IF

If I left would people notice? Would they miss me? Would they move on quickly?

If I said I love you would you run?

If I never changed jobs would you judge me?

If I moved would I survive?

If I went bald would I still be attractive?

If I asked for the truth would it still sound like a lie?

If I order another drink....?

If I lie about my day do I start to believe it?

So Help Me God

I couldn't really tell you the truth. Even though I am known for speaking my mind. It's still not the whole truth. Although, I know you see through my in-genuine smiles and half-hearted hugs. So, you are, at least, aware of my truth existing. You just don't know what it says.

Here lies the truth.

The truth is, he is not smart enough for you and I can't be around you when he is around.

The truth is, I want you to want to see me-not hope that I am around when you drop by.

The truth is, I respect you too much to be witness or accomplice to your poor choices.

The truth is, I get jealous of your free time. The amount of it. The way you utilize and misuse it.

The truth is, I get tired sooner/quicker than ever.

The truth is, I hate when you don't text promptly.

The truth is, I need to be touched no matter how much I recoil.

The truth is, I am not always looking for something more/better.

The truth is, I can be so happy being unhappy.

The truth is, I don't pay enough attention to my happy.

The truth is, I probably need you more than I should.

The truth is, I probably love you more than you do me.

The truth is, I am loving myself...for the first time in a long time.

Don't be Sad Get GLADD

I happened to be lucky enough to attend the Gladd Media awards on Monday night at the Mariott Ballroom in Times Square. Sitting with my boss, his partner, and various other successful GLBT business persons and creative types.

I bumped elbows with Tom Ford, smiled and shared a joke with Julianne Moore, shook hands with Kate Clinton, thanked Cynthia Nixon for her generous donation, made google eyes at Robert Gant and tried to remind Heather Matarazzo of our fleeting but fun friendship back in '01.

I listened to Whoopi Goldberg crack us all up with her straight forward quips and loving acceptance of a community that has kept her afloat. I listened to Cynthia Nixon find a sense of humor about her late blooming. I soaked up Rosie O' Donell's politics mixed with genuine thanks and humbleness at the success of her family cruise line and the documentary that I had no idea existed about it. I was warmed by John Water's confident manner and truthful approach toward the audience.

Then came the montage of video footage and media coverage in the last year. The good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.

I cried.

Nothing too intense just small, sniffly tears.

My visibility as a gay man is more powerful than I will ever know. Each person who takes a stride in public to be recognized, accepted, themselves, etc., is making crucial steps and huge advances in the way we are perceived, portrayed, treated and ultimately understood.

Everything has to do with everything. From Ann Coulter to Rosie O' Donell. From coming out to killings.

It has only been 40 years since the movement really became a movement.

Progress is evident.

I felt empowered, inspired, accepted and safe Monday night.

That doesn't happen very often.

Thank you for being GLADD.

This Just In...

It's been awhile. I know.

It is also very rare that I journal within my blog. Lately, over the past year I have only eluded to my life or written from various perspectives. Sometimes, I have even tried my hand at fiction. But, mostly I have tried to keep a "James Frey" approach to my writing. A fine line between reality and fiction. True emotion or assignment of such. I write in vague metaphors which some "writers" can not stand, other's relish. I stretch myself as a thinker. I give you only a taste of what I might be going through with little to no explanation. Or I rely on a funny story from my past that is guaranteed to garner comments.

This blog exists solely for my own needs. It scratches an itch I have. The itch to try all the uncharted areas of my creativity. The itch to express myself. The itch to gossip safely and anonymously (sort of). The itch or urge rather to be read and understood. The desire to find commonalities among other thinkers and evolving human beings out there.

The blog stems from the creativity and thoughts of other's. Specifically, it's beginnings come from Joely's company. One of my best friend's blogs. This blog has been many things. It's been a bitch fest, a vent system, a piece of art, a lesson in loneliness, an exercise in storytelling, etc. Through her thoughts I found other thinkers. Too many to name here. Some are linked other's are not...yet. But, there are so many people out there with so much to say. Your blogs and your comments often stir my thoughts enough to provoke me to write. Thank you.

I never want to be a Stephanie Klien or a Joe.My.God. or a Perez Hilton. (Or maybe the longing is so deep it hasn't penetrated me yet.) I just want to write when I feel like it and when I have the time.

