on money, and the lack thereof

since i'm not writing much these days, i cobbled this together from a couple old emails to a friend; it's apropos of nothing in particular.  there may be more of these in the future.  or not.


growing up, i never thought about money much.  my parents were depression babies, so they were on the same page financially and always careful with a buck, but there was never a sense of either deprivation or excess in our house; things in that regard were always pretty much just right.

after my father died, three things changed (as regards this subject, anyway):  we became poorer to the point where money suddenly was something we talked about; my father's brother eventually became quite rich; and i, for reasons quite unrelated to money, became quite unhappy.

i've talked about my uncle don a lot on this blog--hell, he's even got his own section on the sidebar--but what happened to him and his family, and me and my family, as either a result of, or maybe despite, all that sudden money, really started me thinking about the whole scarcity/abundance thing.

because while don's rise to riches was heady and fun, and he and my aunt pat were incredibly generous with what they had come into, it really didn't make a goddam bit of difference in how happy any of us were; in fact, in some ways it might have made things worse.

i remember one night, sitting miserably in my nice, new uncle-don-supplied condo three blocks from the university, with a nice uncle-don-supplied car down in the parking lot, years of plush, prepaid education ahead of me and enough cash in the bank to carry me through the school year in comfort, and thinking about how decisively that wish i'd made back when i was a 15-year-old slaving away for $1.10 an hour at a sizzler steak house--how, if only i had money, all my problems would be solved--had come true.  and how it hadn't.

and i saw don and pat's marriage deteriorate, and how he coped with success by drinking, and she, remodeling, and how their kids went from great to losing-their-way spoiled, and how insufferable all their rich friends were, and how, although my mother's cage was plush and gilded now, it was still the same cage.

I didn’t study architecture so i could design taj mahals or high-rises to the sky; all I ever wanted to do was houses—my houses. But I knew before that could happen, I’d have to cut my teeth on other people’s houses first. so, after graduation, and to that end, I worked for two high-end residential firms; first in austin, and then LA.

and I hated it, so i quit.

for a bunch of reasons, actually, but not the least of which was because designing and building a dream house seemed to bring out the worst in people. or maybe it was just the people who made up our client base--nouveau-riche types who wanted monuments to their success. it wasn’t all bad—some of ‘em were actually fun—but so often it came down to couples bickering like sibling rivals over colors, or whose closet was bigger, or which mega sub-zero would look better in the kitchen. I mean, these were people who really seemed to pin all their hopes on the notion that their new house would finally make their lives complete. and then, after all the drama, angst and knockdown-dragouts along the way from concept sketch to finished house were exhausted, and the crystal bowl with the three perfect apples had finally been placed on the gleaming granite countertop, more often than not, they’d look around at all the magnificence they’d paid so dearly for, and i'd hear 'em say something like, “ok—now what?”.

and then after i quit architecture for other people and did my own first house and talked to the day laborers i hired to help me--about how much they missed their countries, how they were only here for the money, how they'd never bring their families--and certainly not their daughters--here, and saw america through their eyes, it propelled me on to look hard at the myth--you know, the one that ours is the life to which everyone on earth aspires.  and i started looking at happiness indices for the various supposed hell-holes of the earth, saw how little those people managed to live on, saw how a cast-off pair of nikes could give some kid in mogadishu a bigger grin than almost any american kid on his playstation-extravaganza christmas morning; saw how, in those primitive countries, family was everything, like it used to be here.

and then i widened my scope of vision to look, for the first time critically, at the panoply of wretched souls whom we've pushed to the top of the world we've made--the judy garlands and marilyn monroes and elvis presleys and justin biebers--and then, eventually, even wider to encompass my whole goddam country.  america, we're number one--in both wealth and sales of antidepressants.

when I finally hit my big payday, i surprised everybody with my restraint--i bought a decent car for my mom, a little pickup for myself (because I needed one), and invested the rest. while I’m by no means anti-materialistic (in fact, I just indulged in a little of it recently), I have come to believe that things really don't matter all that much.

don't get me wrong--i'm not extolling the virtues of poverty here.  poverty sucks, and sucks happiness outta the lives of people who might otherwise be happy.  all i'm sayin here is that maybe there's a point beyond which money doesn't buy happiness.

and that maybe we here in the first world have passed it.

that's all.

and i'm gettin' old

why? doesn't matter--he'll know why.

he does die at the end of the movie, right?

a kinder, gentler email to my roommate (to replace the previous ones i just took down, because they were ugly.  oh, and hey judi--long time, no see):

post 652? (yeah, let's go with that), in which mkf waxes philosophical

from a recently rediscovered email i'd written some time ago to a handsome young man who'd asked me why the right one never seemed to come along:


apropos of your existential question:  i was thinking last night about my maternal grandparents--how they met in rural west texas, and, after a brief courtship, married in 1918.  she was 16, and he 20.  they were incredibly young, incredibly inexperienced, and neither had ever dated prior to their meeting.

when i think about the odds of an arrangement like that working out--two kids, living in one of the most sparsely-populated regions of the world at that time, where the pickings were, needless to say, very slim, meeting at random--i'd give 'em about a zero-percent chance of even liking each other, much less anything beyond that.  and yet, the opposite turned out to be true.  their love was immediate and enduring, and by all accounts (and i've heard many), they enjoyed the happiest and most devoted of marriages.

of course, they had several things going for 'em:  they'd both grown up fast by necessity; they had similar backgrounds, similar values, compatible goals--oh, and chemistry (they were both fine young animals).

but they also had something else going on--something which, on its face, would appear to be a great limitation, but which i've come to believe might be the greatest gift of all.

but how do i put it?  lemme go at it this way:  from time to time, and most particularly since i've started writing myself, i'll go pull up an old handwritten letter or essay by someone like jefferson or madison, struggle through the archaic script, and marvel at the clarity of thought expressed therein--the clear, cohesive, flowing line from beginning to end, unbroken and unmarred by strikeouts or rambling incoherence.

and then i'll consider what it takes my spoiled, techno-modern ass to produce an average blogpost--the editing, overthinking, deleting, backspacing, cutting-and-pasting--and i just laugh.

those writers of the past--even the mediocre ones--could spit it out mostly right the first time because they had no other option--they had to organize their thoughts, focus their efforts and be at their best in a way modern writers with all their fancy tools and toys can't even begin to approach, simply because their primitive medium was unforgiving.

i think it was the same with my grandparents--there was no internet in their world, much less casual dating or, god forbid, divorce.  their primitive medium was unforgiving, and thus they were forced by circumstance to bring their A game to the effort.

oprah winfrey used to ask her guests, "what is the one thing you know for sure?"  had she asked me, my one thing, arrived at after many years of experience in the field, would be the belief that humanity handles scarcity far better than it does abundance.

so, you might be wondering--by way of all this, am i trying to tell you that you should just quit yer bitchin', pick one and make it work goddammit?  no.  because, unlike my grandparents, we've eaten from the tree of knowledge, you and i--we know what's out there, what's at least potentially possible, and have been mass-marketed into the belief that we won't be "happy" until we find just the right needle in that big ol' haystack.  cheery thought, no?

keeping my options open,

mkf

p.s.  needless to day, jefferson would be appalled at the amount of editing that went into the production of this email.

