tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-205899432024-03-13T18:19:22.276-04:00Tales of a Bi "MWM"A Blog by a middle aged gay man, starting a new life while respecting the old. Separating from my wife, remaining a friend to her and always a father to my children. If only it was as easy as it sounds.Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.comBlogger299125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-47331650627530407122012-04-23T19:21:00.001-04:002012-04-23T19:21:36.742-04:00Home Stretch<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: blue;">It was once said that no one ever washed a rental car – a
commentary on ownership which has crossed my mind more than a few times of
late.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a bit over four years ago
that I ventured forth from the basement lair (some might say man cave but that
would not be an accurate depiction) and rented an apartment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some belongings from the old house, a few
trips to Ikea and a one year lease.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even
the year lease seemed long for what was surely a brief experiment, a way
station on that circuitous path back home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Before I knew it the landlord wanted to know my plans; another one year
lease – the rates were good for the two years, but that took me to a faraway
date, very far away.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></span><br />
<span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>
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<span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Well the second year also passed and now with
recession surrounding us all, the two year renewal was financially
attractive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A long commitment but at
some point the cheap gene kicks in and if after two years I am still here,
another two is seeming much shorter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lo
and behold, the next two years passed and with them the dream of going back to
what once was.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the renewal notice
again appeared.</strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: blue;">After four years in my picturesque but rather
inconvenient town, it was time to take a look around – there are other
rentals.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the housing crash and recession
linger so with prices down, mortgage rates at historic lows, by any estimation this
is a good time to buy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And buy I did, a
modest – cozy as the brokers say – place; better configuration for my kids, and
closer to everything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A little painting,
some minor construction and bring on the moving vans.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: blue;">Once there it became apparent to me in different ways –
internally and also interactions with Phil and Carrie – that something had
changed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Life was no longer measured in
one year lease terms, the concept of a way station on my way home no longer
held water.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This car would be washed; it
was mine with a mindset of staying a decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>My relationship with Carrie particularly suffered – not in any way directly
to do with the new home – my fingers have done it again with the word
“home”.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had moved from my apartment,
from the way station on the journey to my new home.<o:p></o:p></span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: blue;">The move was four months ago and it is easy to blame
another brutal tax season for the delay in writing these words, but it was much
more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was the unsettled landscape but
yesterday the tremors and aftershocks faded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I had the kids for a multi-night sleepover, Carrie had a little needed time for her and when I returned with them, Carrie and I sat at the
table and talked – not of big things but of little ones and it was as
friends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How much the tension weighed on
me was not apparent until some of it lifted and maybe now we can both move a
bit forward without false illusions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></strong></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong><span style="color: blue;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>The
return train left the station a long time back but it has taken me a long time to
accept. It's time.</span></strong></span></div>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-14467097481180267912012-03-04T14:59:00.001-05:002012-03-04T15:01:09.766-05:00Who'll Stop The Rain?<div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>SueAnn has proven to be quite the reader – an hour or so of reading and the e-mail: questions and comments which should only become more interesting as things really start to heat up. Yesterday she read <a href="http://bibydays.blogspot.com/2006/04/rage.html">Rage</a> and wondered of her brother, a gentle child I gather, who in his late teens developed his own anger and rage. A vignette appeared – his children inadvertently locked out of the house, a cold night, and a discussion: hypothermia or wake Dad? As I read it another vignette came to mind, one that has heretofore escaped these pages. </b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Must be close to a decade ago now and we decided that the little ones – maybe nine years old – needed to go camping. A new tent, some other equipment and it is time for a test run – one night in a campground not far from home. My boys are with me along with their cousin – three healthy teenagers to join our quest. Now my boys are not much for camping but there is not really much discussion. We – they – are going camping and I suppose one could add and they <u>will</u> like it. </b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Now we are seven, a bit much for even our beautiful new Eureka tent so a second tent is somewhere found – Carrie, the young ones and me in our tent and the boys, lucky them, get their own tent. The weather had a chance of rain, but everyone knows the weather man is always wrong. Anyway, what better way to test the new tent?