I was touched by this narrative of young love.  There is a beautiful romantic optimism about it all.  But it also makes me a little bit sad, because I haven’t yet know a true love with a real future.  One day I would like to have a grand romance.  One day……

At the end of August we had a Puntabu-pool Party at Puntabulous‘s parents’ house out on Long Island.

When I first heard about this gathering I was really nervous, and not entirely sure I would be comfortable attending for an assortment of only slightly absurd reasons.  One of the reasons is that I tend not to be a fan of large social groups.  I am much more comfortable in small social settings, ideally one on one.  I think that I tend to worry about fitting in with a group.  Cognitively, I aspire to be an independent minded individual.  Yet, my human nature seems to crave acceptance and be hurt by rejection just as much as any other person.  I used to dislike my human frailty, but now I try to be more in touch with it, and let it shape me into a more interesting creature.  Humanity can be a beautiful thing!

Unfortunately I got a slightly late start, because I’m not much of a morning person.  Even so, I figured I would still manage not to be more than fashionably late.  After all, I don’t live that far from  Long Island.  I used to visit some friends who lived out that way, so I was somewhat familiar with the area and thought I knew what to expect traffic wise.

Optional (potentially boring) description of travel experience

As some of you may know, I am a big lover of gadgets.  Before I embarked on the journey that is home ownership and improvement, I usually had all the coolest gadgets.  Now, I just have some of the coolest gadgets.  When I chose to upgrade my GPS navigation unit I decided to spend a bit more money and buy one of the better units available.  It has a lane assist feature that overlays lane signs for major roads and includes traffic reception with dynamic rerouting.  The unit usually works OK, but considering the cost, and the current state of other consumer electronics, I find its performance rather underwhelming.

Of course there was traffic on the Belt Parkway.  My 1.5 hour trip was going to be a 2 hour trip.  Not a big deal.  My GPS decided that it had an idea to save me.  It decided to reroute me on to local roads to avoid the traffic.  The problem is that just because there is traffic on the major road does not mean there is none on the local road.  While the system certainly gets traffic reports on major roads, it probably does not have traffic info on local roads, and does not seem to fully consider the impact of traffic lights.

I ended up going going mostly on local roads.  The trip took me three hours!  If I just stayed on the Belt I may have made it in two.  Next time, I think I will just turn off traffic.  Perhaps the benefit of the travel complications was that I became more focused on just getting to the destination than I was about fitting in.

Things should get more interesting here

Once I said my hellos, got settled, and had a few Cosmos, I found myself feeling surprisingly comfortable with the group.  I was just glad I could be there.

I had a really great conversation with Nathan (the cleft chinned Canadian cutey) about the Bassoon, and his assorted Bassoonery.  He makes his own reeds, with very sharp knives!  I already knew he was handsome, but found myself impressed by his charisma and conversational acumen.  He seems like a quite cool fellow.  He reminded me a little of Captain Jack from Torchwood.

I also had a very interesting conversation with Jere and Justin about the judiciary and the state of gay rights.  I really admire the vocational path that Jere is taking.

Apparently, if you want to get all the gay men out of a pool all you have to do is promise them an Enrico hug (once they are dry). Seriously.  Enrico is such a hug stud!

Tam was there, with her daughter and Vegemite.  Someone described it as soy-sauce on steroids, and I think that is a good description.  It certainly has a kick to it!

Polt was good enough to organize some special gifts for Craig, and a collection so Craig could get his parents a park bench from all of us.  Polt is such a thoughtful guy.  I’ve got another post coming about a surprise he sent me.

Adam and Michael from CockyAndRude were there as well.  I am totally intimidated by their bloggery productivity.

David was also there, in his impressively little swimsuit (I totally considered bringing my own little gay swimsuit, but I worried about scaring Craig’s, “conservative”, parents.  I also wasn’t sure if I could pull it off any more, or if I ever could).

Josh and Enrico did a great job covering the music for the day.

I also got to meet VUBOQ for the first time.  I had previously met Fdot a few times, but had not seen him in quite a while, so it was good to catch up a bit.  I also got to see Paul again, whom I had previously met after the NYC Pride Parade.