*     *     *     *     *

and yeah, i know, i'm like a dog with a bone with this "scarcity v. abundance" thing, but with every passing year, it just gets truer and truer.

post 651 (or thereabouts--fuck, i can't keep track), in which mkf relates some existential angst

[fine--you want personal, i'll give you personal (god, why didn't i stop drinking an hour ago)]


i had really been dreading this bathroom remodel planned, perpetrated and suddenly sprung upon me by my mostly-absent landlord/roommate and his girlfriend (see? he's not my lover), fearing the disruption of my sacred routine, but turns out it's not been so bad.

in the first place, it means i'll finally be getting a showerhead that's positioned to hit me at somewhat higher than mid-stomach level, so there's that.

and showering at the office has turned out to be an unexpected treat--thick, turkish towels, endless hot water, and who knew attorneys kept such nice triple-blade razors and designer shaving balms in their (unlocked) lockers?  (j/k, sorta)

but the best part has been getting to know gary, the (hot 58-year-old) contractor, because what a pleasant surprise and font of useful knowledge he's turned out to be.

first, you gotta understand:  i hate contractors, and i came by that hatred honest.  after years of watching 'em fuck up my carefully-rendered details on job after job, to the point where i was 86'd from a jobsite for throwing a hammer, not at, but near (which point i stressed over and over as they dragged me away) a contractor early in my architectural career, ol' gary has been a welcome breath of fresh air.

rescued from mcdonald's drudgery at the age of 17 by a builder/uncle who first saw his potential, gary has become a master of many trades who takes tremendous pride in his work, and has delivered far more on this little job than he'll ever be paid for.

i first laid eyes on him when i stumbled bleary-eyed outta my bedroom at the crack o' nine a.m. last monday, to the sound of pounding demo hammers, noted his studly form as i pushed past him on my way to the kitchen (because i'd already gone out back and peed behind a tree).  he wandered in behind me, watched me mix my morning shot-o'-cayenne-in-warm-water eye-opener, asked me why the fuck i was drinking that stuff, to which i merely looked up at him with a bland expression, raised my left fist with index finger curled, and then shot it boing! straight up in the air.

he said, "no shit?", and even after i warned him he'd have to work up to my dose, demanded i mix him one just like mine, downed it, and then doubled over, gasping, while i laughed.

and with that, we were tight.

i've had many conversations with gary since that day, and have grown to like him more and more.  he's my age, had his wild time, grew up, got married, got land and horses, had kids, and now has grandkids.  and his family's his whole goddam life.

as i type this, i'm wrecked because the 23-year-old i fucked yesterday stood me up tonight.

progress of a sort, i guess

so we're remodeling our bathroom, and the contractor is this 58-year-old i'd climb up one side of and down the other if i didn't think he'd swat me off, and then take home to mom.

so, see, noblesavage?  there's hope for me yet.

and in other news, i've been in discussions with a couple editors about maybe pulling some of the stuff from this blog together into the form of a book, and one of 'em, while passing on the project since he didn't think he was the one (and he's not--basically, i need carrie fisher off her medication, but she won't return my calls), wrote me today that

You do what you do (especially the reversal) quite well.*

and it occurred to me that, if i'm gonna talk to these serious professionals about my writing, then perhaps it would behoove me to maybe pick up a book on the subject so i have at least some passing knowledge of what the fuck it is that i'm doing.

___________
*now, you could read volumes into that little sentence, but i've decided to take it as a compliment.  and after a quick google search, i find i have to agree with him--i am a minor master of that particular technique; i just had no idea there was a name for it.

denver

from an email to a friend:

so tonight i ran my usual "here i am, come and get me" ad that i always run on craigslist whenever i hit a new city, to (i'm happy to say) gratifying response.

but i had specific needs tonight which had nothing to do with being a performing donkey, and i finally settled on this wholesome, cute, buffed-out 30-year-old white guy as my best bet to fulfill them.  because his ad was interesting--he was looking for an overweight daddy, and i knew there had to be a story there.

i opened my reply with "look, i may be too thin for you (words i don't get to utter very often these days, so that was nice), but...", and he came back very quickly, invited me over.

i found his place, and it was clean and bright and nice, and so was he.  he led me down to a basement bedroom, away from the sleeping roommates, and when he turned to me i took him in my arms, kissed him and gently/roughly felt him up and down for a long while, loosened his pants, while he melted.  when i felt the time was right, i breathed into his open mouth, "so tell me about your first time", as my hands and mouth continued their work.  between kisses, he breathed the story back to me.

he was 15, on vacation with his family at a resort, had left the pool and wandered into the locker room, and then into the sauna, where he came across this--you guessed it--fat daddy in a towel, whom, i have no doubt, took one look at this little vision and knew his every dark dream had just come true.

"so you were wearing a swimsuit"

yeah

"baggies, i'm guessing."

yeah

"what color?"

lime green

"with your adolescent boner standing up just like it is now (i lightly feathered my fingers up and down his rock-hard dick, making him shiver), except in a little green tent, right?"

oh yeah

they eventually retreated to a shower stall, but he didn't get fucked that first time--that would happen during the following year's family vacation, with the following year's fat daddy.  we eventually worked up to that--we're in bed by this point--and i recreated the experience for him, while we breathed words back and forth into each other's mouths until we came simultaneously.

i left him dazed, surprised and happy in a puddle of sweat and cum, came back to my room, showered, flipped open the notebook and started this letter to you.

i don't fuck around with kids, victor.  there are a number of reasons for this, but the main one--the guttermorality--behind this Rule is simple:  i refuse to imprint my baggage on a brain and psyche that are not yet fully formed, leaving 'em with fat-daddy fantasies for the rest of their lives.  hell, i have enough work picking up the pieces all those fat daddies who lacked this particular scruple left behind.

but i love the roleplay, when it's right--taking these kids in men's bodies back to the moment of their lifelong fixation, making perfect--for them and for me--what probably wasn't the first time around.

i haven't decided whether this is wrong or not.  i'd love to know what you think.

day 5, in which mkf comes out to his brother

lots of things happened on days 1 through 4, too--and even more during days 6 through 16--and i'll eventually catch you up on all of 'em, but let's start with this one, because i think mitch might find it instructive.  oh, and if you're expecting a tale of heartwarming reconciliation between long-estranged brothers, you've obviously forgotten where the fuck you are.



day 5 found my mother and me rolling into tyler, texas fresh from atlanta, where i had fetched her at my sister liz's house in the near-cherry dream benz i'd just picked up for a song in cassville, pennsylvania (see?  i told you a lot had happened).  there were two purposes for our presence there in our old hometown, but only one of which is germane to this post; namely, some unfinished business i had with my brother.

some context:  for as long as i can remember, it's always been my mother, sister and me over here, and mark over there; he's always been separate and superior, alien and apart.

my mother and sister have spent a lot of time agonizing over why this is.  one of my mother's theories, for instance, is that, as she was in traction and hyped-up on morphine as a result of near-fatal surgery to remove a tumor from the base of her skull when he was born and thus unable to hold him for the first three months of his life, they never bonded.

liz has never been able to figure out why he's always especially had it in for her--maybe, she thinks, because he was the aggrieved middle child and saw her as the indulged baby; or (my theory) maybe it's because she's the only one who has ever consistently called him on his shit.


me?  my relationship with my younger brother has always been arm's-length and uneasy, probably because we've both always known it would all eventually come down to what happened on day 5.

