Happy New Year

I confess, I have never been Mr. New Years. It always struck me as a form of forced gaiety: more a commentary on me than on the reality. This year may qualify as the strangest New Year to date. A year that has been everything: the proverbial roller coaster with dizzying highs and chest crushing lows.

The thing is that I would do it all again. Would I try to be more sensitive, have less of a tin ear to my surroundings: absolutely. Do I wish that I was still a straight guy giving bj’s: not on your life. It is not the sex, though it is good. It is the feeling that maybe there is this real me that was buried so long and the warmth of the sunlight on that soul feels liberating.


In a normal year if I add one or two people to a list of those I call friends, it has been a good year. So how do I describe a year where I have not added one or two, but found a whole community? That has been the most fascinating, exhilarating and humbling part of the whole journey – a few “bricks and mortar” friends and many, many “cyber” friends. I put cyber in quotes because the word connotes a distance, a lack of reality that I eschew: many of you have become as real as could be imagined.

It has been an honor to be in this community and I wish all a happy and healthy New Year. (That sounds so banal: Take two) I wish you all a year of continuing your various journeys and finding peace- both inner peace and peace with your loved ones, ones who have suffered with us every step of the way. May peace be with us all.