Monday, July 26, 2010

When the Lights Go Out

Ron and I are having a mini-vacation in the luxurious Hampton Inn in downtown Silver Spring. The finely appointed room and the delicious breakfast are making this a memorable couple of days, indeed. We hope the power gets restored in Wheaton quickly. An enforced vacation isn't quite the same thing as a planned vacation.

The power went out yesterday afternoon during a very violent thunderstorm. Outages range from Gaithersburg east to College Park. The power may not be restored for a couple more days. We're crossing our fingers.

I do enjoy having electricity in our hotel room. I'm so used to power being on. It's difficult to use a wireless computer when the network is down. I am going to the house tomorrow to clean out the refrigerator, and to hope that the power will come back on. I'm ready to end this mini-vacation (but only when the electricity returns to 2101).

Monday, July 19, 2010

A New Dawn

I don't mean to be ironic; it just comes out that way. I slept in my own bed for the first time in a week, and indeed, it is a new dawn, a gentler dawn, a more rested dawn.

Ron and I spent the last week at the IMEN Gathering at Camp Ramblewood near Havre de Grace, Maryland. It's a gay naturist gathering, full of a lot of flair and verve, although not always at the same time. I added my own atmospheric presence at the gathering, too.

And I wasn't even one of the fabulous ones, although if I keep it up, I'll be fabulous before I die. The pic is the part of me that can be displayed in this blog. I wouldn't want to violate my TOS.... I was participating in a Rocky Horror costume contest. I looked very scary, complete with fishnet and leather corset, not to mention the thigh-length vinyl boots with 7" heels. I was in orbit.

I continued to the wear the costume for six hours which included dinner, and a talent show performance. A girl's got to do what a girl's got to do. Beauty doesn't come cheap! Classy means more than being born in a trailer park on Christmas Eve. Sometimes, you have to show your trouper colors and persevere. I think I look pretty good for an old man.

Sunday, July 18, 2010

Naked Anxiety

I cannot use adjectives around naked men.
Hot? Or not-so-hot?
Speechless with small talk.
I don't want to offend hot naked men.

My own insecurity safely in hand
I hope, I think I'm a hot naked man,
maybe I'm a hot naked man,
maybe I was a hot naked man,
maybe I could be a hot naked man.
No, I can't use adjectives around naked men.

The stomachs, the gravitas,
the wrinkled notions of
boy grown much older:
Hot I don't think so,
in this reflection of missed connections
for not being hot and
not seeing hot, too.

I cannot use adjectives around naked men.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Short and Sweet

Happy on Fire
Happy on Fire

Okay, Fans, all four of you. I realize that I've been remiss over the last few weeks. Lots of stuff has happened, and you don't know jack. If I were you, I'd go somewhere else to read the news!

Not that I'm mocking you, or anything like that, like you don't have lives or are a bunch of losers, no, no, Happy would never do that, unless he thought he could get away with it, and make you believe that he actually cared about somebody, other than himself, which is kind of an interesting concept, anyway, because why would anyone except an egocentric person with an outsized concept of self keep a blog anyway?

None of this has anything to do with why I'm writing this entry, or why I entitled it, Short and Sweet. With a title like that, you might think I was going to write about waffles or cookies, both of which can be short and sweet, and in fact, I have some great cookie recipes on my recipe blog. That's probably too literal a reading of the title of this entry. In fact, I was going to make this entry a short summary of my activities in the last two weeks, but that's probably boring. But I'll do it anyway.

High on the list, while I was at the IAGSDC Square Dance Convention, Chi-Town Shakedown last week, Brian sent me one of those email questionnaires that you complete and send out to 147 of your closest friends. Brian in his own responses indicated that I was slow, perhaps a little sarcastic, and (if you really read between the lines) somewhat unhinged. To my credit, I completed Brian's questionnaire, and I'm quite pleased with the results. I'm grateful to Brian for providing the opportunity, even though it was an immense distraction (me thinking about it while on the dance floor trying to do-si-do). It consumed me. I spent hours awake at night thinking about an appropriate response. So I'm glad that that's been dispensed with.