*     *     *     *     *

whenever i sit down to compose one of these little stories, one of the biggest challenges i face is what to leave out.  in this case, for instance, i could double the length of this post by laying out a long list of the sorta family-destroying shit in which my brother specializes, in order for you to more fully understand what brought us to blows on this day 5--but, fuck that; let's just cut to the chase.

simply put, around thanksgiving 2011, shortly after the sale of my mother's little house in austin was complete, my brother backed her frail, 80-year-old ass into an emotional corner and, without allowing her to consult her other children (there was no time, he told her), helped himself to half the proceeds of said sale in the form a "loan".

my sister had handled the renovation of the house two summers prior (new kitchen, bath, flooring, roof, HVAC--it was beautiful), and i had ruthlessly negotiated the sale, gaining her top dollar, so it was a fairly tidy little sum. on closing day, liz and i talked, and the last thing she said to me that day was, "whatever you do, mike, do not let him anywhere near that money."

i remember laughing, saying, "c'mon, liz, even he wouldn't..."

i shoulda listened to her.

*     *     *     *     *

on day 5, the deadline for repayment long passed, i gave him a call, told his voicemail i was in town and we needed to sit down and talk.  he texted me back, said he had nothing to say to me. i replied that he could either come see me, or i was gonna drop by and see him--and, hey, was his wife at home, and did she know what he'd done?  he replied that i could say whatever i had to say to him by text.

i thought about it a minute, decided a written record might be more enduring and useful than a face-to-face screaming match, and began.

i'll spare you most of it; while the resulting exchange has proven both enlightening and endlessly entertaining to various friends and family who know all parties involved, it would probably bore you, my readers--but, bottom line, the madder he got, the more infuriatingly reasonable i made sure to become.

finally, after he'd exhausted his entire laundry list of grievances, accusing liz of me of everything from parental neglect to embezzlement in an effort to deflect blame from himself, i coolly gave him a deadline of six week to pay up, or i was gonna get serious.

at which point, conventional arsenal depleted, he launched his a-bomb:

 and, boy, he had been sitting on that one awhile--33 years, i suspect.

and my reaction must've deflated him, because all he could come up with in response was the text at the top of this post.  so, because i'm a giver, i decided to give him a little more--you know, remove any lingering doubts:

and finally, because it needed to be said,

nobody out-texts me, motherfucker.

*     *     *     *     *

 
my brother slung a lotta shit at me during that conversation, and most of it bounced off my smooth teflon surface. but one thing he said did stick--that i'd run away in 1989 and left him to watch over our mother.

and he was right; i did.  and he'll never understand why.

see, when i was growing up, i was loved--everybody loved little mkf, and he knew it.  hell, i was a sweet, happy little kid--what was not to love?  i got along with everybody--i could shmooze the grown-ups, i could play army with the boys and barbies with the girls, and . . .

to this day, i dunno if it was something somebody said, or whether i just woke up one day and smelled the coffee, but when i was around six or so, my world started to shrink.  i started avoiding the girls, i stopped dancing like nobody was watching--i didn't know why; i just knew it had to be done.

by the time my balls had dropped and my loins alit with fire, i knew why, all right.  i knew it was because i was like my dad's cousin billy mike--the schoolteacher with the sweet smile who was so unlike his asshole-athlete brother alvin in all the wrong ways, the one everyone had always smiled at and then spoken of behind his back in tones of syrupy, southern "bless his heart" contempt.

and i started looking around at my family, all those people who had loved me all my life, and i started mentally dividing 'em up into the few who'd still love me if they knew, and the many who'd look at me like billy mike

who died in 1986 of "leukemia", bless his heart
 
and from then on, i played my role--i smiled to their faces, even as my heart hardened to them.  i stoically endured my father's suicide, and steeled myself in the face of my mother's disintegration as she lost first her husband, then her mother, best friend and favorite brother in three hard years.  and all the while, i planned my escape.

this process of shutting down made me a lousy older brother, i admit--cold, guarded, withdrawn--and i thank god mark and liz didn't follow my high-school example.  but if my kid brother had told me back then he was sure there was a warm cock waiting for me somewhere, it woulda killed me, so i did what i had to do.

and i eventually found my place in this city of angels, became a successful, hard-hearted homosexual nobody can hurt.

it's been fun, but my mother needs me now, and it's time to go home.

and as for you, my brother:  after all the shit that's gone down between us over lo these many years, would i still give you a kidney?

yeah, i would.  but i'll see you in court first.

van cliburn, 1934 - 2013

a repost from a couple years back; tonight, it seems appropriate.  rest in peace, mr. cliburn, and thanks for the memory.



so i'm thirteen and on a trampoline in some strange kid's backyard in a strange city, having been dragged there by the kid of the friend my mother had dragged me along with her to visit [that's clear, right?].

it's hot and we're jumping and hollering and generally having a good time, when suddenly there's the sound of a car out front and then the gate opens, three grownups appear and the action grinds to a halt. one of 'em (the woman, i think) steps forward and calls out, "c'mere, kids, there's someone we want you to meet!"

"my parents," one of the kids who lives there mutters. "c'mon, we have to." obviously, he's done this drill before.

we dutifully dismount and cross the lawn to the grownups. i'm embarrassed as i always am when meeting new grownups, but even more so than usual because they're all impeccably turned out in their church clothes, and we're a fuckin' mess.

the parents proudly introduce their guest and the kids are all like, yeah, whatever, give him a half-hearted wave and head back to the trampoline.

the parents are obviously mortified by their kids' reaction. i'm mortified, too, and more than a little stunned--because, unlike them, i know exactly who this guy is.

see, my grandmother had told me all about him as we watched him perform on television one night. about how he'd gone to the soviet union at the height of the cold war as a callow young kid from the nearby town of kilgore, competed in their fancy piano contest, beaten the russkies at their own game and come home with the prize.

about how america had celebrated his victory with magazine covers and ticker-tape parades.

but more importantly--at least for my grandmother--about how he had vindicated east texas. because suddenly we weren't just backwoods hicks anymore--we had produced a prodigy.

so without overthinking it too much, i walk my sweaty and grass-stained ass up to this elegant, imperially-slim gentleman, stick out my hand and say, "nice to meet you, mr. cliburn. my grandmother loved you."

and then feel myself flush as it flashes through my mind--"holy shit, is 'van cliburn' like 'van dyke'? does he have a first name i don't know about and i just made an even bigger fool of myself?"

no worries--he smiles and takes my grubby little mitt in his without hesitation. his hand is cool and supple, and i marvel at the fact that he'd let anyone touch it, much less me.

we talk for a minute. turns out the kid's parents are real estate agents and are helping him find a house for his mother. he asks me about school and about my grandmother, and seems genuinely interested.

and then he heads into the house to talk business with the parents and i head back to the trampoline to join the others, but i can't get back into it. the afternoon has changed, and i can't put my young finger on why.

alas, the word "surreal" hasn't yet entered my vocabulary.

mkf offers a couple helpful hints

while this blog garners few comments, i do get emails--boy, do i get emails.  which is somewhat understandable since, judging from their tone, the majority of these emails come from folks who wouldn't be caught dead publicly commenting on a blog such as mine.

said emails fall roughly into three categories:  the ones condemning me to gay hell for taking exception to my politics; the ones accusing me of making shit up (as if, were anyone to take the time and trouble to construct the elaborate fantasy life of which i am so often accused, it would be this one); and, last but not least--and the subject of this post--the ones from closet fans asking for help in transforming their sad, sexless middle-aged selves into perpetually priapic love machines like the mysterious mkf.

