Not a Morning Person

A typical morning, for me, betrays the fairly intimate relationship I have with the snooze button on my iPhone.  I am not a morning person, not by any means.  I snooze a minimum of three times every work day.  Truthfully, though, I need to set my alarm for at least forty-five minutes before I have to get up, so the option is there for five times.  As soon as the alarm starts to go off, I am fair game for my two cats.  My roommate is up before me, although my alarm starts going off before his.  He typically feeds the cats, as he is the first human on their feet.  By fair game, I mean I become part jungle gym, part cat toy, part barrier.  The cats, Tim Riggins and Luna, are happy they’ve just eaten.  Post meal happiness usually brings with it a burst of energy.  Did I mention I am not a morning person?

Last Thursday, true to form, Tim Riggins decided he wanted to share my pillow with me, so wriggled in between my head and the wall, not very effectively, I might add.  I did have half of him on my head, but at least, he decided upon being cuddly, instead of playful.  Luna, meanwhile, not wanting to be left out, lay over my feet.  Every time the alarm went off and I moved to tap the snooze button on my phone, the two of them had to get up and move around, finally settling back to where they’d begun about four and a half minutes into my nine minute snooze.  Rinse and repeat.  It probably makes no sense, whatsoever, that I go through this over and over again every morning.  I should just set the alarm for the time I have to be up and cut out this snoozing business altogether, but where’s the fun in that?

I actually do get out of bed eventually.  After this happens, I have allotted roughly an hour to take my pills, eat breakfast, have a cigarette, brush my teeth, shower, shave (sometimes), moisturize (always), get dressed, do my hair, spray cologne, clean the litter box, and walk –or run—2 ½ blocks to the bus.  It’s a well-oiled machine, my morning routine, as long as I avoid my phone like the plague from the moment I turn the alarm off until the moment I put it in my pocket, five seconds before I head out the door.  I get easily distracted and it wouldn’t be unheard of for me to spend twenty minutes checking Twitter or playing Words with Friends, then discovering, my bus is leaving from the bus stop in five minutes and my hair’s a mess and, oh yeah, I’m not even dressed yet.

Last Thursday, I was up and on my feet by 5:55AM.  It was pay day and I needed to reload my bus pass and pay my electric bill.  I actually like paying bills.  It’s something about having a list --even of bills to pay-- and crossing things off of it.  Pay days, then, start off happy and then quickly devolve into thoughts of despair and dreams of winning the lottery.  I fixed myself a bowl of Sugar Corn Pops (No judgment and at least I eat it with Skim Milk!) and took it, a small glass of orange juice, and a large glass of water to the computer, but first I swallowed my first thing in the morning fistful of pills.  I scarfed down the small bowl of cereal while adding value to my bus pass and paying Xcel Energy.  Checked email quick.  Checked time.  No time to Paypal a couple of friends the money I owed them for group gifts.  I could do that later.  In fact, I had dallied at the computer too long for me to even have a cigarette.

Cereal bowl and juice glass in the dishwasher, litter box tended to, teeth brushed.  Oh crap!  There was a load of laundry in the dryer from the night before.  Clean towels.  Naked run to the dryer.  Thank goodness roommate is already gone.  Trip over a cat on way back to the bathroom.  Fuck!  6:25AM.  How does time go by faster in the morning than any other time of the day?  Have you ever wondered that? 

In twenty-five minutes, I managed to shower, wash my hair, shave, moisturize, get dressed, grab a can of soup for lunch and my coat and bag, and get out the door, down the stairs and out to the street and make it two blocks to the bus stop just in time to climb aboard.   If you’re a regular follower of this blog, you know that I have been HIV positive for almost twenty-five years and that I’ve had a couple of rough years where med changes and side effects are concerned.  Recently, I’ve missed some work due to throwing up.  With every new med change comes an adjustment period.  In fact, last Wednesday, I was up half the night “adjusting”.  I was relieved, THursday morning,  that seemed to have passed, at least for the time being. 

As the bus took off, however, I knew all was not well.  I was nauseated almost immediately.  For the next twenty minutes or so, the dread built, until finally, I got off the bus as quickly as possible, waited for the bus to leave (I take that same bus with many of those same people, five days a week!) and turned around to throw up on the side of the road.  Now, I laugh at most of what I face.  Let’s be clear, many people face worse and many people face the same, every day, living with HIV.  There is no better way to deal than to laugh at what you can, cry if you need to, and then get back up as quickly as possible and move forward.  It’s probably a great recipe for just about everything life throws at you. 

That said, I ask life, really?  Really?  Couldn’t I have puked prior to the snoozing, bill paying, cat box cleaning,  teeth brushing, showering, shaving, moisturizing, dressing, and running?  I mean really how rude!  I could have also really lived without the whole on the side of the road thing.  But I guess that’s just life’s little sense of humor.  I’m reminded of a meme I particularly loved from a few months back. 

"WHENEVER LIFE KNOCKS YOU DOWN, JUST CALMLY GET BACK UP, SMILE, AND SAY, ‘YOU HIT LIKE A LITTLE BITCH'."

Words to live by! 

Love, Lies & Social Media

We tend to toss the word love around on social media, so much so, at times, that maybe it’s lost its potency.  I rationalize my usage of it by telling myself that really I love everyone, so why not tell random people?  Still, it’s a bit odd, isn’t it?  I think one thing that contributes to this warm and fuzzy feeling is the amount of time I spend using social media every day.  I interact with the people I know there more than I do almost anyone else in my life.  Why wouldn’t I feel a closeness to them that can, at times, transcend whatever distance there is between us or whatever limitations actually having never met can add to a relationship?  Some of these connections become such that it all of a sudden feels odd if a day goes by without any communication.  Am I addicted?  Probably. 