Another cool treat was meeting Michell M. and Harry (or is it Terry?  I think I missed something, and now I am totally confused).  They were such a cute couple.

It was also nice to meet Craig’s parents (another cute couple), and his sister.  Craig’s father was quite the grill master!  His family made us all feel very welcome.

Craig was amazing!  I have know him for a number of years now.  I remember how shy he used to be.  My understanding is that he does not tend to be a fan of large groups of people either.  Yet, he invited us into his home.  What a huge act of affection on his part!  Craig was running around all day like some sort of huge hunky hospitality elf, with sexy legs in place of pointy ears.  He was a great host.  It has been an honor and a privileged to watch him grow and blossom over the years.  He has been a huge inspiration to me, and I am grateful for the way our paths have crossed.

All in all, it was a great day.  Thanks to everyone who came and made it a special day.  I am sorry I got there late, and did not have much time to spend with everyone.  My trip home was accomplished in just under 1.5 hours with minimal traffic.

Apparently these are the rules:

1. Go to your first photo file and pick the 10th photo in it.
2. Tell the story behind the photo.
3. Tag 5 other people to do likewise.

Now, I didn’t make up these rules.  It all seems slightly fuzzy to me.

I am supposed to tag 5 other people to participate in this thing.  Well, I am not sure I know 5 other bloggers who have not been tagged yet.  So I will just tag three people.  There is no pressure if you prefer not to participate.

I tag:
Enrico from Hotel Tuesday
Justin from Comfortable Junk
Paul from his blog

My interpretation of the rules puts me into the very first folder of photos I took with my first digital camera way back in March of 1998, 12 years ago when I was 20 years old.  Due to the state of  digicam technology during that era the quality of the images is pretty crappy.  The maximum resolution was 640×480.  I truly would have been better off using a disposable camera.  I was a bit of a gadget geek, and the idea of a digital camera was very cool, even if it was impractical at the time.

Here is the 10th photo in my first photo folder.  Don’t bother clicking on it, it won’t get any bigger.

The photo is of my parents’ dinning room.  I was just testing out the camera and taking photos around the house.  I have no idea why there are balloons all over the place.  The balloons look heart shaped, so I suppose they were from Valentine’s Day.  I never got anything for Valentine’s Day, so I am guessing some dope my sister was dating at the time gave them to her.  She dated a few dopes over the years.  Fortunately she didn’t marry a dope.

Here is another photo from the same set, of me.  It looks like a was a little heavier when I was 20.  I was a bit of a slob about my appearance before I came out.  I didn’t shave or cut my hair as often as I ought to have.  I hated shopping for clothes.  I just wore whatever was on the top of my drawer.  My sense of style has evolved a bit since then.

Despite the low image quality of the camera, it was ahead of its time and included some very nice features.  One feature was a panorama mode.  You could take a series of photos and the edge of the one before would be overlaid in the display as you composed the next image.  It came with software that could join the photos.  This is a panorama of my bedroom.  You can click this photo to see a larger version.  Apparently the white balance and exposure was not locked in panorama mode.

Some aspects of this room had not changed since I was in my mid teens, in fact some aspects of this room persisted until I was in my late twenties.  In some ways I suppose it was an analog of my life.  I was stuck in the same place in my life since I was in my mid teens (I was still in love with the first guy I fell for) .  The decor of my room was just a reflection of that.  As you can see I was also a bit of a pack rat.  I tend to save things that I may have a use for in the future, even if there is only a slim chance I may need it.  Recently I have gotten better at throwing things away.  However, I still have a backlog of junk from my youth for me to eventually get rid of.  Good thing my house has a big basement!

I made that metal wall lamp next to my bed as well as the wall shelf in high school.  You can see a large container of Cadbury Creme Eggs on my night table.  I still love those, and the only time one can buy them in the US is around Easter.  They are available year round in the UK, and my English relations used to bring some over for me whenever they visited.

On top of my bookshelf is a collection of software boxes, from back in the days when software actually came with big printed manuals.  You can see a number of versions of IBM OS/2.  I went from running Windows 3.11 to OS/2.  I actually preferred it to Windows 95 because it was a fully preemptive multitasking operating system.  I spent the last couple years of high school writing a file management tool for OS/2 and DOS in Borland C++.  It was an exciting time for me on a number of fronts, both social and technical.  My hobby programming ended up winning me a job, and leading to my current career.

