that at 19 she already understood things about the world that I was only beginning to ponder at 22, her realistic pessimism barely concealed.
She lit up another cigarette.
Besides, we have had this same conversation before, a few times.
- - - - -
In the chatroom that night I received a message from Phil, a cute, timid gay boy who is a math major at my school. He wanted to hang out.
"I need to take a shower first," he explained, "because I am so horny. I know that you want to be friends, and I want to be your friend. When I'm horny, though, it makes me want to do things. I'll just jerk off in the shower."
I convinced Phil to come right now, regardless. I am bored and lonely, I typed, I do not want to wait; he can masturbate in a bathroom later or something.
Together we headed for the underground tunnels, sat down, talked quietly. He very recently spent some time at a mental hospital for cutting himself.
"I was running one day," he told me, "and accidentally brushed up against an exposed screw. When it cut me open," he paused, "...and I began to bleed... ... I realized that I felt relieved rather than hurt."
"What do you mean?" I asked.
We were sitting across from each other Indian-style, holding hands, the bottoms of my knees resting on the tops of his. I stared intently into his pale blue eyes. His low voice echoed down the narrow concrete tunnel.
"It felt good," he went on. Suddenly, so close, I could smell the offensive odor of his lightly acrid breath, perhaps the smell rising out of his mouth from the depths of his rotting soul within. "It made me feel like my stress was released. I used a broken shot glass to cut for the next few days..."
"Let me see your arm," I demanded. He obliged my request, pulling up his shirt sleeve to reveal the skin there. Was that a white line I saw, thin as sewing thread, or my imagination? The cuts were not deep. He did it for attention, I thought.
His disclosure that he had one day called his friend Danielle to report the cutting -- a girl from the university who he barely knew -- confirmed the attention hypothesis. Hadn't, in some deep recess of his mind, he known that she would be scared, call 911, that he would be taken away in an ambulance to the psych ward?
The incident reminded me of a time when I was 16 and feeling beyond desperately bored with loneliness and ennui. I went to the psychology office at school, explained that I was suicidal. I knew how to answer all of the questions appropriately to get the vacation that I wanted. No, I did not feel safe. Yes, if left alone I felt that I would not be able to prevent myself from inflicting fatal self-harm. Of course, it was all an act, as if I was on stage. I was rushed to Four Winds in an ambulance. I remember the dramatics of the pouring rain, loud claps of thunder, bright, prolonged flashes of lightning. Casual conversation with the medics in the back of the vehicle as it sped down the highway. My mother and aunt, frantic and confused at this unexpected turn of events, struggling to keep up in the car behind.
I was not prepared for the welcoming interview. My script hadn't been thoroughly written. How long had I had suicidal thoughts for? Did I have a coherent plan in place? By what means would I get the job done? ... pills? knife? gun? What is my sexuality? I studdered through it. The man left the room, asking my mom to fill out a standard evaluative questionnaire. She was nervous, uncertain. I coached her through it trying to get her answers to make my story believable, but, of course, not be too disturbing. I certainly did not want to spend the rest of my life here.
The stay there is a blur. 5 minutes with the psychiatrist. His diagnosis: I need to lay off of the pot, it's screwing with my mind. Where did I get it from, anyway? My high school friend Jennifer Isager -- Oh. Turns out that is a patient of his. Just lay off of the drugs. He prescribed me Celexa -- an antidepressant -- to be taken daily. Convincing my roommate that he was hearing voices, getting him taken away to the padded room in the middle of the night. No, I didn't have the radio on, no I wasn't just talking to him for the past hour, I was sleeping. What the hell is wrong with him? Was he okay? I should call the nurse. Total confinement. A crush on the rambunctious 13 year-old blonde with anger management issues. The sad, obese girl who had been at the hospital for so long now that her room -- unlike most others -- was fully decorated with posters and knicknacks. The covering of the electrical outlet being half ripped off. If I was really suicidal, couldn't I use it to electrocute myself? What kind of a half-assed nut-house is this, anyway?
I probably could have spent months, if not years there. What would it have taken? Every night we had to fill out "personal" journals that the counselors read. I am a writer. I could have made up fabulous stories for the conselors to read, revealing "secrets" to them that I never told anyone about trapping squirrels and poking out their eyes, how sometimes, at night, I would stand above my mother's bed with a steak knife, barely able to constrain myself from slitting her throat. How I hoped they would let me out soon because, honestly, I think I am going to finally go through with it...