Years ago, I met a group of men and women from all over the country on a message board on E! Online.  We bonded over our mutual TV addiction.  I have a number of what I consider harmless addictions.  I suppose I could be learning a foreign language or thoroughly cleaning my house or considering a solution to the current economic crisis, but I’d rather watch TV or Tweet.  Anyway, this group of nine women and three men became pretty close friends.  Eventually we took our communication off the message boards and began to email.  Some days there were a hundred emails.  Eventually some of us texted, messaged and began to speak on the phone.  We became friends on Facebook.  Our topics of conversation grew beyond television.  Almost nine years later, nearly all of us have met each other.  I have traveled to Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York City to stay with some of them and I have had visitors from Dallas, Austin, Los Angeles, other parts of California, Idaho and even Oregon come to visit me.  The friend from Idaho fell so in love with my friends in Minnesota that, after two visits, she decided to move here.  Stronger bonds have developed between some of us and our communications have broken off from the larger group.  We still also email as a group.  The experience of meeting these people online and then in person has been, for me, one of the most emotionally fulfilling and cherished of my life.   

It can and does happen and not everyone, in fact not many of the people you meet on the internet are as crazy as you’d maybe imagine.  Oh sure, some are certifiable.  Many are, let’s just say, enthusiastic.   I’ve rarely, though, had experiences with the mean folk who so often populate the social media verse.  Sure I’ve seen them, but I tend to steer clear.  I prefer my drama scripted, well written and acted, and confined to a TV or movie screen.  And I don’t tolerate bullying or cruelty.  It’s easy enough to just go elsewhere.  As I’ve said there are heaps of positive people.  They’re not hard to find and they outnumber the crazies and the meanies, a hundred to one, at least as far as I’ve seen.  A friend of mine recently called social media a buyer’s market.   That makes sense.  You can’t trust everyone online just like you can’t trust every single co-worker or every single person you meet in a bar or on the street.  Hell, I have people I’m connected to by blood that I trust less than a handful of the people I’ve come in contact with online.  I suppose you need to kick the tires, so to speak.

A few months ago I met a woman on Twitter and we quickly became close.  I trusted her enough to exchange phone numbers and we talked on the phone for what amounted to several hours over the course of a dozen or so calls.  I eventually came to read her tweets and absorb them in her voice.  That experience as a whole is one I highly recommend.  It’s pretty amazing to take in someone’s thoughts and hear their beautiful voice in your head as you read. 

The experience with this one person turned horrid.  It turned out she was not at all who she claimed to be.  I should have kicked those tires harder, apparently.  Her pictures were fake.  Her story was fake.  The woman was not the age she claimed to be.  She didn’t live where she said she did.   I was understandably stunned by the level of deceit.  Why?  What was the point?  I have no problem understanding the need for attention or even the desire to be someone else, but this woman took these things to whole new levels.  Immediately after being confronted by some of those she had deceived she took the stolen pictures down, at least from Twitter, and proceeded to reinvent herself on Facebook.  That alone sent me over the edge.  Those hours on the phone, promises made, secrets shared none of it appeared to have meant a thing.  So I was left to grieve the loss of a friend.  I have no culpability on her end.  I can only feel and mourn what was there on mine. 

I will not allow this person to ruin my experiences elsewhere or mar the camaraderie I’ve come to cherish on Twitter.  I think it’s important to step back every so often and check your surroundings.  Most of us have decent enough bullshit detectors.  WE just have to pay attention to them.  Because of some of the people I met on Twitter and their encouragement, I began writing this blog.  Because of the blog, I began writing a novel, fulfilling a lifelong dream.  It’s funny that I never started before or rather never continued after dozens of false starts.  The people on Twitter were so supportive and the time must have been right, in my life.  It has truly been and, I hope, continues to be a joy in my life.  I look forward to sharing much more of what I’ve been working on the past two months soon.  Even the woman who lied callously and repeatedly encouraged me.  I told her once that, one day, I’d likely write about her.  I try to keep my promises.  I never imagined though that this is how the story would go.                     

 

The Fullest I Can Manage

I was barely twenty-two years old when I tested HIV positive.  That was twenty-four years ago.  A few years back it occurred to me that I had been living with HIV for more than half my life.  This was never supposed to be.  I was never supposed to live this long.  In fact, several years ago, after the first time I’d been sick, I got better and fell into such a depression I wasn’t certain I’d ever dig myself out.  I had something called CMV or Cytomegalovirus.  Because at the time, my immune system was nonexistent and because I had at least one AIDS related infection, I was considered to have full blown AIDS.  It was 1994 and I was living in Seattle.  I was twenty-six years old and going blind.  Each day was like looking through a little bit smaller toilet paper tube.  Prior to that, I had not taken any of the HIV/AIDS related drugs I had seen completely obliterate the quality of life of so many friends.  I refused.  You may call it valiant, but really it was just cowardice.  I didn’t want to get that sick.  This new development, however, frightened me enough that I was against a wall and no longer had a choice.  There was an experimental treatment that’s first dose was to be administered intravenously, so off I went to the hospital, just a few weeks before Christmas, 1994.  After that, I had agreed to go on a regimen of medications.  I had been, at that time, HIV positive for almost six years.  I really believe that my gutless refusal to take any treatment prior to that is one of the reasons I’m alive today. 

                                                                                                                         

If you’ve recently seen the brilliant HBO movie the Normal Heart or maybe you were around then, you know that the first cases of a rare cancer in gay men were reported by the New York Times in the summer of 1981.  There weren’t terms like HIV or AIDS that early.  No one knew what the hell was happening, not even doctors.  For the next 10 – 15 years, testing positive for HIV was thought to be a death sentence.  That’s what I meant earlier when I said I was never supposed to live that long.  When I got better, in 1995, after starting treatment, I grew more and more depressed.  Now what?  I had spent the last half-decade preparing to die.  I certainly hadn’t done anything about living, no savings, no education, and no career.  I’d burnt bridges definitely.  What was the point of living any differently?  Well, I decided, I’d just go on another five years and surely die then. 