*sigh*

it's not that i don't wanna help other men achieve this exalted plane from which i gaze down upon you mere mortals, it's more like i honestly dunno how much help i can be.  because, you gotta understand, i'm very different in some key respects from most men you'll come across.

see, most men--and, i mean, throughout history, and regardless of the degree of wealth, power, talent, intellect, accomplishment or romantic prowess to which they might lay claim--seem incapable of escaping obsession with their shortcomings in at least one (and usually more) of the following areas:

• baldness
• penis size
• body dysmorphia
• loss of vitality and virility with age

and, while i wish i could say i relate (oh who am i kidding; no, i don't), here's how mkf deals with each of the above manly existential crises:

baldness:  the realization i was losing it roughly and, for a minute, happily coincided with the introduction of rogaine to the market--until, after a quick calculation revealed to my then-broke ass that it would be either rogaine or cable, it was really no contest.  because like going bald should be my biggest goddam problem.

penis size:  what can i say--other than a regrettable early surgical choice in which i had no say, i wouldn't change a goddam thing.

body dysmorphia:  i gaze, naked, into the mirror at my doughy face, sagging posture, pasty skin and childbearing hips, and say to myself, "damn, you've got a big dick."

loss of vitality and virility with age:  again, what can i say--use it or lose it, motherfuckers.


but fuck most men--let's get back to gay men.  because, in addition to the above, so many of our little tribe seem condemned to eventually and inevitably face a special hell reserved only for us; namely, loneliness, isolation and sexual starvation once we've passed our prime.

and, again, i dunno how much help i can be in this regard, because staving off this inevitability seems to come naturally to me (so far), but if you're one of those who really wants to extend your dumbass adolescence into middle age, then i'll do my best to give you some pointers.

next time.

[sorry, got too chatty, lost the point and ran outta steam.  been happening a lot lately.]

fuck blogging--maybe i'll just post my texts

the odyssey

the setup

if you had told me a mere three days before that i'd be authoring such a text as the above three days hence [in which the discerning reader will note references to not merely one song, but two], i'd have told you you were nuts, but such are the vagaries of life.

it was the conversation with my mother that did it--the prospect of another disjointed, homeless christmas in the company of family who, no matter how beloved, were not her kids had left her bereft to the point that all the false cheer in the world couldn't mask the pain in her voice.  i hung up with my assurances that i'd see her the week after ringing hollow in my ears, and started thinking.

christmas fell on a tuesday this year, giving me a four-day weekend--so, what the hell?  on the way to work, i dropped the car off at the dealer for a full service, arranged for new tires from the guys across the street, and, three days later, headed east.

ma was gonna get a little christmas surprise.

but why didn't you just fly?

i've gotten really tired of answering this question.  because, seriously--faced with a choice between spending six hours each way on the days immediately before and after christmas packed into close, angry proximity with millions of my fellow holiday travelers, subjected to endless lines, radiation boxes, strip searches, obese seatmates and god knows what else followed by a puddle-jump to my final destination; or 20 hours in glorious, autonomous solitude, surrounded by smokes, cokes and audiobooks--knowing everything you know about mkf, gentle readers, which one do you think he'd pick?

besides, there was another factor which weighed on the decision; namely

road sex

there are two viable ways to drive from los angeles to northern texas.  i chose the northern route out, because it would put me within range of two reasonably large cities at about the time i'd be ready to stop for the night.  oh, and get laid.

last thing before heading out the door saturday morning, i placed my standard traveling ad on the two respective craigslists, complete with ETA and expectations. and while my act may be getting a little tired in LA, lemme tellya, those boys in the hinterlands love to see me coming.  by the time i hit new mexico, i had settled on a cute boy in albuquerque who wanted to put me up for the night, but all that went out the window when i got the email from

kyle

if you've never spent time in texas, then you've sadly missed out on kyle and all the kyles just like him.  for some reason, the state fairly abounds with kyles--the kinda boys that, had i known they existed back when i was in college alongside 'em, i might've never come west.

he showed up at my amarillo motel room just like i knew he would--drunk, semi-belligerent, frat t-shirt, baseball cap turned sideways, fresh from a near-bar fight and stir-crazy after a week of winter break home with the folks and of course NO KISSING.

sure, kyle.  we both know you'll be screaming a different tune in 15 minutes.

surprise

to my surprise, nobody in on the surprise broke.  walking up behind her in the living room on sunday, saying, "hey, what's up?", watching her freeze in her tracks, turn on her heel with wide, disbelieving eyes and throw her arms around my neck, made it all worth it.

a little gutter, a little morality.  it's how i roll.

oh, yeah--christmas

all i can say is, may at least one of yours be white.

and the reviews are in (continued)

when i wrote the first part of this post, it was with the full intention of coming back in part 2 and doing a point-by-point response to the reviews of this blog referenced therein.

thankfully, i'm sober now and back to my usual semi-indifference to the opinions of others, so i'll spare you most of it.  but i did wanna address a couple things.

first, one of paulo's readers weighs in:

what strikes me most about gregory's review of my blog--aside, of course, from its typical compassionate-liberal viciousness--is how it completely misses the point.  no sense of humor?!  this whole goddam blog is nothing but a dark cosmic joke, and i thought i'd made that fairly clear.  so either gregory's an idiot, or i've been deluding myself as to the extent of my supposed cleverness.  god, i hope it's the former.

as for paulo himself, while he professes to love the blog, he seems to see its author as nothing more than an amoral, aging lothario drunkenly crowing about all the boys he's nailed.  to this, i can only respond with the following, from an email i once wrote to faithful commenter noblesavage:

the reason you cringe at my trick stories, rob--in fact, the reason so much of what i write is cringeworthy--is because that is the intention of this long, five-year gutter-morality tale.  or, to put it another way,

oh mother, tell your children, not to do what i have done

(and yeah, will, i know--the animals did that one, too.)

where paulo nails me to the wall, however, is with the following observation:

I believe that even though one should have some courtesy to the person reading their drivel, paying a reader too much mind can fuck with your head as a writer.

boy, is he right about that.  i'm starting to care about what you assholes think, and it's clearly fucking with my head.

and the reviews are in

I'm just a soul whose intentions are good
Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