</b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Night falls, we curl up in our sleeping bags and yes, the rains come. And come. And come. Oh yes, the winds join the party. Our tent is beautiful, rain tarp taut, tent lightly swaying in the wind. Nice and dry. At some point – maybe 11 PM, one son comes over. Their tent is not faring as well, there is some leaking. It is late, we are camping. I assure him it will be fine and anyway there is not much to be done. An hour passes and he is back. Their tent is faring poorly, something about a water condition. </b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>He suggests they could sleep in the car – a nice Suburban with plenty of space. All they need is the car keys. We are there to camp, spread out in our sleeping bags, being real men, not wimps huddled in the car. My tent is fine; how bad can theirs really be. Character building, what a Dad does for his sons. He goes back to the tent, I go back to sleep, the car keys sitting idly in some pocket.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Dawn breaks, the rain has let up and I go to see how my little men, real men have fared. They are wet. The tent is wet. The sleeping bags are wet. I suspect the sleeping bags stayed wet for a period measured not in hours but in weeks. Even I can see the evidence, the evidence of terrible judgment, of child rearing gone horribly awry. </b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>There are many family stories – every family has them – but there is not much humor in this, not even with years to recover. I have apologized, they have accepted, but it happened and it never had to. So I read of this other man and for a moment thought poorly of him but then realized that I actually thought poorly of myself.</b></span></div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNoSpacing"><span style="color: blue; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>The question of course is where does all this come from – the rage, the controlling, the veneer of fear. (Veneer is such a nice word, a thin layer of bad hiding my internal good. I could, should, change the word but it shall stay as a reminder of the depth of my delusions.) To say it comes from the repressed gayness feels way too easy, life is much more complex than that. But then there is the “new” Dad, the calmer model. There are the comments of friends of my new found calmness. I would like to tell them, tell them all, that I was always calm; they just weren’t looking hard enough. But as a good friend says, when three people tell you are drunk it is time to lie down.</b></span></div>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-64805674716738505462012-02-26T20:05:00.000-05:002012-02-26T20:05:52.366-05:00Where Was I?<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>Recently I met a childhood friend of Phil's and we were making conversation, passing the time and the subject turned to writing. SueAnn spent much of her life writing for a living - magazine articles, commentary - focused non-fiction in her field so keeping up my end of the conversation, and undoubtedly ego driven, I volunteered that I had recently done a significant writing project - this Blog. It is not a secret and a number of people know of it and that is typically the end of the story. So I was caught unawares when SuAnn wrote to Phil asking for my email so she could ask how to find the darn thing. Of course the soaring ego was tempered with the fears, the fear of sharing so much of myself and those around me, the fear that it would be banal when read after the fact, the fear the writing would not measure up - all the usual suspects. And thrown into the mix was Phil's fear of what she may learn about him, her very old friend. Not the gayness, he has been out to her for a while, more any embarrassments. Uncharted territory.</b></span></span><br />
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</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>At first it seemed easy - Phil was my excuse, easy to hide. But then an email, an explanation. SueAnn's brother passed away, maybe five years ago, and after his death it was uncovered that he had a gay side. She loved her brother and is still coming to grips, grips with the secret, grips with the gayness, grips with what he must have gone through. Upon reading that, and a few further emails, a plan was hatched. Phil does not join my tale until rather late in the story; by the time SueAnn gets that far, we can see if editing is necessary or if the fears are all in our minds. </b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b>So it was with a sense of excitement and trepidation that I opened this blog, saw the picture and the layout, and in essence said hello to an old friend. I often think about this friend, frequently have thoughts that need to be put to paper - not for anyone reading but so I will have a chance to revisit some day. I know, they sell diaries, but it just is not the same for me for reasons I cannot understand no less explain. And then while there, standing in the foyer, a quick peek inside; I read the last post. It was going to be part 1 of yet another triptych but there it was, a full year later, standing all alone, a story started and never finished. There was work - there is always work - and there were distractions but that was not why the post was all alone. It was that Carrie was peeking and I was afraid to share and afraid to hurt, hurt more than I seem to do regularly. I suspect that after a year it is quiet out there, no one around and that is okay. But I do miss this place and maybe it is time for a few more visits. </b></span></div>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-45003428516564866202011-02-21T20:25:00.000-05:002011-02-21T20:25:00.683-05:00The Final Days<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Lately I have been noticing a book at the end of one of Phil’s book shelves – The Final Days, the story of the end of the Nixon Presidency and I have considered that the participants probably did not realize that they were in the final days until after the fact. So it is with hindsight I can gaze back over the past three months and see what should have been obvious. </span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thanksgiving was in Connecticut this year (yes readers, another road trip), an extended weekend in the family home. But of course the phrasing “family home” should be the first hint of trouble. The home has become crowded with the addition of an adult daughter and her child. What was comfortable for three and on occasional fourth is a petrie dish seething with humanity. There is also internal geography – a house with a basement bed / bath where at some point one could say “good night” and wander (or slink as the case may be) down to a spot which is while in the house is not in your face. Now my personal geography is a single bed in the home office with my head as the crow flies being maybe twelve feet from Carrie’s, our doors maybe a yard apart. It is impossible not to be aware of the total lack of personal space boundaries.