Monday, May 31, 2010

Love and Loathing

For you readers who follow me on my adventures, you undoubtedly know that I am on the Manhunt site rather often looking for hookups, and chatting with buds, seeing who's online, etc. It's more than sex and less than satisfactory.

For the most part, Manhunt efficiently delivers the goods. Desperate men eventually find ways to accommodate each other's needs. Occasionally, though, you run into jerks. I ran into such a jerk yesterday, a gratuitous jerk with whom I had never had any contact. This is the message that he sent me:

Joker7727: wow..u are a fucking joke!!! 60 years old and u take naked pics of your self...fucking gross dude!!! no wounder people hate fags....guys like you give us all bad names. u look like a kid toucher!!! nasty dude!!!

This wasn't quite as bad as the message where a different jerk told me that "you old guys should just kill yourselves," but it's pretty close. The message is curious because I had never had contact with the sender, so why was he contacting me with this hateful, offensive message? I'm guessing he believes that old men shouldn't be having sex, or more likely we shouldn't be seen on Manhunt.

He pissed me off. So I replied to his message, not in kind, but intentionally. I fully expect Mr. Joker to block me after he reads my message. I hope he reads my message. But if he doesn't, at least the exchange is memorialized here:

wheaton_guy: No, I think you're the fucking joke. It's fags like you that give guys like me a bad name. I don't take pictures of myself in public restrooms like you do. And I don't know why you think I look like a kid toucher. Maybe you have some issues that you should explore with your therapist you self-loathing, ageist, bigoted asshole. Finally, if you live another 27 years, you'll be my age. You'll probably be hanging around here posting naked pictures of yourself. You might want to try a little humility, because when you're my age, you're certainly going to need it. It's my earnest hope that you never receive as hateful a message as you sent me. It's bad karma for you.

Don't mess with me.

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Sometimes Everything Looks Like a Penis

Ron's out of town, and I'm randy. When I was 29 (or 39, or 49), I didn't expect to be sexually active, and well, horny at the age of 59. I thought the day would come when sex just wouldn't interest me anymore. That's not proving to be the case. The desire remains strong, even if the implementation isn't always exactly on target.

That's a blog entry in itself. When Pfizer put Viagra® on the market, it changed my life. Although the drug doesn't create or increase sexual desire, it makes the result of sexual desire obtainable. After decades of having no follow through whatsoever, Viagra was an epiphany, and an enabler of possibilities, and it probably kept my interest in sex active because it made the possibility of sexual connection with other men real. When I couldn't get a hard on, I always felt that I had let the other guy down. Now that I could actually have a much larger sexual repertoire (with Viagra's gentle, insistent help), I felt a sexual validation that I had not experienced in decades. Of course, that's in my head, and I should probably be talking to a therapist about that.

I used Viagra yesterday. I had a happy afternoon with Tim. We enjoyed the completely undignified time with each other. Sex like this reminds me of who I am.

This morning I was still a little blissful. I was walking past the Discovery Building in Silver Spring, on my way to the farmers market to pick up some produce. The Discovery Building has this huge mural along the sidewalk that combines themes of Prometheus, the Tree of Life, Neil Armstrong, Hal, and the Ultimate Answers of Physics (that's my interpretation). And the mural has a lot of penis-shaped objects in it: the Tree of Life, flaming planetoids streaking, fish of a sort, and a starry universe heading out to the Big Chill, penises everywhere, and it didn't take a huge amount of imagination for me to see them! They are there. I saw them with my own eyes. And I'm cutting my dosage in about half.

Monday, May 24, 2010

It's Not Easy Being Gay

I remember at the beginning of this year, that I promised all of my readers that I would be updating this blog regularly. I guess it depends on how you define "regularly."

Some updates: My bedroom is still a complete mess. I need to set a deadline, then get to it. It's a scary prospect for me. I keep hearing about elderly hoarders, and I wonder am I contemplating my next forty years every time I look at that pigsty (and that's really being unfair to pigs) of a bedroom. What gives here? Am I mentally unbalanced. I also notice clutter creeping back into the office, and it's giving me the heebie jeebies. I'm entering some warped zombie-like universe. Everywhere I look I see awful premonitions of my future.

Michael and I made it to the Silver Spring Farmers Market early Saturday morning (okay, 9 a.m.) to pick up our box of CSA produce. I also purchased a baguette and a container of cardamom gelato. Later on, I proceeded to prepare a spinach potato dish that Spiral Path Farms had conveniently included in their newsletter. Spinach Colcannon is a dish worthy of your consideration, especially if you fix it like I do.

Lunch at Sushi Damo
We'd already eaten half the dish when it occurred to us to take a picture

Tim and I went to Sushi Damo on Saturday afternoon, just after the lunch crowd. There's nothing quite like post-coital seafood. And that sentence is wrong on so many different levels. Not a hint of Tuna was to be found.... But the rolls were wonderful: the Eel Special Roll, and the Mango Sensation. I think I can speak for Tim (and Me!) and heartily recommend both creations. I have no idea how "authentic" these rolls are, but sinking back into the taste and delight of the moment makes that judgment wholly irrelevant, for at least this particular lunch time.

Sunday, Ron and I attended a (very) (gay) pool party in the neighborhood. The looksist and ageist demons were dancing in my head while I was attending this spectacle. Bawdy ballads, anyone? Care to hear about the latest naked sightings of young male celebrities? Are you interested in knowing the real inside dope between Sal Mineo and Tony Perkins? I thought so. The aforementioned Spinach Colcannon was devoured in its entirety. One-half pound of melted cheese just about guarantees a cleaned out dish at a potluck of this caliber, although I continue to be dumbfounded and amazed at the results and my reaction to those results. Sometimes, I just want to turn in my card, and slink back into the slimy shadows from which I emerged after Stonewall.

Friday, May 14, 2010

Stigma and the Supreme Court

Elena Kagan is not a lesbian. Ruth Marcus, a columnist in the Washington Post, said so, and of all people, Ruth should know (evidently). Oh, and the White House also announced that Elena Kagan is not a lesbian. I needed to know this.

Saturday, May 8, 2010

A Musing

I'm finally on a computer that doesn't have a worthless browser like the one on my BlackBerry. Not that I'm dissing the piece of crap that passes for software on my phone. I'm sitting in front of my Mom's computer cruising the Internet, and doing my darndest to remove all traces of my virtual journey across the web. The boys in Moscow are having none of it, and that's probably okay, considering that most of them travel rather than host.

I went out to The Barn today out in Uniontown, Washington. The Barn houses an eclectic group of artists' studios in many different mediums, plus it has the world's niftiest gift shop. My sister, Katherine, has a studio there, and she showed me her latest watercolor that will one day end up on a grateful wall of my home. I like her painting for its sense of place, and my connection to the place. I guess I'm a natural born humanist, or something like that. Currently, The Barn is hosting an exhibit from the Washington State University School of Architecture about the wooden grain elevators that dot the Palouse country. I grew up seeing grain elevators everywhere, but without any connection or knowledge about them. I liked the exhibit, and will quietly regret the demise of these prairie sentinels.

Tie Dye. Who knew that it's alive and well in Moscow, Idaho? Moscow has a tie-dye business (curiously called Tye-Dye Everything) and has had for ten years. I talked to one of the owners, and we're talking hardcore hippie. She and her husband lived in the woods in a recycled school bus. She's been making tie-dyed goods since 1989. The shop is overwhelming. There is nothing there that doesn't come out psychidelically enhanced. I was impressed. It reminded me of my dorm room at Theophilus Tower.