                                                       some old song

i've been writing guttermorality for almost five years, and have nearly called it quits as many times.  while i wouldn't trade the experience for anything, it's been in many ways a long and lonely slog.  i have few readers and even fewer commenters, and those commenters i do have--and i love you guys, don't get me wrong--tend to focus on the surface of whatever i've written, rather than the substance.

consequently, in the absence of any real criticism and feedback, i've been basically writing in a vacuum all this time.  believe it or not, i agonize over every one of these posts, try to distill 'em down to their bare essence, make 'em look offhand, layer in all sorts of subtle meaning--you know, say what i wanna say without actually saying it, and hope somebody gets it.  but i'm usually left to wonder if anybody ever does.

well, tonight i got an answer, of sorts--from not only one writer, but two.

lemme talk about paulo a minute.  i first came across his column many years ago whilst flipping through a new, cheap-newsprint biweekly weho rag called fab!, and, after lingering for probably too long over his picture,

gritted my teeth and steeled myself for whatever inane, crayon-scrawled prattlings with which this pretty-boy had managed to fill the space below.  because, clearly, he couldn't possibly be anything but a desperate, gay-affirmative action hire to draw readers to a struggling new paper with eye candy, right?

wrong.  this boy had the chops--his writing was brazen, honest, shameless, street-articulate, hideously un-PC, not to mention dead-on and funny as hell, and he had me from word one.  and i came back issue after issue not only to see what gay sacred cow he'd be (usually accurately) skewering this time--and, often as not, and to his credit, that included himself--but to snicker at how the peanut gallery had reacted to his last incendiary blast.  because lemme tellya, there was nothing more entertaining to ol' mkf than a buncha clutching-their-pearls, outraged fags writing letters to the editor week after week who couldn't decide what they needed more--to hate paulo or to fuck him.  (me?  i was conflicted too--i couldn't decide whether i wanted to fuck him or be his best girlfriend.  i settled for neither.)

sadly, fab! eventually went the way of all truly interesting gay publications--i.e., outta business--and i lost track of paulo. but i never forgot him.  i'd eventually launch guttermorality as a political blog, and, when one drunken night i tired of that shit and decided to get a little personal but wondered how far i should push it, i thought of him and how he'd owned his shit and decided, "fuck, if he could do it, i guess i can, too."

which brings us (almost) to today.  see, a few weeks ago, i got a hair up my ass to google ol' paulo, see what he was up to, and found his blog.  turns out he'd been through a lot in the ensuing years--through the ol' meth rabbit hole and out the other side, victorious--and the experience had tempered and matured his writing.  gone was the boy who had so ruthlessly lashed out at those gay stereotypes he had feared becoming, replaced by a man who had every reason to be proud of who he had actually become.

so i referenced him in a post, sent him the link.  and not only did he write me back, he actually wrote a post about my goddam blog, urging his readers (who number far more than mine) to check it out.  at least one of 'em did--a writer himself--and gave me his own mini-review.

so, do they get me?  check out the link above, compare their impressions to yours, and come back next time to see what i have to say about it.  because, after five years, i think it's time i quit laying it between the lines, and explained a few things straight-up, straight-out.

why? because this is what drink and boredom have reduced me to

presented for your delectation, much as i found it earlier this evening:

so why are we ragging on kewl, happy, dumb-as-a-rock chad tonight?  because it's been a bad day, i'm in a mood and chad's an easy target, that's why.

see, in stark contrast to chad with his naturally beach-blond hair, beach-blond body, beach-blond millions and apparent invulnerability to disease, mkf drags his fat, aging ass outta bed every morning and girds his ever-widening loins for yet one more struggle with demons and darkness and existential-angsty aloneness before finally collapsing, exhausted, into yet one more uneasy little slice of death, full of the awful, sisyphean knowledge that, at best, he's doomed to arise the next morning and do it all again.  no surf.  no jet-ski.  and god knows, no sailing yacht.

sure, i know there are multitudes of chads out there who live golden, effortlessly-blissful lives, but i don't particularly enjoy having my nose rubbed in that fact, especially when i think i'm safe among my own maladjusted, sex-twisted kind--i mean, hell, just the big dick without the correspondingly disfiguring big-dick features alone should be enough to have him killed in my book.*

so with all this in mind, i decided to drop chad a line, ask him to help me make some sense of the unfairness of the universe.

if i receive anything beyond a "duh?" in response, i'll be sure to let you know, but i don't have high hopes--i expect his little beach-blond pucker is every bit as flawless as his little beach-blond dreams.

_____________
*and yeah i know, noblesavage, but if chad is a figment of some old perv's imagination designed to lure hot, unwitting boys to send him revealing photos of themselves, i have no post, so we're not going with that one.

since you asked--the sober version

[and the navel-gazing continues . . .]


not satisfied with my answer, huh?  well, i'm not really, either, so lemme try again.

as you know, back when i first hit town i began my gay career by attending the wednesday-night group rap sessions at the LA gay & lesbian center.  in retrospect, probably a mistake--mostly a buncha lonely misfit-types sitting around talking about their misfit loneliness, interspersed with a few clueless newbies like myself.  not exactly the best introduction to the life, but what the hell did i know?  i had no steve kuzi to guide me this time.

anyway, that very first night, in response to my introduction, one of the guys--a fat, loud, outspoken mid-fifties new-yorker named art, cut through all the murmured greetings and socializing suggestions by saying, "screw these guys--if i were your age and looked like you, i'd be out sucking and fucking every goddam night."  i tucked this little pearl of wisdom away for future examination.

a couple weeks later, i hooked up for the very first time with one of the guys in the group, a shy, sweet latin boy who told me afterwards, "i'm so glad i caught you now."  when i asked what he meant, he said, "you know--you're all new, at the height of your studliness (i never forgot that phrase).  you've got your whole gay life in front of you.  you're gonna play around for a little while with a lotta cute guys, and then you're gonna meet the one, settle down and make some lucky guy a great husband."

didn't quite turn out that way, did it?

i spend a lot of time second-guessing the choices i've made in my life--for instance, i wonder sometimes how differently things mighta turned out for me if my first gay housemates had been a couple high-minded ph.d's instead of royce and paul--but for the most part, and in the end, i think destiny wins out, and we end up who we were meant to be.

the kid was half-right; i possessed one of the components for gay success--i was new, cute and studly--but i was sorely lacking in the other.  to put it bluntly, i was not, and am not, much fun to be around.  i don't care for most people, nor they for me.  crowds make me nervous, and i really don't enjoy going out and doing things.  i'm depressive and negative and overly-critical, i don't think like the herd, and most guys i meet aren't willing put up with me for more than about five minutes unless my dick is up their ass.

and don't tell me i'm wrong, rob--hell, even you, my best and oldest friend in LA, can only take me in small doses up-close-and-personal these days.  before guttermorality came along and revived our relationship, i saw you once a year for maybe an hour, tops--and that's if i was lucky.  now, thanks to the blog and email, we spend long stretches together like we did when we first met, if only at digital arms-length.  i've always appreciated the irony in that; i wonder if you ever do.