</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Yet with all of the new limitations Carrie and I persevere, dinner, a glass of wine, chatting while the kids float about. The limitations on personal space, the additional children, take a toll but also almost create a sense of fellow travelers in a revolution gone wildly awry. A strange existence where the underlying reality gets lost.</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We were preparing for Thanksgiving a few paragraphs ago, a Wednesday night, dinner and a pitcher of Perfect Manhattans – a specialty of the house. Soon dinner is forgotten in an alcohol induced haze and the inevitable happens. First pure sex, the virtual ripping off of clothes, skip the foreplay and become one followed a little later by making love, hugging, feeling, being. It was and it was good. Of course there is always a morning after, one marked more by guilt and recrimination on her part than mine – I do have an awesome tin ear – and further complicated by a child in the next room who admitted to hearing us talking but in reality did connect the dots.</span></strong><br />
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<span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We now move to the land of Rashoman (a movie I actually missed) where the same moment becomes very different in the minds of different participants. I went home and thought of somehow having it all back – not being straight per se but if not a man in my body, a toy wielded by the right person, by her. Somehow a return to a life that has continued in many ways – weekends, dinners, telephone calls, but is also long gone. </span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I speak to Phil, tell him what occurred, and share my emotions, my misguided dream. Not tomorrow - five years do not disappear into the ether in a blink of the eye. No, she would need time to think about it, time to consider. I have it – I will not have sex with Phil while she has time to think secure in the knowledge that I am only living with him during the week, maybe still sharing a bed, but I’ll skip the bj’s: what more could one ask.</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #0c343d; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The whole story is too long for one post so I suppose this is as good a time as any to leave off with one thought – can you spell delusional.</span></strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-39262519012909198742010-10-27T18:46:00.000-04:002010-10-27T18:46:24.496-04:00Survivor's Guilt?<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every year Jews across the world have Passover Seders commemorating the Exodus from Egypt many generations ago and at those Seders there is a moment when we remember the ten plagues that God wrought on our enemies and as we recite each of the plagues we dip our pinky in the wine glass and allow a wine droplet to fall on the plate – a reminder that in our time of happiness we remember other’s losses. </span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Over the last three or four year’s thoughts of relative happiness have been a constant in my brain. How can my happiness – if that is really even the right word – not be tempered by Carrie’s travails? So she remains a constant – a constant with daily phone calls, a constant with almost weekly visits and if not a constant, a comfort when she recently allowed us a full embrace, a throwback to what once was.</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And the refrain from the outside has been that we are each responsible for our own lives, that her success or lack thereof in the social world lies on her own shoulders. I do understand this – I am her friend but not her keeper. I also understand that she has taken a series of “hits” that one would not wish on their enemies, no less a best friend. So I have been oft accused of survivor’s guilt.</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It’s just that it does not feel that way to me. When I call each day to check in – the mundane things that make a life – I do not feel a sense of obligation, getting something out of the way. I rather enjoy the little updates and banter. And when I arrive for a weekend visit and the kids announce they are off to something else, sitting at the kitchen table with Carrie is not a burden, but on the whole relaxing. Lord knows there is not much pretense left (though I still try to make believe that if my cell rings, it is really not Phil).</span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As we sat at the kitchen table recently I asked about the future. In less than four years the youngest will be off to college. There will be no need to call daily, the updates will be slim. There will be no need to drive up on a Friday night – the kids will not be there. Does all that end; is there a weaning process like a four year old giving up the teat? </span></strong><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The thing is that while there may be elements of survivor’s guilt, I enjoy my life, limitations accepted, with Carrie and cannot really imagine the day when the spigot gets turned off. </span></strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-10560855220175473442010-09-23T17:16:00.000-04:002010-09-23T17:16:06.956-04:00Weekend Update<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>While not much of a Saturday Night Live person – past my bedtime – I always liked the Weekend Update, essentially real news yet when an errant picture or caption, or even a stutter in the delivery is thrown in, the absurdity becomes evident. That is the way I feel about this story – absurd bordering on self parody. </strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>I have written of Phil’s friend Stan, his last boyfriend and current beach buddy. I have written how the three of us would find the beach or maybe I would just join them for dinner after my day of work. And I have written of Stan turning against me – not that I blame him - and my wondering what this summer would bring. I wondered on these pages would there be resentment on my part, not so much of their days at the beach – I do work – but of the evenings after, dinners presumably absent me.