The Affect of Ugly on the Libido

I walk through an amusement park on a hot summer afternoon, through scantily clad teenagers, small children and their parents. The air is filled with a mixture of sweat, hot dogs, and the stench of damp socks, soaked by the waves of salty water from the log ride around the corner. All around me there are children with sticky pink fingers and dirt covered shorts; teenagers boys with soaken t-shirts, giant basketball shoes and oversized denim shorts that could pass as dresses they reach so close to the ground; young girls barely covered by tiny tank tops and skimpy shorts that reveal pimpled buttocks, tattoos, bruises and bad skin; old men in sandals, plaid shorts and recycled work shirts carrying their 4 year-olds and looking like they just got out of bed; middle-aged queens with their fanny packs over their hips and a look of determination as they head for the nearest roller-coaster in their much too short shorts and designer active-wear sneakers and socks; sweaty, uncomfortable Amish families in neat dresses and white shirts that are nearly sweated through; 14 year-old, acne-covered, boys and girls with mouths full of braces in polo shirts and black shorts carrying around little brooms and upright dust pans cleaning up after the messy patrons who have missed the garbage can; 300 pound men with giant bratwursts in their hands sitting next to their pudgy children eating ice cream out of little cups. Next door at the water park there are men with deeply tan arms and the whitest chests I have ever seen; mothers tending to their children with sun-screen, wearing wrap around bathing-suit bottoms in an attempt to hid their cellulite legs but being entirely unsuccessful at it; tattooed skinny gentlemen with long, greasy hair riding slowly down the lazy river on round blue floats in their cut-off jean shorts; Men with mounds of flesh and bulges hanging over their red and blue swimming shorts heading off the mounds of water coming at them in the wave pool. Misshapen feet, beer bellies, flabby upper arms, bad tattoos, and misplaced tan lines abound.

There are times that I am disgusted by other human beings. These are times that thoughts of sex make my stomach churn and my desire for it is beyond nonexistent. These are times when I look at the people around me and wonder how in the hell these people could possibly be found attractive by any other human being on this earth, how they find mates, how they find it acceptable to walk around in public is such states of disarray and complete unattractiveness. It amazes me the way people dress in public, the ways they allow themselves to be seen out in the world. If it's not the girls walking around in their pajamas alongside their mother in the same outfits only 6 sizes larger holding back bulges with thin layers of fleece, it's the men in desperate need of a bath walking around in the liquor store in week old clothes and shabby beards. If it's not shirtless children in the department store along side their disheveled mothers and half-stoned fathers, it's the thin blond woman in her boyfriends shirt demanding her pain pills and the drug-store counter with the deep, raspy voice of a life-long smoker.

I may be cruel, but this feeling doesn't hit me all the time. There are times in my life that I am so driven by my libido than anything and everything looks attractive, just not today. Today I'd be much better off staying inside alone and tending to some matter that does not involve dealing with the outside world.

Wisdom?

It would seem that the older I get and the more I learn about the world, about people, the less I seem to have a grasp on these things. It would seem a paradox, but the more I learn, the less I seem to really know. Less and less makes sense to me. Perhaps wisdom is nothing more than accepting the fact that there are no answers to most of life's questions, or else we simply have to make up our own and go with them. Perhaps the only truth we can really know is our own, which may not translate to any other soul on this earth or elsewhere.

I have been lost in a world of movies, television, written word, and stories these past days, trying to escape the unsettling realizations that the landscape of my family is about to change again in profound ways. It is at these junctures, these turning points, that we see people for who they really are. We discover how those around us respond to crisis, how they deal with what is put on their plates. Whether it be divorce, a major death, a tragic accident, a severe illness, etc., what it tends to do is give us a new perspective, a new way at looking at our existence, our relationships, our place in the larger scheme of things.

As I watch the screen and read the words on the pages of my books, lost in the stories of others, it occurs to me to remember the differences in the way people live, the differences in what we find acceptable, the differences in our overall life experiences that can make us aliens to each other, unable to grasp how another sees the world because we do not know their journey, the path they have taken to get to us. We do not know their past, their upbringings, what has been taught and ingrained in them by society, by religion, by schooling, by experience. We do not know of what they are ignorant, what they have been denied experiencing in their lives that has prevented the perspective needed to understand us, to understand others around them.