But I soon wanted out of the asylum's oppressive atmosphere. They didn't know, didn't realize, that this was all a scam, that I wasn't really suicidal. My ego was offended by the constant surveillance. There was, obviously, no freedom. The doors were all alarmed, your sovereignty checked at the door. Well, it was time for me to check out and end this disappointing dive into the unknown. I felt sorry for the teenagers who were there with serious problems that would never be solved, or even soothed, from the 2 minute superfluous meetings with the psychiatrist who asked everyone the same questions off of his checklist, the shallow, uncomfortable group therapy sessions, the realization that almost everyone in the place was automatically prescribed Celexa from the moment they arrived. The troubled youth were shuffled in through the door and treated like massive herds, checked in, numbered, perscribed pills and then shuffled back out the door fast as they came -- unless you were really unlucky like the fat girl with all the stuffed animals and knickknacks whose home had become Four Winds in all of its generic, sterile, character-free glory.
Did Phil cut himself for attention, call his friend Danielle with a desire -- not even entirely conscious to himself -- to visit the asylum? Probably. Every now and then someone would come barrelling down the tunnel, causing Phil and I to jump out of eachother's arms, and shut-up. With all of the homosexual progress, we were still aware of the pangs of shame and humiliation that we would feel at being seen like that by someone straight. It wasn't normal, it wouldn't be right. These pangs were left over from a childhood of being picked on and taunted and made to feel inferior for our gay status, our sissified demeanor. Lonely and bored, dissatisfied, did Phil hope to find salvation a the hospital? Did I, all of those years ago? I think that I did. I'm crazy, I'm hurting, I hate my life, please, help me! Only to realize that it wouldn't work. They just wanted to drug us up and take our money.
"Five hundred dollars!" my mother had exclaimed, as we drove away from Four Winds, after my release. "We're so lucky that we have health insurance. They charge five hundred dollars a day!"
Phil kept talking, getting into details about his troubled childhood and how he sometimes hears voices at night. He wanted to kiss me, apologized for being so horny, and alluded to the fact that he liked to be fucked and would let me fuck him. He was a sissy, more than me. I noticed how masculinely baritone my voice sounded in contrast with his high-pitched alto. When I playfully pushed him up against the wall, he cowered submissively but I was disgusted at my small, 5'3 frame which was tiny compared to his towering six feet. He was hot, but I hated his apologetic demeanor. He was too willing to follow me, to do what I say. I could slap him around and call him my bitch and fuck him hard and he would like that.
When I wanted him to sneak into the abandoned classroom he whined, "I can't, no, no, I can't. I don't want to get in trouble", high-pitched, bending his wrists, his eyes begging me not to be mad, to understand. I realized that I was attracted to rebellious, tough-guys and when we finally departed for the night, and he wrote down his number, I doubted that I wanted to see him again.
- - - - - - - - -
"Alright, so, now that we've gotten off, I gotta ask," came the voice over the phone, "do you really have a two-year-old nephew that you molest?"
Paul and I chuckled. It was nearly 3 a.m.
"You know what," I said, "the better question is, do you really want to fuck a baby until it's dead? Because that shit is fucked-up, man. I think that killing an infant by fucking it is just about as explicitly crazy as it can possibly get. I absolutely cannot think of anything more bizarre than that."
I had spent a couple of hours talking with Paul, each of us indulging the other in our deepest, most disturbing sexual fantasies.
"Yeah, I know, I wouldn't really do it," he responded.
We were both molested as children. At the age of 9 Paul's uncle had informed him that Paul had been eating his cum since he was still a baby. This as Paul sucked on his uncle's dick. I had been fondled for who knows how long by JR, with the occasional insertion of the eraser edge of a pencil up my anus.
Obviously, our molestation had caused deep-rooted sexual issues. Was I really here AGAIN, allowing myself to get off to mine? The same themes always present: shame, humiliation, guilt. Only Paul had added an element that I wasn't used to talking about: DEATH ... and, to be honest, I did not quite understand it. I don't think that he did either. I was grateful that the thought of raping and killing others did not turn me on and that all of my "top-secret" fantasies paled in comparison with such a psychotically gruesome extreme. I used to think that necrophilia (NOT one of my own fantasies) -- sex with dead corpses -- was shocking. But even this seemed so much more humane and moral than Paul's desire for pedophilic snuff. So much so that I am even reluctant to report it here, on my own journal.