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Of course having fixated on all of the possibilities, I missed the ones that actually came to pass. You see we are not just talking beaches, Phil and Stan are not making sand castles with hoards of children: they are at the gay beaches, a small universe. If one wants to travel – drive a bit, take a ferry, walk a bit, there is Fire Island, more of a weekend than day visit. If one wants to go to the local beach there is Jones and there is Robert Moses. They are quite convenient to each other – one drives to Jones and if the parking lot near the gay section is full, another twenty minutes on a beautiful road and Robert Moses awaits.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>The summer comes and things roll along – Phil is busy running to the country, a wedding to make, I have my weekends with the children and we have a surprising number of weekends together. It is quite nice; we work on his house, paint cabinets, blissfully mundane. Phil has some beach days – weekday affairs. I have my work. We meet up on those days, a surreptitious mid-evening rendezvous swooping him from a railroad station, a train not taken. I won’t deny the strangeness but like everything else in life, after a while it starts to feel normal.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>The summer is drawing to a close and a weekend day, clear sky, humidity dripping, Phil and I together. Let’s go to the beach! Jones or Robert Moses? What’s that – Jersey shore he suggests, something new. And it all comes together. We cannot go to Jones or Robert Moses. Stan is going to the beach and he may be at Jones or maybe the parking lot will be full and off to Robert Moses. We end up on the beach with the kids. Now as a practical matter, I am actually not upset, these are the beaches I grew up on, where I take my kids, not too crowded, my comfort zone. But that does not change the “why”, the fact that my choices are limited, impacted by choices of another who has no place in my life.</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Now I am sure there are comments to be made, conclusions to be reached but ultimately the joy of weekend update is giving the story. The audience gets to make of it what they may. While today looks like summer, it is truly autumn and there is much time before the next visit to the beach.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-35200225226064674342010-09-19T20:31:00.002-04:002010-09-19T20:35:38.408-04:00Trenches<strong>There have been many posts lately, just in my head and not on paper, and they are beginning to pile up like one of those chain reaction collisions in the fog. And when there is so much to say the tendency is to say nothing. The summer has drawn to a close – to me yesterday was the official ending – a summer that would normally be considered quite nice – beach and country, family and Phil (though not together). But there were the sub-themes. Of course the overriding one being my daughter Anna celebrating the first anniversary of the pedophile’s (her soon to be ex-husband’s) arrest. The carnage is unimaginable and are a few of the posts littering my brain.<br /><br />The summer was also marked by yet another choice, another stab at competing values. Saturday was a strange confluence – Phi’s only daughter being married and Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. The wedding alone would have provided enough of a theme for the summer. Having watched my coming out damage my weddings I realized that the whole topic of Phil’s coming out would need a vacation. A subject dear to my existence – while ultimately his decision and problem I am more than a passing player in this drama – taken off the table until the lucky couple are wed. <br /><br />When I realized the conflict – the celebration and the holy day – I made an immediate knee jerk decision. If Phil was out to his family I would come – how could I as a member of sorts skip it – and if not, well then should my religion not win out? Of course it is not really about religion, I am not overly wound on such things. No, it is about family, about having celebrated this day with my family – Carrie and kids – for two decades now, and specifically about having had the traditional end of holiday break fast with them each year. <br /><br />After months of thought, annoying good friends, the angst which once was and still can be my comfort zone, I consult Carrie. She sees it pretty clearly – Phil is my boyfriend, a wedding is hopefully once in a lifetime – I should go. Once again instead of making a decision, I have asked her to make one for me, and once again she has acquiesced. I will have dinner the night the holiday starts with my family, Temple in the morning and then – can you spell awkward – off to the late afternoon wedding. <br /><br />All in all it is going well, but I did mention the soon to be ex-husband – the pedophile. The divorce is dragging, his parents claiming compassion but squeezing out every clause, every last nickel. A quick early afternoon phone call to go over the “last points” and it all boils over – screaming matches on the phone, particularly Carrie after a year of holding her tongue letting loose. It actually was a good thing, a necessary thing, but now the phone call is over and rather then sitting around for a few hours for the usual combination post-mortem / strategy session, I am off to a wedding. I was steeled for awkward, but this was a different level, a moment where I really did have to go – weddings come with a start time, and really had to stay – the level of distress was great.<br /><br />I realize I started typing with thoughts of the wedding, but they may have to wait another day. The thing is that Bill, the soon to be ex, is in jail – coming out soon, but in jail. His career lies in tatters and his earning power damaged at best, ruined at worst. Anna is now a single mom – working but with limits based on many factors. Child care is not cheap and Huggies have pretty packages with bar codes that ring up real dollars. So when every nickel is being wrung out, it does matter. And it not only matters to Anna, but to Carrie who is on the front lines every day, World War I style front lines – trenches with hand to hand combat, or so it feels. And it impacts on me, the wage earner in all of this. Clearly the child will have those Huggies, a roof over her head, food to eat. But it all takes a toll.