1, 2, 3 ... Breathe!

Wow … clicking through my reader trying to catch up on everything was a hit upside the head about how MIA i’ve really been. And that was just my gay-friendly related blog list took me a good 45 minutes to click through about 10-14 days worth. eek! I will never catch up on the rest of it.

But I’m back – and this week will do my very darndest to start blogging again more regularly. I think part of me needed a bit of break, but for those who care, here’s a random smattering of an update.

Moving!
I already posted about moving, and I’m happy to report that we’ve found about 80%, 70%, 65% of our floor from under the boxes, piles, and plastic. We are finally settled, if not unpacked, into our first apartment we chose and moved into together. And we’ve only had one shelf fall off the wall! (so far).

This past weekend we went to one of the gay shrines commonly known as IKEA to aquire some of the necessary accoutrements like a coffee table (to replace the giant telephone copper cable spool I had been using) a kitchen table + chairs (to replace the card table we’d been using) a new mattress (to replace the 10 year old bed-bug prone lump we had before), a carpet and various knick knacks.

Incommunicado
My cell phone has been dead for five days … and that’s kind of a liberating thing. I rather like the feeling of not being tethered wherever I am. I like pretending to be in the days of old (like, what, 10 years ago?) when you could go from work to home and NOT expect the harsh ring from your pocket. I don’t like it when I need to reach the Beau, but eh, it all works out.

Parents
My mom’s birthday was in this past week. I called her after not having talked to her for way too long. It’s not that I don’t love my mom, I really quite do and think she’s a beautiful woman; the problems here are relatively new and amount to very deep rabbit hole involving clinical depression and the denial thereof, blatant deliberate ignorance of the love my life (she knows, she just refuses to accept), and the general manipulative divorce-related guilt trips that haven’t worked for nearly 8 years but still piss me off. That’s probably a whole ‘nother blog ‘n’ therapy.

Jesus Camp
The Beau and I saw Jesus Camp on it’s New York premier. It’s … an interesting film. The Beau was mostly horrified and affected for the children who were so blatantly being brainwashed; he hopes against all hope that at least some of them will see the light and break free. I, on the other hand, watched it in order to see what the fundies were up to these days, and it was the same old stuff, just more bald-faced and blatant. It seems the general talk of raising up children has become a shameless drive to indoctrinate. War-cries meets object lessons, fearful shame tactics meets arrogance-as-evangelism training. If it’s showing in a city near you, go see it.

On Friends
Growing up I didn’t have a whole lot of friends. My family moved around a lot, and I’m slow to get comfortable in new spaces; as time went on, my own shyness reinforced itself by cutting myself off from making friends and making me even more quiet. In High School that changed a bit as I was more willing to be outspoken with other social misfits like myself, but when I went to college on the other side of the country, everything changed.

I made friends with a great group of people (The Group), met my best friend, and about year later joined a wonderful community-driven church. I didn’t come out then, (though I knew for a while that I was gay), but I was quick to defend the civil and social rights of gay people. By my second year, I doubt there was anyone of my friends who didn’t at least suspect I was gay. I lived in CA for about four years and slowly fell out of regular contact with a lot of my friends, some through attrition or betrayal or work or schedules or distance or rejection (by church).

I bring all this up because I was thinking about all my old friends and what they meant to me after a long dry famine of friendship; I hate the idea of losing them to the abyss of distance and change, and have been seriously contemplating writing a few letters. But of course, the question then is, how much do I say? It’s not like my being gay would surprise anyone; I list myself as gay on MySpace and Facebook, and the Beau was present for the last few events before I moved – those who I didn’t tell explicitly probably know from those I did. But do I really want to deal with saying “oh by the way I’m gay, in case you didn’t know” all over again?

It’s not that I’m afraid to come out, it’s that it’s a pain in the rear. It’s like something that’s silly and obligatory. I probably should simply talk about the Beau as if they already all know and leave it at that. They’re smart, they’ll figure it out.

News and Such
So let me close with a recap of a few items that caught my attention while I was busily elsewhere on the Net.

1. American Airlines, More Leg Room, but Not for Cuddles!
In case you didn’t hear from every other gay blog on the net, there’s the story of the American Airlines flight attendants who rebuked the gay couple for being cuddly and resting a head on a partner’s shoulder. Why? It offended other people. The indigance of it aside, I’ve decided to fly American every chance I get and complain mercilessly about the striaght couples, teenage girls, and the color of the taudry uniforms and INSIST they stop it immidiately. Well, not really – I hate American Airlines as it is (a Continental man, myself) – but this sure has set me in motion of thinking what would I have done? Some reports say the pilot threatened to land the plane if they didn’t stop … I’m thinking I would have let him.

2. Latvia Outranks the US in Equality
At least in one measurement. The Latvian government made the “bold” step of outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. This is something that isn’t even a part of the great Freedom-bearing USA’s civil rights and anti-discrimination laws.

3. Jay Bakker, son of Jim and gay-fave Tammy Faye Bakker, is in the news again. (Logo | G-A-Y | New York Mag). I’ve long respected this guy for his story, faith, and courage in growing up as an outcast from mainstream Christianity in more ways than one (and he’s not even gay). If you haven’t before, I encourage you to read his book, Son of a Preacher Man.

4. Joe’s got me pondering with this piece on Orientation and Benton recounts the early stages of his coming out process.

That’s it for now! Time to go unpack some more.

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09/26/06 12:08 AM
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