Some of the things on my wall had meaning to me, but others just ended up there.  My sister gave me a silly joke poster making an analogy of computer terminology to a toilet, so I stuck it on the wall.  The mostly nude photograph of Jenifer Aniston was also given to me by my sister.  I think it came in some magazine she had.  Unlike some gay men I don’t find the female body to be repulsive, even though I am not attracted to it.  I just taped it to my wall and forgot about it.

There is also a small photo of Arnold Schwarzenegger as the Terminator taped to my wall.  There was a time in my life when I aspired to be more like the Terminator, strong and unfeeling.  It was how I dealt with the pain of my teen years.

My mother brought back that tapestry of two knights from her visit to England.  I have always loved knights, perhaps that is another connection to my quest for strength and the emotional armor I endeavored to employ in my youth.

The calendar is interesting as well.  I may have updated the months at one point, but eventually I stopped.  It just sat there for years on some random month.  This came to remind me of my desire to pause time.  The world was moving on.  Moving on without me.  I just wanted to hold on to the happy days of my junior year of high school when I was falling in love.  Back then the gravity of my heart was my guide even when my brain could not comprehend my feelings.  Once all my friends scattered off to different colleges (I lived at home and commuted to school) I felt very lost and alone.  I was stuck in one long rut in my life until I started to come out at the end of 2005.  At that point I began a whole new chapter in my life!  Now I move forward day by day, building the life I want to lead.

Apologies for my moderately long hiatus from blogging.  I think it was due to a combination of Winter hibernation, a bit of (necessary and valuable) heart break, and some social overload.  I found myself directly communicating with so many (the word is relative here) people that I found that I didn’t have much communicative energy left for my blog.

You see, my person wasn’t cast in the shape of a big sharer, as are some.  Being open to other people has required work on my part.  It was work I didn’t have the energy for these past few months.  Few worthwhile journeys are easy.  And mine is not yet done!  I have so much more to share…

I just watched the new Dr. Who this evening, and its theme of the rebirth of the Doctor has got me excited and thinking about my own continued evolution.  We are each our own greatest limitation.

I do have a number of new and continuing projects in my life that will be competing for my energy.  I will be working on learning to balance my energies in an effort to prevent myself from becoming misshapen.

My next post will be a reply to a blog tagging, with some self reflection of course.  My posts won’t be super frequent, they never were, but I expect to have at least a few posts every month.  I will share some more of my most formative life experiences, as well as current happenings.

Stay tuned for more…

Recently, a good friend of mine has encouraged me to get more in touch with my sexual side.  He inspired me to do a moderately racy artistic photo shoot with an eye toward eroticism.  For a long time I didn’t like myself very much.  I am sure that some of that insecurity was due to the challenges of my youth.  It was an interesting exercise to try to capture sexy images of myself, when I had never really seen myself in that way.

This blog is a vehicle for me to express myself and share my perspective with the world.  After being very closed and introverted for many years I now aspire to become a more open person.  Sharing is a part of that journey.  I have shared many parts of my life story on this blog.  I have shared my mind, and now I shall share a bit of my body.

I want to encourage anyone who feels trapped or confined in their life to consider stepping out of their bounds.  Too many people live, and die, constrained by their own fears and insecurities.  You are the master and commander of the ship of your life.  You can take charge and sail it in the direction you choose.

You won’t see anything you might not see in an R-rated movie.  I have had to do a little cropping due to concerns about terms of service issues with my web host.  Sorry about that.  Photography is one of my hobbies.  Unfortunately these photos are not the best example of my photographic talents.  Studio portraiture isn’t exactly my forte, and it is hard to adjust lights when you are posing and shooting yourself.  I can only apologize for the technical shortcomings.

If you don’t’ want to see more of me then don’t read below the fold.

The End.

The amazing fall view makes all the effort worthwhile.  In the early fall I took a walk in the park across the street.  I captured a few photos that I will share in the album linked below.  Now if you want to enjoy the view in person, then you can come help me rake next fall!

Fall Foliage Gallery

The Lake

I had only shared this story with one person. Now I share it with the all the world.