"I actually had homeland security show up at my place. They monitor your conversations on YAHOO messenger. They showed up with a transcript of the chat," he said.
Then,
"I would like to talk to you about this every single night. While jerking off that is."
"Uh-huh."
No thanks, Paul -- killing babies is just not my cup of tea. And I'm not getting paid to be your therapist. Sorry.
PHIL PHOTO
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[28 Apr 2008|04:21pm] |
| [ |
mood |
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frustrated |
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"Oh these little protections, how they fail to serve me,
One forgotten phone call and I'm deflated.
Oh these little defenses, how they fail to comfort me,
Your hand pulling away and I'm devastated."
- Alanis Morissette,
So Unsexy
I was rash in jumping to the conclusion that Calvin was rejecting me. He got in touch on Saturday night, after my date with Chris that had taken up much of the day and run on well into the evening. He wanted me to go out to the club with him and Richard. I told him no, partly as a subliminal admonishment for his declension of my invitation to dinner the previous night, but also partly because I did not want to spend the night marinating my liver in even more alcohol while gawking at hot boys and paying a $5 admission fee to do this. Was this the only leisure I would ever encounter with people -- drinking? It was fun, but not so often. Who wanted to play a late night game of tennis or soccer or drive to Oakwood Cemetery, walk in through the woods and hunt for ghosts? Something, anything but the drunk circus of clubs or the beer-pong games at crowded house parties.
Inside my head, of course, I was delighted --overjoyed even-- that in my insecurities I had misunderstood Calvin. He wanted me after all. It was clear that he was disappointed and slightly surprised at my rejection of his offer. "But, Damian..." "Naw, aw, come on, Calvin, I'm just tired, that's all. Remember when you were tired and didn't want to go out to dinner with Sean and I yesterday?"
More significant, however, was my loss of attraction for Calvin. I remember when I first met him last week. I looked him up and down, admired his baggy cargo shorts -- brand new Summer '08 design from American Eagle -- trendily pulled down just below his hip bones, revealing the upper band of his Abercrombie and Fitch boxer briefs, T-shirt fitted snugly (but not too snugly) on his slim, lean body. His baseball hat completed the image, brim pushed slightly off to the side, reminding me of --oh, God-- the thousands of eternally unachievable straight boys that covered the campus, of whom I lusted after daily, drooling at the mouth, pretending not to stare, genuinely embarrassed if caught stealing a glance at the bluge in their mesh basketball shorts.
Initially, I was so overtaken with an appreciation for Calvin's straight acting mannerisms, tall, lean body and his clothes that I was willing to overlook any possible flaws. We went to dinner where he flirted with me, and gave me looks with his nice eyes that made me feel as if I was just a perfect little angel to him, one that he would never want to offend in any way. Out at the bar for cocktails, with Richard and Sean, he was polite and intelligent. I felt our knees rubbing up against one another underneath the table and I wanted him to reach out and kiss me, but, of course, he didn't. On the way home, that night, he seemed nervous.
"I'm sorry about keeping you up so late, Calvin, I know that you have to get up early," I said, looking up at him innocently.
"No, no, it's okay," he said, taking his hand off of the steering wheel and putting it down onto my thigh, then, as if thinking this was too brash, he quickly lifted it. "It's alright, because it was worth it," he turned to me. Smiled a half-smile.
We arrived back on campus.
"Do you want me to park and walk you to your dorm?" he inquired.
My heart fluttered. Should I say yes? I want to say yes. Does that make me a girl?
"No, I think that I won't get--," I almost said raped, then stopped myself. "I will be alright. I had a good night. Thanks Calvin."
"Okay."
Another one of Calvin's nervous brushes of his hand on the top of my thigh.
I waited for a second, stalling, wondering if he would reach out, in a dominant male way, to give me a hug or possibly dare to try and kiss me. I would respond to it, I knew, fuck, I was hoping for it. I knew that his attempt wouldn't be weird in a sloppy, inexperienced 8th grader kind of way, like Chris's goodnight kiss had been when it came out of nowhere one evening.
I left, without hugging or kissing him, and as I returned to my bed to sleep I felt a deep loss, like something vital was missing from inside of me. No hug? Not even a fucking kiss? I thought. Scenarios played through my mind. He was shy, no he knew exactly what he was doing and he didn't like me, he liked me and didn't want | | |
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