and speaking of this goddam blog, that's another thing.  what started out as a drunken lark very quickly became a personal daily referendum--a self-worth test, as it were.  if i couldn't suck people in with my personal magnetism, could i maybe do it with my words?  even as my writing has exponentially improved, the answer to that question, as has been clearly demonstrated by my stats and comment count over lo these past four-plus years, has remained a resounding and unmistakeable "fuck no."  i'm becoming bitter about this, it ain't a good look on me, it's starting to bleed into my writing, and if i don't get some interaction going here pretty soon, i'm taking this sucker private, extending invitations to the chosen few, and all the lurkers--and yeah, you know who you are--can go fuck themselves and feast on their trainwrecks elsewhere.

they say there's a lid out there for every pot, and for awhile i thought i'd found mine in v--he loved everything about me everybody else doesn't, he put up with my shit, he could keep up with me, and he stuck around through thick and thin.  and i loved him back as best i could, and i really tried (or so i tell myself), but in the end, i could never give my heart to an overgrown kid who'd joyously spend $200 on an authentic, george lucas-authorized light saber when he could barely make his rent.  he's gone now, who knows where--finally gave up on the lost cause, i guess.  the good half of me hopes he's found someone fun who deserves his sweet, sexy, eternally irresponsible ass--when the bad half isn't damning him to hell for abandoning me, that is.

so here i sit--crabby, middle-aged and alone.  is that the worst thing in the world?  i dunno; for me, probably not.

i had my shot, rob--i was a hot commodity there for a precious little while, and you would probably say that instead of investing my limited capital wisely for long-term growth, i blew it all on short-term, rapidly-depreciating assets.  and while that's probably true, even back in my glory days--when cute, hot, desirable guys were asking me for dates instead of just dick--i couldn't in my wildest dreams imagine myself being shackled to even the best of 'em.

i really don't know how to end this post except to fall back on those words my widowed, one-man-woman mother--and now i--live by:  the only thing worse than being alone is wishing you were.

as v would say if he were here, "true dat."

since you asked

the following is a long, rambling answer to a short, pointed question.  i'm posting it here because this is where i keep such things now, secure in the knowledge that nobody'll ever find 'em.

as for the old drivers license above, i found it when i was packing to move, remembered how much i hated that photo--the ugly boy with the w.c. fields nose.  god, we can be so dumb when we're young.



did i ever tell you about st. patrick's day 1985, rob?  i spent that evening at hall's in austin, steve kuzi by my side; by that time we were a fixture in the place--the buff, burly protector and the scared-wabbit newbie.  that night would be different, though; towards midnight, drunk off my ass, i broke away from kuzi for the first time ever, wandered off on my own, found a cute boy who had tried unsuccessfully for weeks to catch my eye, walked up to him and asked his disbelieving ass if he wanted to give me my first gay kiss.

the next two hours were a happy blur; word spread quickly that the new guy was off his leash--i must've gotten two or three dozen first gay kisses that night.  it was probably the most fun i've ever had in a gay crowd (with the possible exception of that time at sunset street fair when your friend jonathan and i drunkenly three-way made out with that really hot guy at detour that i ended up going home with--you remember that, right?).

next time i walked into halls, i was back to my usual sober, shut-down self, welded at the hip to kuzi, not looking left or right.  people eventually got the message, left me alone.

paulo murillo, that perennial weho man-about-town (check out his blog--it's a hoot), opines that there are basically two kindsa fags:  those who are invited to the party and those who aren't, and that most fag-bitchy bitterness originates from those who are wrecked to find themselves in the latter group.

while i think there is much truth there, being the social type that he is, ol' paulo could never understand someone who would trash his invitation unopened.

*     *     *     *     *

i've always been that way;  while there are many things i would change about my high-school years if i could, joining a clique would not be one of 'em.  while in college, my idle fantasies about hanging with those intoxicatingly-cute fraternity boys in their polo shirts and tony lamas evaporated the first time i attended one of their parties.

and you remember my first and only circuit event--white party 1993, right?  i enjoyed the drive to palm springs with you, and throwing back a few with your friends in our suite, but as for the actual party itself, lemme just say that as soon as that godawful music started pounding and those shirtless, manicured, meth-addled faggots started writhing, i couldn't cut one outta the herd and drag his tweaking ass back to his room fast enough.

my heart has always been a lonely hunter, rob, and now here i find myself, having put in twenty-three boy-chasing years in a city that's never been home, sitting here by myself.

your question--why, at my age, i'm still "fetishizing youth"--misses the point; i could never fall in love with any of the boys i sleep with, nor most of 'em with me. my heart, if it ever falls, will fall for an equal.  i don't seek out the young; i seek out the unruined--which, in this town, anyway, seem to be one and the same.  i'd love to find a man who could challenge me to give it up for him, but i've never let myself learn how; in the solitary circles in which i run, most of the guys anywhere near my age are far more fucked up than i am.

i've often wondered how differently things might've turned out for the boy in that picture up there if the coin had landed tails instead of heads, and he had ended up on the east coast instead--maybe he'd have found that fabled faggot algonquin round table, which is the only clique to which he's ever wanted to belong.

or maybe that's just a cop-out--whatever; i gotta take my vitamins, catch some zzzzz's.  

it's gonna be a busy week.

luv, 

me

backgammon, anyone?

my shitty memory has been mentioned in past posts--if someone had told me ten years ago that i'd be writing lengthy, detailed stories from my past today, i'd have laughed and asked, "what past?".  but that was before i discovered that just the right amount of alcohol in concert with just the right random golden oldie could trigger a flood of long-buried memories--and thus, this blog came alive.

it was fun while it lasted (or not), but those days may be over, because, without any drama or conscious effort on my part, the falling-down-drunk phase of my life seems to have passed, just like that.  i mean, i still have one from time to time (in fact, i'm having one now), but one is enough these days.

as also previously mentioned, i recently sold my house, and, in the process of moving, went through every box and drawer and thus re-acquainted myself with every single thing i currently own--and what a revelation that was.

long-forgotten things, i was reminded, can trigger memories, too.  this post is about one of those things.

*     *     *     *     *

i remembered the first time i laid eyes on it--cheap, shellacked-linen case with yellowed, marbled plastic pips, flimsy cardboard cups coated with simulated moroccan-leather paper, painted points on cork.

i had just walked into the club for my usual round of after-school vacuuming and puke-removal, to find beau, my boss, and one of the bartenders bent over the board.  i stopped to watch.  he looked up, caught the expression on my face.

"what's the matter, country boy--never seen a backgammon board before?"

"no," i replied, "i'm just surprised somebody like you would own one that tacky."

he narrowed his eyes, looked at me a long moment.  "do you play?"

i replied, "it's like checkers, right?"

he said, "sit down."

"i've got work to do."