One day when I was in kindergarten, I had to use the bathroom. I asked the teacher for permission, and she told me I could go. The bathroom was down the hall. My teacher decided that another student should go with me. I suppose the thinking was that kids would be safer with a buddy system. It must have been early in the year because I could not recall having had to use the bathroom in class before. I didn’t like the idea of another person having to go with me. It seemed silly and even so long ago, I was of an independent nature.

I believe that the kid who accompanied me volunteered rather than being chosen. He was a black boy that I didn’t know very well. We walked down the hall to the bathroom near the gymnasium. As I entered the stall he followed me. I thought that was a little odd, but really, the whole idea of going to the bathroom in pairs was odd to me. I wasn’t particularly self conscious at the time. It might have felt more awkward to ask him to wait outside, so I just ignored him. I must have assumed that’s how things were done in kindergarten.

I dropped my pants and peed. Just as I finished I heard the boy standing behind me, a kindergartner just like me, say, “I am going to fuck your white ass.” I turned around and saw he had unzipped his fly and had his dick in hand. I am certain that I didn’t know what “fuck” or probably even “ass” meant at the time, but I remembered his words. Even if I didn’t know what his words meant, I knew that he intended to violate my private personal space in some ugly way.

I felt a surge of panic induced adrenaline. My fight/flight response kicked in and I did both. I quickly pulled my pants up, and pushed him back into the stall door. Then I dove under the door to escape. He grabbed my leg. I had to kick him off of me. He pulled off one of my shoes as I broke away. I ran back to my classroom like the wind. I flung the door open, visibly distressed and disheveled. I remember my teacher asking me, “Did he touch you?”

That is where all my memories of that incident end. I know that some people block out powerful emotional traumas. Here it seems that I vividly remember the trauma, but can’t recall the aftermath. Have I blocked it out? Was it so insignificant I just don’t remember? If something like this happened now, there would have been law enforcement involvement and probably at least some counseling. I don’t even know if that happened in my case. I don’t recall ever seeing my attacker again.

I never talked to my parents about what happened, that I can remember. The first and only person I told about my experience was my best friend, about 10 years ago. I had never suppressed my memory of the attack. I always knew what happened, but just filed it away in the back of my mind as something I chose not to talk about.

Certainly a traumatic experience of sexual violence can have a profound effect on a kindergartner. I think that was my first violent confrontation with a stranger. No child should be exposed to that kind of violence at such a young age. How can a little kid believe that the world can be a safe place once he is attacked? By a peer, who is supposed to be just as innocent as himself, no less? Perhaps that is a part of why I had so much fear and anxiety in my early youth.

I mentioned that the attacker was black. Up until a few years ago all of my significant experiences with black people were negative. One tried to rape me in kindergarten, one was a manipulative acquaintance of poor character, and one tried to mug me in high school. My parents were racist. They would routinely say disparaging things about black people.  I knew these weren’t politically correct notions. I knew there were bad people of all races. However I never had black friends. I think on some internal level I had trouble trusting black people based on my own bad experiences.

I was a white Anglo-Saxon Protestant from an upper middle class town; it wasn’t until I was working on my coming out journey that I became more aware of what it was like to be a minority that is discriminated against. I became acquainted with some gay black people on that journey. They treated me well, and I felt a common connection with them. I have become a more open minded and accepting person, but I had to work at that.

I referred to the other boy as the attacker. But certainly he is also a victim. How does a kindergartner learn how to rape someone? How did he learn the words he used? What kind of hell did he endure before our meeting in that bathroom stall? Is he still alive? I am sure that initially my anger was directed at the boy who attacked me. As I got older, and realized that he was probably a victim of molestation himself, I could not be angry at him anymore. He was born innocent. It was the world that molded him into a kind of monster that lashed out at me. I can only hope that the person or people who molested him were brought to justice, and that he got the therapy needed to heal and have a more normal life.

Sadly, children, even very young children, are capable of all the evils of adults.  In some sense they can be even more dangerous than adults in that they lack a mature  emotional and cognitive understanding of the consequences of their actions.  Nothing happens in a vacuum.  Our world creates many of its own monsters.  This is a community problem.  I believe that we, as a community, can improve things.  I will be exploring this in future posts.