There is a gap, a space between me and you, between all of us. At some level there is a lack of understanding that may not be able to be overcome, at least not without some effort. Our challenge is to make that effort, to learn about other people, other cultures, other ways of thinking that can enrich us, give us a deeper understanding of those around us. The more I learn, the more I know that there is never just one way of doing things, never just one way to live. Change is the only constant in this world, but it would seem to be an accelerated process in my own life at the moment, or at least in the lives of those close to me. I am just hoping for the wisdom enough to figure out how to fit into yet another altered state of existence in this world.

You will excuse me if I am feeling a little more philisophical today than usual. There are many thoughts running through my head, many questions, and they are only just beginning to take shape into a form I can express to you. Bare with me.

Happy Valentine's Day Or Not

I suppose that a Valentine's Day entry is a prerequsite for a blog with the word 'romance' in it, but I can't say that it has always been my favorite holiday. It's a little ironic how a holiday designed to celebrate love could bring on such a mixed bag of emotions ranging from pure joy to complete and utter heartache and resentment.

As children, we handed out Valentine's to each other in class. I always feared I would turn out like Charlie Brown and end up the only person without a paper heart on his desk. One year, I even hand made Valentine's for the entire class instead of buying the cut-out kind from a box. I drew Charlie Brown and Snoopy and Lucy Van Pelt with friendly Valentine's messages to each member of my class. Of course, I was mostly made fun of; but that was nothing new. Par for the course for the 'quiet, artistic' oddball in the class.

February 13th of this year would have been my 6th anniversary, had I still been with my previous partner. It reminds me of happier times, the beginning of love, the start of romance. But, quickly, those thoughts are replaced with the reality of what that partnership became, devoid of any inkling of something to celebrate with flowers and heart-shaped boxes of candy. Not that I ever recieved those things. Most of the time, I sort of celebrated on my own. He hardly remembered the event without two or three or ten reminders. I might have received a card once in the first year or two now that I think about it. I suppose I should be thankful for that.

I once broke up with a man on the actual day, February 14th. He had brought me a grocery sack full of candy and hopes for a holiday snuggled up together in bed. Instead, he got my complete inconsideration and two eyes full of tears. I regret the way I handled the situation. We weren't meant for each other in the end, but I could have shown more compassion. It saddens me to know I was once capable of such selfishness.

Like any sentimental holiday, Valentine's Days seems only to heighten or spotlight the emotions were are already feeling about love, relationships, romance. It throws our past back in our faces, or reinforces a smitten beginning, or deepens our sadness and lonliness. We are reminded of lost love, or cling to our current sweerhearts, or long for a love that has yet to appear. There are so many aspects of love, so many emotions involved, that, by design, a holiday meant to celebrate it is going to have to deal with each and every one of those aspects in doing so.

Whether you and your sweetheart share a kiss and a loving embrace on this day of flowers and chocolate or you spend the evening on a date with the sofa and a bottle of Jack Daniels or simply boycott the holiday all together, take comfort in the fact that it's only one day out of the 366 we have this year. Tomorrow we can go back to the rest of our problems.

Happy Valentine's Day (or not!)

Placing Blame

If you will excuse me today, I thought perhaps a little clarification/housekeeping was in order.

Every action I have taken, every reaction I have had, every life choice I have made has been my own, and I have had to deal with every emotional and physical consequence of those choices. This is a realization I have had to come to terms with slowly over the last few years. I am responsible for my own actions and cannot place the blame for them on anyone else but myself.

It has come to my attention that I may have portrayed a sense of blame for some of my actions and the nature of my behavior on society in general instead of taking responsibility myself. This has never been my intention. If I have done so in any way shape or form in the spance of writing this blog, I do apologize. If I write about society or the gay community in general, it is only to portray my own perspective on whatever subject is being discussed. I write it the way I see it. If I am wrong, than I open any subject up to discussion. Generalities are just that, they are not meant to represent each and every member of society or the gay community. No generality can do that.

I have made many choices in my life. Every relationship I have had that has ended has been partly my fault. I accept that. I have yet to discuss any of the details of my longest partnership (it has been something I have not been ready to talk about here yet), but I realize after much soul searching that I am as much to blame for its demise (if not moreso) than he was. I accept that I have treated people with complete disrespect and have been utterly ugly in my demeanor at times when it comes to love, sex, and relationships. And I accept that some of things I have chosen to participate in through my years (however completely idiotic) have not been because I felt pressure from society to do so or because I felt society pushed me into a corner, but because I chose to participate.