Lately, things are going well for me. I am surviving work. I am learning to live by myself more and more each day. I am trying to relax my thoughts and my reactions. I am looking at myself in the mirror again and content with what is reflected back at me. I am deepening my personal relationships. I am making goals. I am taking the baby steps needed to reach them. I am working on my tolerance. I am focusing on my future (one tiny fragment at a time). And I am not feeling guilty for much of anything anymore. That is the biggest step. I have been sad and lonely because I feel guilty for silly things, unimportant things, and things that have passed and there's nothing more that could be done.

I have a lot more to say than this. I just wanted to post an update.

This just in.

Life just IS right now. Nothing too fabulous or tragic to report.

I am Being.

Emergency Contact

It was most definitely an emergency. It came with sirens in the form of moans and screams, lights in the speed of my movements, and urgency in my anxious gut throwing me on an airplane in a two week spontaneous decision. Hell, it practically came from a megaphone that was magically attached to my shower head while I sang my heart out.

At least that's how my mind would describe it.

I needed contact with another. Physical, emotional, genuine, tangible contact. I needed to feel flesh. I needed to smell skin. I needed to hear another's heartbeat. I wanted fingers intertwined and legs draped. I wanted tongues to touch and run. I wanted breath to breathe life into me. I needed to know I was real. That my body still had feeling. That my soul still had energy and connection. It felt like an emergency.

Emergency Contact.

Over the course of the past few months, I have had to brave my doctor and then a dentist and soon the dermatologist.
With these visits comes a lot of paperwork. Forms with check lists and redundant information that is located on my driver's license, my insurance forms, my medical records, etc. Questions about my sexual activity, my allergies, my family history, my habits.

Then there is always the emergency contact section.

I always pause when I reach this point in the forms. My pen or number 2 pencil hovers over the blank space.

I don't have anyone to put on the emergency contact.

I certainly can't put the beautiful man who, only recently, satisfied my longing and craving for emergency contact.

I guess the emergency is over. But, I still need the contact.

You know, in case of an emergency.

Pet Shop Boy

I have spent the past 8 months in a haze. A foggy version of myself either simply going through the motions or standing motionless. In the scattered and tattered moments of bliss I do have the pleasure of experiencing, I have either been removed from my current state by way of alcohol or sex or I have been performing.

This haze has made me "unrecognizable" to some. But, mostly it's just made me fade into the background of life.

It began by me trying to move on from the last relationship only to realize I had begun the process over and over again feeling unsatisfied with the tactic at hand each trial.

It spiraled by me trying to get over the "getting over" phase of the "end of the affair", as I now dub it.

It blinded me when karma left the building only to leave me with pesty reminders and audible drips that could only be remedied by professionals.

I am coming out of the dark as Ms. Estefan tried to sing to us. In this light I have made unbearable realizations about myself and other's. I have become bitter and jaded when I always remained the realist with a deep sense of hope buried inside. I have transformed from a trusting all-American boy to a cynical, plotting lil' bitch. All the while wishing and hoping for someone to take me seriously.

I am beginning to realize why you didn't call back. Or why you didn't enjoy my body. Or why after two dates, or one sleepless sleepover, or drunken bed tumbling, or nicotine kisses, or intoxicating promises that you will never find comfort in my soul as a home.

I am just a lonely boy on display inside this pet shop we call community. I can look so cute and cuddly and you will come inside and ask to hold me, and touch me, and tease me and play me. Then you will think hard for only two minutes about the responsibility I will become, the nuisance I could be, the dependence I am already demonstrating and you will drop me back into my shredded newspaper box having satisfied your urges only to leave me longing for more.

Why is this so much easier for you?

The pet shop boys sing What Have I...What Have I...What Have I Done to Deserve This.

Big Yellow Taxi

For the past couple of months or more, I envisioned some sweet dinner with only 6 to 8 of us at some circular table in a very secluded section of a dimly lit Hell's Kitchen Establishment. Every night, I would put my headphones on and drown in the "going away soundtrack" I created for us. While listening, I would envision the perfect toast. The toast would be precise, succinct, personal, sensitive, and touching enough to draw tears without sobs. I would draw on all the music we both loved. The songs you introduced me to. The songs I shoved down your throat and you eventually swallowed with sweet aftertaste. The prose and poetry from each song would fit together the way we once did. As if they were forming their own hit song together.

There would be lines like...
It's been a busy day with some heavy seas. But you've done your best. I know you've got a lot of strength left. Everything is temporary, But I can be someone to fall back on. Because, don't it always seem to go..."that you don't know what you got till it's gone." Paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

I miss you.
We miss you.
There are so many songs that speak of you, to us, with me.
There are words I never said. The toast never happened. The cake mix still sits in my barren cupboard. I wanted you to have one last piece of poke-and-pour before you moved on.