It wasn’t as cool to be gay in the 1980s and 1990s as it is now.  You never heard girls or women wish they had a gay best friend.  As far as I can remember, there were only two gay characters on TV at the time, Soap and Dynasty.  No one famous was out of the closet.  Even gay bars and clubs were in basements back then, or their windows were blackened out or boarded up.  No one wanted to accidentally happen by a club, look in the window, and see two men kissing.  Even in a large city, you’d never see two women or especially two men holding hands on the street.  Many gay people were terrified of the idea of coming out to their families.  The fear of being abandoned by the people you count on most was, let’s just say, different than it is now.  PLEASE don’t think that I am, by any means, diminishing the fears of young gay men and women today.  The decision to come out is just as harrowing and so many are still disowned by those they love the most.  It’s horrible to think that the people closest to us can abandon us, either emotionally or financially, for finally accepting something about ourselves we have absolutely no control over.  I am just trying to demonstrate that it was a different time;

the climate was far less friendly.  Some came out with not one person on their side.  Being HIV positive or having AIDS only added to the struggle, doubling the hysteria. 

It was March 8^, 1990, when I tested positive.  I’d already known at the time that I’d been exposed.  When the doctor told me, I felt more than a modicum of relief.    I have to say, it wasn’t as much having suspected it was coming, as much as it was relief in knowing it was the ultimate punishment.  What more could they do to me for being gay, what other penance could I be asked to pay?  I could finally stop running from the shame.    

I’ve told the story already that I was friends, at the time, with several other young gay men all of them within a year or two of my age.  Within two years, eight of us had tested HIV positive.  Less than ten years later, I was living back home in Minnesota when I got the news that the second to the last of the eight had died, leaving me the only one left alive.  Nearly unable to breathe under the weight of that news, I sat on the floor of my apartment in Minneapolis, chairs being too far from the ground.  Naturally I got drunk.  It was nine o’clock in the morning when I cracked my first beer determined to pour over photo albums and reminisce.  As the morning drew on, I began to rip pictures out of the albums, suffocated by the faces of so many dead people staring back at me.  It wasn’t only the seven people I alluded to who had died It was the 1990s and I was gay, having just lived in Southern California, then San Francisco and finally Seattle.  In the preceding decade I had known 73 people who had died of AIDS.  73! 

The guilt that you feel having survived takes on a life of its own, so many people far more talented, far more beautiful with far more to offer than I did, all gone.  How could I not feel guilty?  I suppose there are still moments of guilt, more than another decade later, mostly when I’m shirking my potential and just getting by.  I owe those amazing people much more than that.  I suppose a piece of it is the telling of, not just mine, by OUR story.  I lived through an amazing time in our history, sad certainly; sometimes so much so that you felt you might literally drown in it, but also incomprehensibly life affirming.  You can’t really imagine what it’s like to face your mortality in such a way and at such an age and then come out the other side.  At some point, it became clear that I had very little say in my own destiny or whatever you want to call it.  I had done nearly everything I could to die and, yet, I was still here.  There was drug addiction, two suicide attempts, and such an abhorrent level of self destruction, I’m embarrassed to admit, I woke up one day and realized I had wasted nearly my entire adult life, determined to die.  It was then that I decided, and it was a very definite decision, like flipping a switch, to try and figure out how to live.  It was as simple as that.

I have taken HIV meds, now, for almost twenty years, the side effects ranging from fatigue, depression, painful neuropathy in my feet and legs, weight gain, weight loss, skin irritation, nausea and vomiting.  In the beginning, some of those were constant, but with the advent of newer, better regimens, the side effects seem only to persist in the beginning.  Sometimes you are on the same regimen for so long that the virus develops an immunity and the drugs lose their efficacy.  Then it’s time to start new drugs and with those, a whole new set of side effects as your body struggles to get used to the new poisons you’re willingly taking in on a daily basis.  And then there are drugs you take to alleviate the side effects of drugs you take to alleviate the side effects of the HIV meds.  And so and so on.    

In 2002, I had lost my medical assistance, tied up in red tape over a job that offered health insurance, leaving me ineligible for assistance, yet disqualifying any preexisting conditions, and I went off HIV meds for the first time since 1994.  I was off meds for six months and, by October of 2002, I had pneumonia in both lungs, I had lost forty pounds, weighing around 110 pounds, and I had no immune system.  Once again, I was facing full blown AIDS.  I spent ten days in the hospital, the neuropathy in my legs aggravated by the harrowing weight loss; I was on morphine for pain.  Visitors had to wear masks and hospital gowns and slippers, not for their protection, but for mine.  Anything they might be carrying could be the final nail in my coffin.  Once again, though, from somewhere, I rallied.  Back on meds, surrounded by loved ones, I began to gain weight and get better.  By New Year’s 2003, it was barely evident I’d even been sick, let alone having, again, almost died. 

I went on a new kind of regimen then, something called a protease inhibitor, in conjunction with other anti retrovirals.  A protease inhibitor was a new class of drug in the early 2000s that prevented viral replication.  For nine years, I did great, the virus essentially held at bay by one drug cocktail, but then, about two and a half years ago, that cocktail stopped working.  For the last two years, I underwent five med changes, some complete, others just tweaking one or two meds, or playing with dosages to diminish or eliminate side effects all together.  In some cases, the regimen never started to work.  In others, it worked, but not for long.  Each time a med change was ordered, there were side effects, mostly vomiting, so much so for nearly an entire year, that I damaged my esophagus.  I took steroids to repair some of the damage, but there will likely be some permanent damage, as well.  For the record, I seem to be back on a regimen that is working.  Surprisingly, we’ve decided to restart the original drug cocktail I began in 2002.  The hope was that, the virus had spent so much time in the previous two years fighting off new drugs that it’s immunity to the old, more effective ones had been forgotten.  So far, so good.  I’m doing better than expected and my test results have been amazing.