I thought that it would be really cool to give him a stuffed animal version of his S.V. character.  I had been thinking about it for well over a year before I was able to bring the idea to fruition.

In middle school I was forced to take a sewing class ( and cooking class) as part of the required curriculum.  Being the macho kind of guy I was at the time I would NEVER have taken it by choice.  In the class we made a stuffed animal.  I made a green octopus.  We actually learned how to use a sewing machine, and all that jazz.  I had totally forgotten almost everything I learned about sewing in middle school.  I was practically starting from scratch.  I think it took me almost half an hour just to figure out how to thread my machine for the first time!

An acquaintance of mine had told me about a large fabric store in my town.  He said that is where many Broadway set designers go to buy their fabric. So that is where I went.  Hey, if it is good enough for Broadway it must be good enough for Craig.   It was a bit overwhelming.  The place was fairly huge.  I spent hours trying to find just the right fabric.  My color choice is not perfect, but it is fairly close to the cartoon colors.

I drew up a template of all the parts in Power Point.  I traced the patterns onto felt for the facial features and used fabric for the front, back, arms, legs and intended to use it for the cape.  I did not posses the hemming skill required for the cape, so after a number of failed attempts I switched to a felt cape, which seems to have worked OK.

My crazy sewing work area

I should have started the actual sewing much sooner.  Toward the end I got better at it, but in the beginning it was slow going.  I had dinner plans with Craig on Wednesday and I REALLY want to have it done so I could give it to him.  The night before I didn’t even have the shells sewn together!  I was not at all confident I could finish it on time.  I went to bed that night and I actually dreamed about the big procedure for sewing the shells together and attaching all the limbs and cape.  I knew that final critical part of the assembly could make or break the entire project.  The pressure was on Wednesday morning.  I attached all the parts according to my dream and everything worked!  Yay!

S.V. sitting on my couch

The final result is not perfect, but it actually turned out better than I worried it might at some points in the project.  I am pleased with what I was able to accomplish.  I am certainly not good at sewing, but it is a useful skill I can pull out when needed.

I was thinking about sewing my own curtains.  I am not sure if I am ready for that just yet.  I totally need to work on my hemming abilities first.  I may start with some table skirts for the folding tables I am using as end tables, to help fill them out.  Eventually, I think it would be cool to be able to tailor my own clothes for a sexy custom fit.

Here are some of the things I learned:

• Dave S. owns a shirt (maybe even more than one!).
• I love the way Jere says “literally”.
• Jere is also a kick ass rapper.
• Kári is very handsome.  I already knew everyone else was handsome, but hadn’t seen him before.
• David is a great singer!  I knew of the talents of Enrico, Josh, and Jere; but I had not heard David sing before.  I need to try to see one of his performances sometime.
• I know that am not always a very outgoing person when I am in large groups containing more outgoing people, however I think I did mostly OK at the meet-up.  It helped that I felt like I already knew most of the people though their blogs and comments.

I had been fortunate enough to have previously met Enrico, FDot, Josh, and Craig.  It was good to see them again.  It was really wonderful that Polt and Dave S. came all the way to NYC for the meet-up.  It was a great group, and I really liked everyone there.

I want to offer a huge thanks to David for helping get our Karaoke activities started.  We needed an MC to get us shyer guys going.  He also helped spontaneously arrange the rest of our night.  I am in awe of his organizational abilities, considering that I have, at times, spent close to half an hour debating where to eat in the city with much smaller groups.

Here is a list of the attendees and their blogs:

Craig – Puntabulous
David – Someone in a Tree (NSFW)
Jere – Blind Prophecy
Dave S. – Spike 300
Polt – Polts Palace (NSFW)
FDot – I Deny You The Nidus
Kári – Vegfarandi
Josh – Josh is Trashy
Enrico – Hotel Tuesday

I didn’t have any time to write a creative narrative of the meet-up since I spent all my free time editing a video I shot.  So, I will let the video be my narrative.  You can watch Part 1 of a video of the festivities on YouTube.  I will try to post part 2 in the next few days (or maybe late tonight).

Once again I am thankful for the friendliness, kindness and generosity of the Puntabugang.  I am hopeful that we will have more meet-ups in the future.