The square dance convention was fabulous. I helped lay the flooring on the Wednesday before the convention, and met Norman during the work. Norman is this nice optometrist from New York City. I could just fall into the pools of his eyes. Dreamy in a mature male, who hasn't gone to seed, bearish sort of way. We hung out together on the Advanced floor for a couple of days. He's trying to nail down his Advanced calls. I was slumming because I just couldn't face the Challenge 1 floor. I danced several tips there on Friday, and decided that my head hurt too much to continue. I was nursing a sinus infection, and just couldn't do Challenge. Norman and I took a very satisfying nap Saturday afternoon, that left me refreshed and ready for more dancing.

It's great fun to have enough confidence in a dance program to go on auto-pilot and just move about the floor. I can do that at Advanced, and it's my own little heaven. Dancing is a lot like organized religion. The caller calls, and the dancers obey. Sound familiar? It's very hierarchical, a real S&M relationship. I had a great time dancing with Norman.

So on Sunday afternoon, the very last session of dancing, I went back to the Challenge 1 floor. I had a fabulous time on it. I was in a square with three (straight) couples from England who were square dancing across the United States. They dance C1 flawlessly, and helped me through it. What a dream square. I moved on to another square, and this guy bops up, takes my hand and we dance together. I get into another square, and there he is again, smiling at me, and hugging me 47 nanoseconds too long at the end of the tip. I ask him, your room or mine. He says yours, and asks me if his partner can come along. Whoa!

So that's how I met Michael and Steve. Michael is a hot little cub, and Steve is a big and very friendly bear. So we snuffled off to room 1530, and I discovered my inner bear. It turns out that Michael had been stalking me since Silicon Galaxy, which was was five conventions ago. He saw me in the Moonshine Tip, and had to have me. Such are the siren ways of square dance conventions.

The other wonderful experience at the convention was the piano bar. Chip Prince played all the show tunes, and several of us belted them out. I haven't done that in twenty years, and I only know three musicals, but it was so much fun, and hilarious, too. Thanks, Chip!

Joe Branch and I went on the Fun Badge Tour together, seeing the nether regions of Chicago, then I trekked with Grace to Calumet Park, and spent the night at her place. She turned me on to Ancestry.com. Very Interesting.

Now I'm back home. I've been out on my bike. I'm getting ready for the IMEN Gathering. This is our week in the sun. I should be packing, but I'm not. Actually, I should be writing out Condo checks, but I'm not. That will get done before we leave, or the world as we know it will be fundamentally changed. I'm really in a mood to do nothing, so I'm writing this interminable blog entry, instead.

Last night, Leo came over after work. Work drag is a big turn on for me. So I drag him inside by his tie. Leo is an overachiever. Really. So he wants me to be the cowboy and ride, ride, ride. I agree that that would be a good idea. I put some lubrication on my fingers, and prepare my delicate regions, only to discover that I haven't completely washed my hands of the chili peppers that I was roasting and skinning for dinner. Oops. Later on, Leo tells me, "Your ass is on fire." Boy, was that an understatement. Toward the end of the performance, he needed me to help him reach satisfaction. I was hesitant to do it, because of the perhaps residual damage I might cause to his member. But he urged me on. He reached Nirvana. I hope it was not a lot hotter than he expected.

Today, a couple of Ron's friends came over, Chris and Peter who were later joined by Jay. We went out to lunch, then came home for a wonderful conversation about life as gay men. I do not believe that straight men sit around the living room (or a campfire) and talk about being straight. Believe me, gay men talk a lot about being gay. I think it goes with the territory. So I told them my Leo story. They laughed their asses off. So did I. In fact today, it's only a warm memory, rather than hot sex. Leo, it really was on fire.