Many people have questions, I know.  Most people have no idea you can have full blown AIDS and then go back to being just HIV positive.  I should say now that I am not a doctor, nor am I medical professional of any kind, so I can not speak on any of this, except as someone who has lived with it for nearly a  quarter of a century.  I wanted to put it all in writing because so many people now are living this life I am, miraculously, brilliantly alive years, decades past what they expected.  It’s a challenge certainly.  You don’t wish to walk into a gay bar with a sign around your neck proclaiming your status.  I believe most people are less afraid of being exposed to the virus than they are of actually becoming involved with someone who will die.  Obviously that is changing, but not as fast as you might think.  I made a decision, several years ago, not to tell a potential boyfriend until it was clear we were going to have sex.  I guess the theory was that he’d be so taken with me by then; it wouldn’t be so easy to walk away.  We had gone out for a little less than a month and the expectation was that we would spend the night together after dinner and a few drinks with friends.  During dinner, I told him.  His reaction was

amazing.  He took my hands across the table and assured me nothing had changed.  After dinner, as I had said, we were meeting friends for drinks.  It had started to pour by the time we reached the bar, so this kind man dropped me at the door and went to find a parking spot.  I went in to meet our friends feeling on cloud nine.  The guy never came back that night.  I saw him once after and he acted like he owed me money he couldn’t pay back.  There have been other instances sure.  For a long time, I just stopped dating. 

At times, you have this feeling that no one can ever really understand.  Literally, all of the people in my life that could have, have died.  I suppose had this fact become unbearable, I could have found a support group.  In 2003, though, in a dark movie theater, next to my best friend Melissa, I sat dumbfounded as a movie presented the most brilliant metaphor, to me, for living with HIV,  in the most unexpected place, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.  “Come, Mr. Frodo!' Sam cried. 'I can't carry it [the ring] for you, but I can carry you.”   All at once, the tears came.  It was an emotional moment anyway, but I didn’t cry for Sam or Frodo or anyone in Middle Earth.  I cried because I had ever held anyone at arm’s length because they couldn’t actually understand everything I had been through or was going through then.  For most of my life, I have been surrounded by wonderful, flawed, yet amazing people.  I have rarely lacked support and for that I am so grateful.  So many people, unable to carry the disease, have carried me instead.  Over and over again, I have feared I would be left alone, only to have someone pop up when and where you least expect them to. 

Many people find my attitude about all of this commendable.  I believe the sentiment most often bandied about is what a positive attitude I have after all I’ve been through.  Of course I don’t walk through life whining about my lot in it.  I’ve never understood the point in that, though sure, so many people do approach their life as if it’s a chore they can’t wait to complete and cross of their to do list.  I have been given a gift, really we all have.  Anyone who thinks I have a positive attitude, though, should be beside me on the morning’s when I grumble out of bed, almost disgusted at the prospect of another day, or when I swallow another handful of pills I know will make me sick, without an ounce of gratitude, or a single thought of any one of those 73 people I knew who had died.  I am often grateful there isn’t a loud speaker attached to my brain broadcasting my thoughts.  I’m grateful, too, that I manage, most days, to find some joy in the mundane, that I choose to surround myself with people who also choose to laugh at life’s endless barrage of inside jokes.  Getting up every day and putting one foot in front of the other, attempting to better yourself and trying to be kind to other people no matter what, isn’t, in my opinion, about having a positive attitude.  It’s about making a decision to live.  It is so much easier to be happy in life than to be miserable.  Look around.  I can almost guarantee you that you’ve crossed paths, recently, with someone who chose the other option.  I am never as good as I hope to be.  Being truly good, I think, is a thing rarer and rarer, but I hope that I have touched as many as have touched me.  If that is the case than I’m glad I’m still here.  I hope to honor those who have died of this, with which I live.  I hope, too, that I’ve shed just a little bit of light on what it is like to live with HIV, so much having been said about what it is like to die of AIDS. 

A Hand to Hold

To you I give my hand to hold
My trust to take
You give to me the security
Of the seat next to you
Words I can believe
Precious love.
To you I give a frightened heart
The self I am unsure of
A nervous laugh.
You give to me a shoulder to hold me up
A smile to change my sight
Permission to exist as I am
And precious love.

Some Poetry from a Hundred Years Ago

BROKEN & BLOODY

How you stole your way into my life
is a mystery, even to me.
I'd lost track of the barricades
I'd constructed over the years, shielding a heart still breaking
from a love and a half ago.
You leaned against nothing but the sky
as it reached the rest of what there was.
Laid back, you slid through life
like a blade on ice.
Something about you
a sculpted face
designed at the hands of infinity,
ravaged with character.
Was it magic or a game
one without rules.
Whatever it was, it is no longer.
For my heart lies nearby
broken and bloody
Too long under your knife.
Yet something about you lingers
probably always will.
You took it all back, Indian giver.
Yet nothing ventured, not a thing gained.
I just caught my breath
Though you've been gone
Forever.

Untitled

Stolen innocence is what I cannot get back.
It was taken from me, taken.
What can I do now, but listen
to the demons that live inside my head
and purge my heart of hatred.
But first wish him dead, because
his death might set me free. 

MY LOVE

Your smile, the one I feel in love with in another life
it betrays you, for in its lines and creases is proof
proof someone else occupies your thoughts
proof someone else is held in your glance
In your arms and in your smile, the one I fell in love with
in another life.
my love, where are you when we make love
Whose face do you see instead of mine
Whose name do you say in the solitude inside your head
Just now, I have noticed you hiding
behind your smile
the one I fell in love with in another life
the one I forgot, last night
the last time you held me.