I accept that I am not a perfect person. I have made many, many, countless mistakes in my day that I cannot erase. But I will never place the blame for those mistakes on someone else or on the ambiguous entity known as society. Whether or not society accepts me, oppresses me, or celebrates me, I still have to live with myself and my own choices.

Speed Dating With Graham Norton

I needed something funny to lighten my evening. I thought I would share. Graham Norton is a talk show host in England (he had a brief stint with a show in the United States), and is one of my favorite gay celebrities.

Beat the S*@# Out of Me?

There are days that I leave my day job feeling like I need a new profession, or at least a change in venue. There are days that I feel so drained and useless that I don't even know where to begin to rebuild my confidence in myself so as to return the next day and start all over. Today is one of those days.

Writing this blog is obviously not my primary profession. Sometimes I do wish I could stay here, though, in the rather solitary world of fingers on keyboard letters and lit up computer screens. At least then I would be spared the rath of public scrutiny. My day job requires me to work with the public on a daily basis, and sometimes it is more than I can handle. Today I had a couple come in that did not much care for the way I handled their situation, and they let me know it as clearly as threatening to beat the shit out of me if they ever saw me out in the world. The adrenaline rushes through me at time like that, sometimes to the point of making me shake with a mixture of fear and anger. My stomach churns. I span through a desire to fight back and cuss and threaten the way they have followed by a fear that I have, in fact, done something terribly wrong and that I am the one at fault. My mind fills with doubt, and I wonder why I even do what I do. I want to retreat and hide. I want to walk out and quit. I want to call for a police escort to walk me to my car. But then part of me wants him to be outside waiting to beat the shit out of me so that I can take one big uppercut to his face and knock the bastard of a man to the ground for even thinking about threatening me. Part of me wants to beat the shit out of HIM.

It makes me sick to think about it. I do sometimes have this problem that when someone comes in to talk to me and has an attitude, I often have a hard time preventing myself from having an attitude right back. Such was the case this evening. The worst thing about these situations is that they generally occur at the end of my work day, leaving me to muddle over the details over and over in my head all night as it was one of the last things that occured in my day. I doubt myself, I doubt my professionalism (I wonder sometimes if I, in fact, have acted the way the nurse did in my previous entry. But, then, that was really about discrimination more than attitude.), and I doubt my ability to do my job.

It used to be much worse. When something like this would happen, I would agonize over it for days. It begins to roll of the back after a while as a neccessary part of working with the public, but the agony never completely goes away. I suppose you really cannot please everyone, and I just have to remember that there is always going to be someone who doesn't agree with the way I operate or who simply does like my attitude. But does it really have to go so far as threatening my physical being?

Unprofessional

Early this morning (way earlier than I would have preferred), I escorted one of my closest friends to an outpatient surgery center so that he could get an upper GI endoscopy done. In layman's terms, they were checking out his digestive tract, from his stomach up. The procedure required general anesthesia; and, thus, our fearless patient was unable to drive himself home. Thus, the reason for my presence.

I don't know exactly what the staff throught of my presence, but most of them treated us with due diligence and a helpful attitude. The doctor performing the procedure even came out after it was over to inform me of what had happened and how everything went. Not that I really wanted or needed the information; but it was nice to be informed and to feel a little bit involved.

I didn't really think anything of it until a short, red-haired nurse in her mid-thirties called me into recovery to be with my friend as he began to wake up. She called the 'family of" to recovery. I didn't hear her the first time, but when she loudly and irritatingly shouted his name again, I followed her through the marked door. Dismissingly she told me where the bathroom was, where to find a beverage, etc, and escorted me to the recovery booth I needed to be in. I sit down and wait. She quickly goes over some post-procedural guidelines to follow and has me sign a form that says I have been informed of said information. She then returns to the nurses station. I notice that the paper I have just signed has been signed on a line marked 'patient or significant other.' She returns shortly later and asks if my friend is able to walk out, which he is not even close to being so, realizes he is not and returns to her chitchatting and bantering with the other nurses. In the midst of it I begin to hear a conversation among them about a man of 31 that one of them knew that had never been married. They laughed about the fact that his grandmother excused it to "waiting for the right one," instead of just acknowledging the fact that he was gay. Our nurse returns two or three times later, each time pushing a little more sternly for us to get our things together to get out of the facility and on home.