"sit down."

so i did, for the first of what would turn out to be hundreds of battles beau and i would wage on that tired old board.  at first he beat me easily, of course, gleefully pointing out my errors as he mercilessly demolished my board, but i caught on pretty quick, and soon we were slinging dice back and forth, doubling each other up to 128 for no good goddam reason and generally having a good time.

our relationship would go through many changes over many years--from employer-employee to equals of sorts to business partners--but backgammon was always the constant.  we'd spend hours facing each other across that board, smoking, drinking and talking into the night.

one christmas, beau's second wife, gayla, surprised him with a new set.  it was nice--leather, fancy stitching, weighted pips, expensive.  he loved it, of course, because he had to.  the old one got passed onto me--"take care of it," he told me. "i've had it since i was a kid, and it's been with me through thick and thin--trust me, it's lucky."  and i've had it ever since.

i last saw beau in late 1985, and our final conversation wasn't pleasant.  he called me the next day, and i let the machine answer, figuring i'd call him back later when i cooled off.  "later" would turn into never.

i've googled him from time to time in the ensuing years, just to check on him--he ended up in dallas, married a third time (gayla had bailed before i did) and started a tour-wholesaling business--but held off making contact, figuring i'd do it one day.

when i opened that box three weeks ago and found the set--musty and uglier than ever--i figured enough time had passed already.

*      *      *      *      *

i finished moving, slammed the door on my newly-rented storage garage and raced to the airport, missed my flight to dallas, stood by all night for the 6am special, drove the 90 miles east to tyler.  i was there to help my mother move into the house my sister had just bought for her, but i had other plans as well.

the next day, i drove the few blocks over to yorktown circle, parked.  the house looked exactly the same as it had when i had last visited it many years before, but i hesitated, headed for the front door instead of through the garage as i always had in the past--hell, who knew if they still lived here, or were even still alive?

when a stranger answered the door, my heart sank; i apologized, was in the middle of explaining when a familiar voice rang out from within:  "michael, is that really you? get in here right now and let me hug your neck!"

the stranger, it turned out, was a nurse; shirley, much older and frailer than when i had last seen her, couldn't get up to greet me, but that warm, sweet smile hadn't changed a bit.

before i could ask, she told me about fritz--he had died of complications from alzheimer's four years prior.  "and let me tell you", she said, "over 800 people came to his funeral.  people we hadn't seen for years, and some we didn't even know, all of whose lives he had touched with his testimony and his music."

fritz had been a well-known musical evangelist in the southern baptist church, and he and shirley exemplified, for me anyway, everything that was and could be good about christianity--and i'm talking the serious, hardcore, grit-your-teeth-smile-and-turn-the-other-cheek type of christianity that would prove necessary in order to have beau as a son-in-law (to the point of fritz's vomiting, rinsing his mouth and then walking out and performing the wedding ceremony at which i was best man--i only learned that little tidbit much later).

"how are gayla and ginger?", i asked, and was glad to hear that they were doing well, still happily married to great guys who loved them.  i would see them both before the week was out, and neither, to their credit, gave me too much grief about dropping out of their lives for so long a time.

and then shirley said, "you know beau died, don't you?"

no.  no, i didn't know that.

*     *     *     *     *

our friendship ended badly, and long after it probably should have.

beau was bad for me--everybody told me so, and on some level i always knew it.  but i didn't care--he got me in a way that nobody else ever had, and he listened to me in a way that nobody else has before or since.  i didn't know then that that's what sociopaths do, but it probably wouldn't have mattered if i had.  he gave me, a callow, naive east texas boy who didn't know shit from shinola, a window into a world i might never have known existed had he not come along when he did, and for that i will always be grateful.

i'm a very different man than the boy i was then, and i have no doubt i could hold my own with him now.

why'd you have to die, asshole?  you were supposed to outlive us all.

would you let me anywhere near your kid?

a few months ago, i was in an airport, waiting to board.  i had settled into a chair across from a young woman with a toddler in a stroller (as much as i try to avoid strange adults, when i get the opportunity to interact with kids, i generally grab it).

this one was a cutie--thirty months, give or take, with light-brown curls and a big grin.  i'd catch his eye, make a face, he'd shriek, whip his head away and then peek back at me through his fingers and we'd do it again, over and over (much to the annoyance of everyone around us, no doubt, but fuck 'em--the kid and i were happy, and his mother was thankful for the break).

the game suddenly ended when, in mid-giggle, his eyes moved past mine and his expression changed from amusement to pure joy as he threw out his arms and cried, "daddy!"

i looked over my shoulder and saw the identical expression on the face of the man who walked up, bent down, scooped him outta his stroller and tossed him in the air.

kid never looked at me again.

*     *     *     *     *

i wrote a piece awhile back--one of my better ones, i think--called machine of wonder, in which i touched on my childless ambivalence.

i'd make a lousy father; of this, i'm fairly certain.  i mean, i'd have my moments, sure, but i know myself--the good times would be overshadowed by my feelings of annoyance and entrapment by an endless, 24-hour-a day commitment to a small, dependent human.  not that i'd ever be short or mean to little him or her--i'd grit my teeth, smile and hide it well--but kids always know.

but i'd make a good part-time mentor; of this, i'm also fairly certain.

*     *     *     *     *

some years ago, an actress i know did some publicity work for an organization that provides a place for inner-city latchkey kids to hang out after school--you know, watch tv, play basketball, study, stuff like that.  they had begun a mentoring program, and she told me i oughta sign up for it--i'd be great.

what the hell--i gave the director a call, did the interview and was matched up with a shy 15-year-old named george.  it was a once-a-week thing, which was perfect--every tuesday, we'd meet after school for a few hours, and i'd help him with his homework.  simple, right?

yeah, well, as it happened, young george's achilles' heel was algebra, which was my weakness, too.  so we developed a routine--i'd show up, grab his book, turn to the day's lesson, tell him to get lost for 15 minutes, and madly study my ass off.  he'd come back, and we'd go over the work.

at first, it was like pulling teeth.  george was bright, but he was not a math guy--he just didn't understand all those x's and y's.  we struggled for awhile, as i cast about for a way to make it come alive for him. we stopped one day when his frustration grew too great, and i asked him what did turn him on--what he got without having to try.  his passion, turns out, was art.  he loved to draw--he took some sketches outta his backpack that he'd done of his friends and showed 'em to me, and they weren't half bad--but that wasn't gonna help us here.