 THE MIDDLE OF ME (prayer for a voice)

Fly away!  Get away from what stifles you, whatever is holding you back. Be wary of those who tell you who or what you are, or especially who or what you should be.  Take charge of your dreams and what images you see.  Take charge of your life.  My hopes for you, the child, the muse within, have only the ends of the interminable earth, the heights of a dreamy, cloudless blue sky as limits.So go!  Be you, whoever that is.  Know that happy endings exist, sometimes only for effect. Know that life is seldom fair. Know that sometimes, most times, it is difficult, but know that most things are possible, most times. Know that people are mean, and just as many are kind and openhearted.  And know that it is dreams, the process of imagination that life is about.  And the sky, the earth, the crashing waves of the ocean.

Take risks, my child.  Please don't let my fear stop you!  The fear I feel was forced upon me by poor judgement, misconceptions and lies.So I feel stuck.  Not you.  I'm counting on you to do the work.  You go push the limits, fall down again and again, but get back up for when you are on your feet, you can move forward.  Sitting in one place, it is so easy to just look back.  Take big huge steps.  Go and don't be afraid, although it is alright if you are.

I am stuck, but I am setting you free.  I'll try and follow.  Know that you are so loved.  Know that you are mine, yet I belong to you, as well.  You live inside of me, a breath.  A muse.  Inspiration.  I call you the Middle of Me for you are.  So go!  Write.  Speak. Do whatever it is and say whatever it is your voice tells you, for your voice can do and say in equal measure.  Go now.  I'll protect you. 

The Eye of the Beholder Part 2

I was talking about my first time in a gay bar.  I was seventeen and finally, perfectly at home in a place I had never thought to dream of.  In the bars I made a few friends, mostly acquaintances though; and because of these people my trips back and forth became more commonplace.  Within a month, I’d met a man and not long after that, we moved in together.  By this time I was eighteen.  Ray was thirty, a bit round with a very hairy chest and a doughy, expressionless face.  His hair was dark and curly, unkempt.  He was a sweet, sweet man, but not terribly smart.  And I am certain that I hurt him.  Even though, like a kid in a candy store, I wasn’t at all certain what I liked, I knew what I didn’t like. Ray worked nights and I spent mine at the bars.  I was, I guess what you would call, a regular, never having difficulty getting in and being served. 

This world that I had found in two gay bars in Minneapolis in the mid-1980s was fascinating, full of colors and sounds I never knew existed.  It was like I had been living life in black and white, but now the world was before me in full Technicolor.  I basked in the beauty of the men around me, wallowing in desire and occasionally wading in deeper.  It didn’t take me long, then, to figure out what I liked.  I did have a type after all.  The men I was attracted to, then, were all older, but not by much.  They were twenty-one, twenty-two, not much older than that.  At eighteen, the difference in age between yourself and someone in their early twenties can be colossal.

The Urban Dictionary defines a twink as such: “an attractive, boyish-looking, young gay man. The stereotypical twink is 18-22, slender with little or no body hair, often blonde, dresses in club wear even at 10:00 AM, and is not particularly intelligent.” I don’t know about the unintelligent part.  It certainly isn’t a prerequisite for the rest.  But the slender with little or no body hair and certainly the age bracket describes to a T the kind of man, boy really, who I am attracted to.   I was attracted to twinks when I was a twink myself and I have been for the couple of decades since I was twink age appropriate.  Remember when I said that I was young and skinny?  I looked, amazingly enough, 18 or 19 and weighed around 130 pounds from the time that I was 17, first venturing into the gay community, until I was in my mid-thirties.  Imagine my horror the first time I looked in the mirror and realized I couldn’t pass for twenty anymore.  Even the twink state of mind had flown the coop. 

In gay men, I believe there are two things you are likely to find in common nearly across the board.  I’m sorry, but in my experience it’s true. Many gay men, including myself base their attractions on the physical, primarily. I’m not saying that mental, emotional, even spiritual attraction never enters the mix, but physicality is paramount.  I’m also not saying that it’s necessarily a bad thing.  I balk at those who call it shallow.  I’ve always said that, if physical attraction wasn’t extremely important, there wouldn’t be any such thing as gay or straight.  If in a soul mate, I was merely seeking a spiritual connection, I would have, long ago, married a woman and settled down happily.  If all I required of a romantic relationship were things in common, similar tastes in music or movies, oh how much happier I would have been my entire adult life.  No I needed smooth skin, a flat stomach, smaller stature, maybe a treasure trail, but no more hair above the waist than that.  Muscle men never did it for me, bears neither.  I liked jocks, maybe even slightly nerdy types, and especially twinks.  It’s a funny sort of conundrum to find one’s self nearly flip flopped in a role.  Who once was a twink had become a daddy.  At least that’s the gay group I fit into if merely looking at my age and who I was attracted to, if not always how much money and how many credit cards I had in my wallet.

Back to the Urban Dictionary, a daddy is defined as Gay slang for an older gay man with money.  You might hear someone say, “I'm on the hunt for a new daddy. My last one lost his job,” or, “I'm tired of working all of these hours. I need to get me a daddy.”  Oh how the mighty had fallen.  How could this have happened?  Time marches on, I guess.  Thankfully, though, I seem to have gone into a new phase where I still don’t look my age.  For the last ten years or so, I have looked to be in my early to mid thirties, even now as I am more than a decade past my mid thirties.  Maybe it’s genetics, maybe it’s the expensive moisturizers and exfoliates I have become addicted to.  It certainly isn’t lifestyle.  I drink, smoke, and consume massive amounts of crap, especially diet highly caffeinated soda.  Remember how I said much earlier that I wasn’t born with skin that tanned easily?  This fair skinned Irish boy spent a number of years burning my pale skin into submission.  Sunshine and tanning booths, god I even remember the years we used to grease ourselves down with baby oil and literally fry our bodies in the sun.  That can’t possibly have been good, but vanity said otherwise. I only stopped when I had a small skin cancer scare seven or eight years ago.  By then the damage should have been done, but still, you’d never know. 