I begin to think about it, and I realize that this nurse in fact has pegged us as a couple (which is the farthest thing from the truth) and has decided that she is tired of dealing with us and wants us out of this facility as quickly as possible. And on top of that, our presence has spawned a conversation on the subject of gay people among the 5 or 6 nurses idling nonchalantly at the central work station. I grow increasingly irritated at this point and try to coax my friend into a slightly more conscious state so that he can dress. He tries for his pants, but is slow at it. He keeps asking me the same questions over and over because he cannot remember asking me and cannot remember my answers as he is still dragged down by the anesthesia. Eventually he is able to get his clothes back on and sit up in the bed. The nurse returns after a rather long hiatus and opens the curtain that has been pulled shut for some time. She gives me a look like, 'thank God I can finally get rid of you two," and pulls out his IV, replacing it with cotton and surgical tape.

At that point, I was very tired of being there and go to pull the car around to then escort my friend away from there and on to his home to rest. I am glad he was too groggy to grasp the situation as it was highly unprofessional if nothing else. The entire rest of the experience was cordial and very informative, but that last nurse left me with a bad taste in my mouth. Although she didn't flat out say anything derogative or offensive, her demeanor and her attitude spoke for itself. Whenever I think the world is progressing, it seems that something always proves me wrong.

Let's Talk When We Talk

I have only sat through the Superbowl and actually watched it maybe once in my years on this earth. Last year I went with a group of friends to one of the local bar/wing joints in town, but I couldn't tell you who played, what the score was, or anything else of that nature. I vaguely recall Prince (or whatever he's calling himself these days) and his phallic guitar at the halftime show, mostly because the entire bar sort of paused for a moment and sang in unison with one of his more popular songs. Not that I am anti-sport minded or anything of that nature (give me a good tennis match, the Olympics, or take me to a baseball game any day). I just happen to find football revolting.

So instead of watching the game last night, I opted for the most anti-Superbowl programming available for the night, namely the L word on Showtime. For those of you not familiar, it is a show about Lesbians (thus, the big L) in Los Angeles. Never in a million years would I have thought that I would find such a program entertaining (after all, I'm the wrong gender to be a Lesbian); but since the beginning of this latest season, I have been hooked, making it a weekly event to watch the program with a couple of my dearest friends. Of course, you have to get passed the lady on lady action (blech!), but once you do, there is definitely some substance there.

L L L L L L L L L

Anyway, the reason I am telling you about this is that there was a line in last night's show that struck me as particularly striking. Two of the main characters in the series are former lovers, one of which has moved onto to another long-term relationship. They remain friends, however; but in the heat of a moment last week, the two reunited in a passionate kiss, leaving confusion abound. For the first half of this week's show, the attached ex fumbles around trying to find some way to either justify what happened, rekindle the love that was once there, or erase it completely from memory, it is hard to tell. She calls the ex on the telephone on the guise of asking for advice on a personal matter, but it is rather obvious that that is only an excuse to make contact with her. The ex indulges her for a while, but later at a party, they face each other again with this thing, this kiss, between them. They fumble around their words for a while, not knowing what to say, when finally the single ex basically cuts it off, says that the kiss was a mistake and that it won't happen again, reconfirming the other ex's love for her new lover and pushing past it, at least for the moment. What struck me about the interaction between the two is when the single ex basically told the other to simply stop making such a big deal about it, to stop trying to analyze the whole situation, and to stop acting like this kiss was something that would bring them back into contact with each other on an increased basis. She said it all in one line: "Let's just talk when we talk."

The reason it struck me so much is that I have been in the situation myself, using anything and everything I could hold on to to keep contact with someone I loved, or thought I loved. Finding excuses to call, trying to over-analyze every little word and interaction, thinking that it required some sort of deep discussion to get to the meaning of it all. It is exacltly like stumbling around like a teenager, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to handle your own emotions. By doing that, however, we create our own world of turmoil and strife. We make our lives difficult and weigh ourselves down with uncertainties and petty games.

If you try to force relationships and interactions or over-analyze the situation, you run the risk of destroying what's already there or killing any possibility of a relationship before it even begins. Sometimes you do simply have to 'talk when you talk' and go with the flow. If something happens, it happens, if not, oh well. The point being, don't make more of something than it is. Sometimes a kiss if just a kiss. Just let it be a kiss and move on. Of course, I doubt our lesbian friends are through with this story line, but I guess I'll just have to keep tuning in to find out.

The L Word Season 5 Love Triangle

A kiss and confusion abounds