DUE DATE

They sat across from each other. The artist and the republican.

She talked of the latest Patty Griffin CD. He talked of Hedge Funds and numbers. Words like facilitate and procure dashed out of him in short bursts like the sound of keys on a computer.

He was handsome though. Must have made time for the gym at 5:30 every morning. She was beautiful too. But, not in a gym kind of way. She was beautiful with ease and grace. Hair never had a comb through it but was still luxurious. Not much more than a gloss and a powder to touch up her already smooth and contoured complexion.

"How could their friends even begin to think this would work?" They both thought.

But, they also both thought it was time to broaden their horizons. Opposites attract, so went the old saying.

After a painful 53 minute dinner with wilted spinach, a fish and a meat entree, and small wine glasses cramped with Pinot Blanc, the conversation hugged the line and made a sharp turn toward talk of families and babies.

He was so focused on his career and accumulating his prized possessions. The car, the house, the property, the IRAs, the 401Ks. He needed to secure these things before bringing a child into the world. (This means, "I don't want a child to distract me from the miserable money-making life I am leading right now. I am just too selfish to focus on the life of anyone else.")

She was staring her thirties square in the face and realizing 10 years had gone by without true love or even a glimpse of life with another. She was tired of using the city as an excuse for the lack of love and affection in her world. She frequently had thoughts of Gerber, and burping, and the smell of a baby's skin. In her dreams she would be walking down a crowded street with everyone staring at her as she breast fed this enormous adult sized baby. She was the girl in her circle that oogled at passing strollers and could be found rubbing her un-pregnant tummy as if she were willing it to grow a baby without the proper ingredients.

"Do you enjoy your job?" she asked the Banana Republican.

"I enjoy the paycheck and the perks," He replied with one eyebrow raised as punctuation.

"So, what you mean is you don't really like your job at all, you just suffer gladly for the money?"

He stared at her with a perplexed look on his face. The first sign of some sort of thoughts running through his mind. After a pregnant pause, he said...
"I am not suffering through anything. I am prospering. I am building for my future."

"A future that doesn't involve anyone else but you? Who will ever see the back seat of your SUV? What good is owning a home on the island or a brownstone in the city if it stays empty for years on end? What you are building is a platform hardly large or strong enough for even yourself to stand alone on." She spoke these last few words as a slow fade or losing air. Similar to the last song softening after the DJ calls last call. She realized she had, yet again, said too much-gone too far.

"And a baby is my salvation?" He asked. Leaving another nine months for her to respond. Finally." I have my own ideas of the future don't assign me yours," and with a fast and furious scribble of the pen the tab was signed and the deed was done.

She walked all the 40 blocks home despite the winter winds, with her iPod repeating the soundtrack from Grey's Anatomy. She made a pit stop at Hot and Crusty Bagel Cafe for small cup of Hot Cocoa. She cried herself to sleep in a bed filled with coffee stains and strewn papers, while lifting her shirt up and pulling at the fat above her hip bones.

He hailed a taxi, messaged all his pig-headed male friends from his blackberry then arrived at his high raise only to stay awake for exactly 45 more minutes. The time it took for him to lay out his plans for tomorrow and sort through life's paper work.

Everything But The Girl

Everything here is telling me I should be fine.
But, I am missing you everytime.

I will be back with you. You will be back with me.
We will have much to read.

Is there anyone out there? Cause it's getting harder and harder to breathe.

Throw me a rope to hold me in place.
As I walk past your door where you don't live anymore.

Like the deserts miss the rain, my heart misses the release.

I will return to this writing and to this relationship and that relationship. It's time to stop Wallowing.

I miss you and I miss you.

Wallowing

It's not that I don't like you.

It's not that I don't want to see you, or be with you, or hold you, or kiss you, or touch you.

It's not that my feelings have changed.

It's me.

It's always me.

I woke up this morning and decided I didn't want to see anybody. I woke up this morning and created a mess of problems in my mind that I could sift through just enough to give me an upset stomach and the pangs of a migrane on the left side of my head.

I lied to you.
I don't have to work.
I don't have any conflicts.
I don't have pressing matters or things standing in the way of our plans tonight.
I am not sick.

I am in the way of my own self.

So, I spend the evening alone over coffee and a stale sandwhich. I type this up before retreating to the last row of a theatre to listen to the strings pluck out the tunes from songs such as....
OUR BODIES ARE THE GUILTY ONES
TOUCH ME
and
WOUNDED.

I am may not be good at much when it comes to love and peace, but I certainly know how to wallow with the best of them.

It will all blow over tomorrow.
As it always does.