As I creep into the last half of this decade before fifty, I am surprised to find that brown hair I found so boring as a teenager is all still here.  It shows no sign of thinning.  Where other men in my family have watched their hairlines recede, mine is barely further back now than it was at twenty-five.  Fortunately, things haven’t been as dire as my teenage self predicted either. AS a gay man, I certainly haven’t remained the wallflower I was resigned to play in younger, straighter years.  There is shyness, not quite as painful as in my adolescence.  I have no problem approaching, chatting up women.  Some of the performer in me has returned over the years and my command of a room with it.  The shyness I have is around men I like.  This seems to be mostly in person, as I have no problem flirting shamelessly via the internet. 

There’s a movie called The Broken Hearts Club about a group of gay friends living and in Los Angeles.  At the beginning of some of the scenes, against a dark screen, flashes a Webster’s Dictionary looking definition of the group’s adopted slang.  One such definition was this: Meanwhile - red alert message amongst friends signaling them to take immediate notice of a attractive passing stranger.  I saw the movie with friends and my group adopted the same vernacular.  Once at Gay Pride, maybe a year or so after the movie came out, one of us said, “Meanwhile,” to which a few dozen people turned around.  The secret was out. We had to come up with a more subtle phrasing to alert each other to approaching hotness.  Our term became NEVERTHELESS. 

Once while leaving a different movie with my best friend Melissa, the two of us were on an escalator going down.  Another couple clearly like us was on their way up on the escalator across from us.  He was gorgeous, I had noticed out of the corner of my eye, whispering with his female friend.  Melissa and I were still discussing the movie we’d just seen.  Once we’d stepped off the escalator, Melissa leaned over and asked, “Did you hear that?  That guy just totally NERTHELESSED you.”  Thank you, Mother Nature!  The point, though, is that I am never likely to notice that sort of attention, maybe it’s just that I don’t expect it.  Thank goodness for friends, the varied wingmen, or predominantly women I have had along for the ride throughout the years.  Hopefully they’ve enjoyed the flirting on my behalf at least as much as, occasionally, I have reaped the rewards of their efforts.

So I have said that my tastes have changed very little over the years.  I still love twinks; the age appropriateness of this attraction diminishes with each passing year.  So does the likelihood that someone I find attractive will return the finding.  Obviously there are those who are attracted to older men for whatever reason. There are all types in this gay culture, the aforementioned twinks and daddies, fetishists, those who are into bears.  I recently heard the term otter used to describe a much thinner version of a bear, slighter of stature, but just as much body hair.  I guess you could say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and thank god for that!  There’s hope for everyone after all. 

In the dating game, I haven’t had many opportunities to close in on the scenario I painted earlier, when speaking of my mother.  Remember I theorized that my love for her only served to enhance her beauty in my eyes?  This is common.  Couples who have been together for a long time, I think, see their attractions to each other grow and change based obviously on more than just the physical and as these changes take place, they must only serve to enhance the physical.  But where did it all begin?  The ideal for me, I think, would be to find someone I am physically attracted to and then see that attraction grow as we fall in love and discover everything there is to know about each other, the things we have in common and the differences we must celebrate in one another.  Sadly, I am forty-six years old and have yet to really experience anything like that.  The love of my life, to date, very likely exposed me to HIV, twenty-five years ago.  Our relationship continued, off and on, for years after that.  We had friends in common and our shared past continued to bring us together.  I haven’t seen him in about ten years, but I hear of him from mutual friends.  Thank fully, the news doesn’t affect me like it once did.  I no longer live for his attention; no longer crave any scrap of affection he might throw me as I had, for years, even after he shattered my trust so irrevocably.  I do expect to find someone.  I need that hope like I need breath.  My friends sometimes suggest that I am too picky and perhaps that’s true.  Again, I place physical attraction pretty high up on the list and I don’t really see that changing.  Why should it?

Earlier I said that I thought there were two almost universal things about gay men, number one being that physical attraction was of much higher importance than it is for women or even for straight men.  Secondly, I think many gay men mistrust other gay men. Even if there isn’t a deep seated mistrust, it’s far easier for us to turn to a woman for comfort, friendship, almost anything, except of course for sex.  I think that those younger gay men not into older gay men must mistrust their older brothers even more.  The term dirty old man comes to mind.  It’s a shame really because there are many more well intentioned, compassionate, and even wise men out there that have taken part in the movements towards gay rights and a treatment or cure for AIDS, many who came out of the closet in a time where no one even thought to dream of gay marriage.  Look at us now.  How fascinating it is experience an entire history through the eyes of those who created it.  I maintain that even if there isn’t a mutual physical attraction much can be gained by keeping an open mind when it comes to friendship within our community. 

That said, I have limited myself over and over.  When two straight women become friends there are reasons having to do with social and economic status, shared interests, spiritual and even emotional attraction, but rarely, if ever physical attraction.  It might not even exist, but if it did, why would it matter?  I laugh when I go to gay social networking sites.  Is Gay.com even a thing anymore or has it all but been replaced by Grindr and Scruff?  I don’t doubt that some of the men on, especially Gay.com are, as their profile says, looking for friendship.  Why then have they included in their profile a preferred age group and why, oh why have they listed their dick size?!  I have gay friends whose cocks I have never seen, nor would care to.  I know that we’re obsessed with dick size, but come on.  I feel that wilting under the weight of this common mistrust of each other; we are sadly robbing ourselves of a sense of community that goes beyond gay pride, beyond our common goals.  We do come together fiercely when our rights are threatened.  We certainly, many of us, come together, one weekend a year to celebrate our commonality, even as we revel in our differences.  That’s Gay Pride.  I wonder if when there is no parade, no festival, no gay day at Six Flags or Disneyland, no amendment to vote for or against can we still come together?  Some can certainly.  And do. 