"what else?", i asked, and after some hesitation, he admitted he loved puzzles and fantasy games.

i thought a minute, pointed to an equation in the book, said, "ok, see that x?  he's an intrepid warrior who's been trapped by the evil y's and n's deep in their dreaded prison of parentheses.  your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to free him, isolate him on the other side of the equal sign where he'll be safe, and reveal his secret identity to the world."

he laughed, said, "nobody's ever put it that way before--now i wanna do it."  and, you know what? he did.

i can't say algebra ever became second nature to george, but by the end of the school year, and given enough time, he could game his way through even the tough equations, and i felt pretty good about that (and i got pretty good at it, too).

i also can't say that george and i became particularly close--there just wasn't that chemistry between us--but he eventually did start to open up, and would talk to me about school, his artistic aspirations and how he wished he could spend more time with his mother, who worked two jobs as a custodian and thus was hardly ever home.

we never talked about girls and shit, and if he knew or suspected i was gay he gave no sign of it, but he mentioned one of the other kids in the program one day--a dark-eyed, elfin boy named enrique

who certainly did know--he caught and held my eye in a knowing way more than once.  i avoided him.

and said, "some of the guys give him a hard time because he's gay.  i think that's bullshit--he's ok." i liked george for that.

on our final tuesday together (he graduated middle school with A's and B's, bitches) his mother showed up--hell, had taken off work--just so she could tell me with tears in her eyes how much my time with george that year had meant to the both of 'em, and to thank me personally.  as this tiny woman clasped me in a warm embrace, i thought, "wait, she speaks broken english.  she's probably illegal--i'd better call ICE."

just wanted to see if you were payin' attention, noblesavage

i told george my graduation gift to him was lunch and a movie of his choice on saturday.  his eyes lit up, and he shouted "matrix!", to which his mother crossed herself and said por supuesto que no!, so we ate at cheesecake factory and ended up at some lame sean connery/catherine zeta jones bomb instead.  it didn't matter--he was happy, got to have the sorta day he didn't have very often.

when i dropped him off in front of his apartment that night and we said our goodbyes, he reached for the handle, but i told him to hold on a second, fumbled around in the backseat until i found a large, slipcovered book i'd once paid too much for called anatomy for the artist or some such shit that had been collecting dust on my bookshelf for years, handed it to him and told him he'd damn well better reproduce every figure in it.  he grinned hugely and promised he would.

i have only two regrets about my experience with HOLA:  the first is that, despite my best intentions, i never managed to find the time to go back and mentor another one.

the other?  why didn't i take that kid to see the goddam matrix?

*     *     *     *     *

so yeah, i'm thinking i'd like to mentor a kid again; i've been thinking so for awhile.  but not once a week this time--more of a "big brothers/big sisters" kinda thing, where i could have a little more involvement.

see, every time i read a story or see a video about some lonely kid--boy, girl, doesn't matter--who was bullied because he/she was fat, weird, gay or thought to be gay, or possessed of some other pariah characteristic that didn't fit the standard mold, my heart breaks a little, and i wanna launch my own little up-close-and-personal "it gets better" campaign.

one of the things that's been holding me back, though, is the fear of being shackled to some kid i don't get and who doesn't get me, and having to soldier through it anyway--i mean, how do you tell a vulnerable kid he doesn't make the cut, and you have to move on?  the answer is, you can't--period.

the other thing that gives me pause is, of course, the pedophilia (not-so) paranoia

hi, i'm a 55-year-old unmarried man. gimme a boy!

that has become so publicized and pervasive in organizations of the type i'm considering.

and it's a legitimate point--i mean, anybody who's read this blog for any length of time couldn't be faulted for asking, "yeah, but what if they pair you up with some hot, lost, fatherless little number who, if he were a few years older and posting on craigslist, you would consider fair game?"

*     *     *     *     *

one late-august sunday awhile back, i drove down to long beach with the intention of having sex with some guy, didn't because the vibe was just wrong, but ended up hanging out with him for the afternoon because his house and pool were so fabulous and i found him interesting in other ways.

somewhere between the third and forth double mojito, he said, "hey, if you wanna stick around for dinner, i have a surprise you might enjoy."

the surprise turned out to be the arrival of a 16-year-old swedish exchange student the guy had agreed to host for the upcoming school year.

kid was adorable--slight, shy, handsome and excessively polite, as northern european-types tend to be--and as he set his bags down in the foyer, his host grabbed him in an unnecessary hug and leered over his shoulder at me.

dinner was semi-uncomfortable (guy's mother lived with him--did i not mention that?)--the whole time, the guy plied the kid with the sorta veiled, seemingly-innocuous questions that would arouse no suspicion in the old lady, but raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

i couldn't get outta there fast enough, but before i did (because i knew i'd never come back), i managed to get the kid alone for a minute while the guy and mom cleared the table, shoved my phone number in his hand, told him, "look, i know you're totally alone here--if for any reason things don't work out in this house, call me and i'll come and get you.  and i mean that."

and i would have, had he ever called.  i like to think that it all worked out just fine for that kid, and that i did everything i could.

i like to think that.

*     *     *     *     *

they say you never truly grow up until your life becomes about something more than just yourself.

but what do you do when you're a manchild?  can you irresponsibly whore around one day, and zip it up and be a responsible mentor the next?

is it possible for somebody like me to ever righteously earn some semblance of the feeling that dad had as he pulled his kid outta that stroller?

i dunno, but i'm betting i wouldn't be the first slut with a biological clock who's pulled it off.

letter to a disillusioned young architect

tonight i dropped by a blog i hadn't visited in awhile, written by a very thoughtful young architecture-school graduate who articulates well many of the same thoughts and emotions i might have expressed when i was at his stage of life (had i then been able to write as well as he does, of course).


he's currently experiencing that "should i throw in the towel?" angst i remember so well, so i thought i'd share with him my thoughts (and they're very inside, so you may wanna skip this one).

back when i was a regular reader of your blog, tracking your gradual awakening from the lies your teachers told you was a subtle thing, kinda like watching a kid grow. but, coming back cold after after a year or so, the change is easy to see.

and i can totally understand why.

after my first year at university of texas SOA (and two semesters of the standard "introduction to architecture" indoctrination), i was one of the pod people, too--convinced beyond doubt that "we" were special beings who saw things differently than the unwashed masses. we studied only the 1% and their immortal creations, with rarely a mention of the bread-and-butter work that would be the destiny of most of us.

my small class of '84 would produce not one, but two superstars: craig dykers, and mehrdad yazdani (one of whose success came as no surprise; the other, as an utter, jaw-dropping shock. i'll let you figure out whom is who).

as for the rest, all i know for sure is what happened to those who are still my friends: two still tenuously employed and as-yet unpublished, another who operates a rather successful headbanging nightclub in austin, and the fourth of whom found the golden ticket--he became the office IT/CAD guru who never picks up a pencil, but can rest assured that (in his own words) "they'd dump a partner before they'd fire me".

me? i left long ago, and get my architectural gratification from doing the occasional house for myself, and sketching out quick, on-the-fly remodels for friends, co-workers and acquaintances (for which they're invariably blown away and grateful, though never to the point of being moved to actually pay me).

these days, i work not for architects but for lawyers, and watch a never-ending stream of smug pups with mostly-mediocre minds sailing straight outta law school into six-figure jobs--entitled beneficiaries of a profession which has convinced the public of its indispensability to society (the AIA could learn a few things from the ABA, all i'm sayin').

my advice to you (since you don't ask)? carve out your own niche, and make of the profession what you want it to be--utilize your talents in ways which please you and you alone, and do great things. whatever you choose to do (and my previous words notwithstanding), your education will prove invaluable to you throughout your life--i wouldn't trade mine for the world.

[oh, and the easiest way to do that? your inner voice is telling you already: get the hell outta here while you're still young (and it's still possible)--find a country that's vibrant, growing and debt-free, and where you won't have to spend the rest of your life paying for my generation's mistakes.]

that's all.

i had more to say, and thought about pouring another cocktail in order to facilitate doing so, until i remembered it was late and i have stuff to do in the morning.

so that's all.