Mistrust is mistrust.  Everyone’s feelings are certainly valid.  Where does my mistrust come from?  I suppose a large part of it stems from being objectified, though seriously isn’t that objectification what I sought?  The rest of it, for me anyway, comes from crap that was never foisted on me by gay men, but by straight men.  And yet, I leave it for the gays.  Why?  I shudder to think it has to do with protecting myself from hurt, being as I’ve rallied against others doing the same thing.  Certainly no older gay man ever hurt me enough for me to mistrust an entire generation of them.  So we’re back to physical attraction.  Is it really that confusing being gay men and separating attraction, sex and friendship?    Apparently so.  I have to do better.  I must remind myself that, even though I am looking for love, the romantic, soul mate kind of heart and mind altering love that has alluded me for three decades, I haven’t given up.  And in that pursuit, from time to time, I have dated men who turned out to be far better friends than sexual partners.  Also, I have stumbled upon gay men I had no physical attraction to and somehow, because of circumstance continually throwing us together, we, too, became friends.  Sadly, had life not demanded it of us, we may have never gotten to know each other. 

Most of us know that beauty is not skin deep.  There are many gorgeous looking men who seem to have very little beauty inside.  We all know them.  And there many not very physically attractive men with souls and hearts so beautiful, if you just take a minute to look, you’ve already forgotten what their appearance told you in the first place.  And there are those of us in between, the average looking ones, with personalities, senses of humor that for survival sake placed our looks in the backseat.  It really does take all kinds and it really is important to remember what our hearts and souls craved in the first place.    

 

The Eye of the Beholder: Part 1

I was born forty six years ago in a small town in Minnesota.  We had one grocery store, one drug store, one gas station, one church and three bars.  There were cornfields all around us and, although I did not grow up on a farm, many of my firsts happened in those fields.  The first time I kissed a girl, the first time I kissed a boy, my first cigarette, my first Playboy, my first Playgirl.  Yes, I virtually discovered I was gay in a cornfield, sitting in the dirt, paging through Playgirl.  I always felt as if I was born in the wrong place, always had fancier designs on what my life should be.  Those designs certainly had nothing to do with cornfields or with towns offering just one of anything.  I didn’t always know there was more; TV showed me.  Inside that tiny box I discovered there were private detectives, high priced prostitutes, fashion designers, drug addicts and alcoholics, alcoholics that looked nothing at all like my parents or their friends.  I didn’t see the sadness or stark reality in the things depicted on television.  I only saw the glamor.  I guess you can say I found some kind of allure in tragedy.  I fantasized about being a private detective.  I even fantasized about being a high priced prostitute and a drug addict.  I know that these situations were, of course, sensationalized on TV.  I knew the inherent horror behind the glamor, as well.  The problem was that that these people were attractive in a way I’d never seen before. 

I think every little boy has a moment when he looks at his mother and sees the most beautiful woman in the world.  I certainly did.  My parents were having a party and my mother had excused herself to tuck me in.  I was five, maybe six years old.  She brushed the hair from my forehead and leaned in to kiss me gently.  I knew in that moment that there was no one more beautiful than her.  I was filled with a sense of awe.  I wondered how did the other kids feel knowing that my mother was more beautiful than theirs?  Clearly I loved my mother and her beauty was based primarily on the fact that I loved no one in the world more than her.   At some point, though, my definition of beauty strayed from love and became about fascination and desire, innocent at first, but eventually even lust. 

Now would be a good time to tell you that I was born with brown hair and brown eyes.  I wasn’t born with skin that tanned easily.  I wasn’t destined to grow tall and muscular.  I was short, skinny, and awkward.  I was cute as a child, but as I grew into adolescence, I became pretty much just average, certainly not the teenage boy of a teenage girl’s dreams.  I was the boy who would watch the girl’s purse when she danced with the boy of her dreams.  I had been cursed with looks that screamed, “GET A PERSONALITY and do it quick!”   And so I did.  I told jokes I had memorized, became a storyteller, a performer.  I craved being the center of attention and I was.  I was the youngest of seven children.  The nearest in age to me was six and a half years old when I was born.  For many years, I did not lack regard.  And my personality grew and grew until it nearly arrived at a place five minutes before I did.  

The thing about a personality is it’s less marketable than beauty.  How do you dress up a sense of humor?  What color goes well with charm when the charm is not preceded by a tan, blonde hair and blue eyes.

Adorable doesn’t always play as well as gorgeous.  

So at four, five, and six years old, I could command a room.  The thing about the rooms though, is that they were filled with people who already, at least in theory, adored me.  Sometimes, maybe, they were people who adored the people who adored me, always a source of embarrassment for my poor brothers and sisters.  Imagine any of our surprise when the further I got in school, the more shy I became.  The further away from my audience I traveled the less inclined I was to perform. By the time I was seven, my oldest siblings were away at school or getting married.  Miserably my fan club was dwindling. The recipe for disaster inherent in this proposition wasn’t just that I was getting less and less attention; it was also that I was craving it more and more.  I was a preteen egomaniac, an attention whore.  I suppose this isn’t entirely abnormal.  I imagine there are many parents of teenagers and preteens that see the same qualities in their children, although perhaps not put quite as darkly.  

For a long time I did have something going for me.  I was thin and I was young.  Our culture certainly celebrates those attributes especially in girls, but yes even in boys.  My adolescence was, not uncharacteristically, filled with heartache, real and imagined.  My parents separated when I was fourteen and my mother moved away, further isolating me.  I did spend time with her on weekends, but most of my time was spent with my father and one older brother. By that time, the five older siblings were all gone, too.  I retreated even further into television and into myself, the child star turned introvert.  In school I sat in the back of the room because I didn’t want anyone behind me.  I didn’t want anyone to see me. 

I was raised Catholic, too,  and this was the 1980s.  I was taught shame early.  I shared a room with my two older brothers for years, but never saw either of them naked.  Our bodies were merely functional, dirty, not to be looked at, certainly not to be celebrated.  I was well into my twenties, a trip to a bathhouse and not my first, when I realized, all of a sudden, that I’d been walking around naked, shocked at how normal it felt, how liberating, and certainly not dirty or disgusting.

Body image issues, shyness, shame for being gay, it’s a miracle I ever attempted to have sex, but that takes me back to that desire I was referring to earlier.  Thank goodness desire is stronger in most people than self-consciousness.   I had both in abundance.  I was seventeen and not out of the closet when I learned of a bar in Minneapolis called the Gay 90s and knew I had to go.  I agonized over how to accomplish this, for weeks, until finally hatching a plan. I had no idea if I could even get into the bar, but I took the bus from the suburbs to downtown Minneapolis anyway  I knew I could get there, but the buses didn’t run all night, so I wouldn't be able to get home until morning.  I didn’t care.  Not in the slightest. 

I actually dressed up.  How cute! How embarrassing! I wore dress pants, a sweater and boots, an outfit I wouldn’t be caught dead in, in a gay bar, today.  I got downtown about 8PM on a Friday night. It took me until almost 10 to muster up the courage to attempt an entrance.  Before that, I had walked around and around the block, studying the people going in.  I was absolutely terrified and have no idea how with my shyness and awkwardness, I expected to pull this off, but finally I decided to go for it. There was a group of 4 or 5 guys going in and I did my best to blend in with them.  My heart felt as if it would pound right out of my chest.  I didn’t count on there being a bouncer.  I’m sure I didn’t even know what one of those was at that age, but just inside the door of the bar was a six and a half foot tall, easily three hundred pound man with a beard.  I nearly fainted.  He wasn’t checking anyone's IDs, but he certainly looked me up and down.  He made some kind of obligatory greeting to my imaginary friends, each one something different, and when he came to me he simply said, “Evening.”  That was it.  It was in easy as pie, though I have no idea how I’d managed to not wet myself.    

I walked into a long room filled with tables and chairs.  There were booths along the wall, a bar almost the length of the entire room and a tiny dance floor all the way in back.  On the bar were two incredibly beautiful men, in just underwear, dancing to Taylor Dayne’s Tell it to my Heart.  Thank god for gay bars!  In many I have been in since, there have been beautiful men in nothing but underwear dancing on the bar.  Those tend to be my favorites.  It’s almost a given that I will prefer a bar with strippers or a piano.  The second gay bar I ever set foot in was a piano bar.  Having grown up on a steady diet of Country music and Neil Diamond, it was in that bar that I was introduced to and began a love affair with the music of Joni Mitchell, Elton John, James Taylor, Van Morrison and even Fleetwood Mac that continues to this day.  That, of course, is a entirely different story, so back to the men.    

For me, watching male dancers undress on stage was akin to watching television.  It really transported me into a world where I was somebody else.  The hick kid from small town Minnesota who just a couple of years earlier was discovering his homosexuality in the pages of a Playgirl magazine, by himself, in a cornfield, was all but gone.  At the Gay 90s, that night, I became who I was meant to be.  I was, for the first time in my life, in the right place.  I’m fairly certainly I gaped moving through that huge bar for the first time.  The Gay 90s is almost a city block long and a quarter of a city block wide and two stories tall.  Throughout the night, I noticed the bouncer eying me and although a small part of me was afraid I’d be kicked out on my ass at any moment, again I didn’t care.  I had found a place where I belonged and nothing was going to dampen the euphoria.  I was 17 years old and for the first time, probably since that night my mom had put me to bed and kissed my forehead, ten

years earlier, the world was beautiful again.  There was purpose. 

At the end of the night, bar close, I made my way to the exit on a cloud, through the smoke and the sounds of music and laughter and the amazing scent of cigarettes mixed with alcohol, mixed with men.  There are certain elements to that combination that have, over the years, become less pleasing, but on that night and many, many to come, it was the scent of drugs and pheromones that made my head spin and my breath quicken and my heart smile.  At the exit, I saw the bouncer again. I can't begin to tell you how imposing he was, especially to a five foot eight, hundred and thirty pound brown eyed boy in cowboy boots. He smiled at me and there was a gleam in  his eye I hadn't noticed before.  It was something like love.  I realized he hadn't been watching me as much as watching out for me.  As I stepped by him, he grabbed me and spun me around by the shoulder picked me up in a huge bear hug and whispered, “You’re home, handsome.”  

And I was!  That bouncer’s name was Adam.  You should have seen him in drag.  It was a sight to behold.  Even in flats, this man towered over nearly everyone.  He did only camp drag, usually keeping the beard.  He was a flurry of feathers and sequins and costume jewelry casting a shadow of love anywhere he went in the bar.  I wouldn’t say we were ever close, but we knew each other by name  and by smile.  I’m certain he knew I had no business in a gay bar, no business drinking, no business pretty much to do anything and he turned a blind eye to it all, knowing how desperately I needed to be there, whether it was legal for me to be or not. Adam died of AIDS several years ago while I was living on the West Coast.  I came home to find him gone.  How strange it was to walk in the door of the Gay 90s and not see him.