<br /><br />I check in with Carrie as I drive home from the weekend, the wedding in the rear view, literally and figuratively. She cannot talk to me, the trenches are claustrophobic and the other side is lobbing the canisters of mustard gas. She knows I will foot the bills – as best as I can which is far from perfect at this point – but the trenches she bears alone. And I want to help, want to man the barricades, but at this point I don’t even know where to start.</strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-55430414723937398112010-06-16T15:56:00.002-04:002010-06-16T15:59:19.322-04:00Sad News<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">Many years ago, when I was an active blogger not only did I write, but I occasionally read and found myself in a community of fellow bi/gay married types all on different portions of their journeys and not all having the same destination. As quickly as it all appeared it faded, as seems strangely appropriate for a special moment in time.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">There was one person who stood out for me – Spider. He was years ahead of me in the journey and took the time to reach out to me, not to stroke me but to call me out, provide a reality check in what was, and still seems to be, a time of unreality in my life. When I wrote about living in the basement and staying out late – very late (okay, once returning the next morning) he emailed me, not a public flogging but a private moment. He thought 1 AM was fine, enough time for a drink and a grope, but later than that was an insult to the woman who now occupied the master bedroom. Of course he was right.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">And then there were the posts that he did, described in a </span></strong><a href="http://bibydays.blogspot.com/2006/10/spider-indeed.html"><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">post of mine </span></strong></a><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">from four years ago. To me it was monumental; to him not a big deal. He met some homeless guys in his hometown and took them to his home – a sandwich, a shower, and a washing machine. They did not move in but left there refreshed. Many of us were moved and told him so.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">Then a period of silence on his blog followed by the news – he had gone to the Doctor with one complaint and discovered that he had others, a sick man at a young age. Occasionally there would be some update but ultimately quiet. I had tried emailing him a few times at the beginning – some moral support but never really had the opportunity to thank him for his efforts; I can be a bit high maintenance yet he was patient in his support and more importantly in his critiques.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">Last night I received an email with a </span></strong><a href="http://sortedlives.wordpress.com/2010/06/13/its-been-a-while/"><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">link to another blog</span></strong></a><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">:</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#663333;">I was sorry to hear of the passing of Brett. Brett was a local blogger (and dear friend) who wrote “Spider’s Web in Thornton Park.” His health had been failing and apparently he fell, hit his head, and a blood clot formed in his brain. I was told the surgery for removing the blood clot was successful, but he never regained consciousness after the surgery.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">A sad day indeed.</span></strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-78030214271050986312010-06-14T22:07:00.002-04:002010-06-15T17:49:22.571-04:00Out of Words<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;"><strong>The writing comes less frequently – easy to blame it on a “lack” – lack of time, lack of angst, lack of words. Time – well that part is true but angst and words: I suspect there is still some left. Maybe there is a feeling that there have been too many words or at least too many of the same ones. I would have thought there would be no new horizons – good and bad – to explore but it seems “plus ca change…” While it could be said the journey started decades ago, and in many ways it did, I am approaching the five year anniversary of the relevant portion so maybe a glance back and look at things today is appropriate.<br /><br />Glancing back somehow goes to the title of this blog, something which always troubled me – a fleeting idea which somehow stays forever, not unlike our given names. Strangely though it has remained true, I may describe myself in polite conversation as “gay” but have spent enough time in this world to understand that underneath it all there will always be the “bi”. This is not a case of hedging my bets – I am in this new world - all in it appears, but I did enjoy the straight years, the sex with women, the sex with my wife. Which of course brings us to the next part of the name, that first “M” - as in married. Yes, I still am. In part a matter of convenience, a health insurance marriage but in part as a link, a link for both of us. We had the strange event of a twentieth anniversary recently; is it an event or more a nonsequitor? We chose event and had a leisurely two and a half hour dinner. Old friends, a life together but no longer the thought (in my mind) of maybe I’ll get lucky. (The rest of the blog name merits no comment: I am still white and still regret including that initial and am still male, though Carrie would not miss the opportunity to comment on that.)<br /><br />There is more to be said of the family world but let’s bring in another element. I still have a boyfriend though after three years one might question why Phil has not been elevated: boyfriend seems so temporary, a date that may not make it through the week. This is a tricky subject with many elements, practical and emotional, but one stands out above the rest: Phil is not out to his adult children, nor does it appear to even be in the cards. I have struggled with this – what are my fair expectations, should it (or does it) impact me, does it make a difference? I know the children, they seem to like me, we have broken bread and the daughter warrants a little hug and quick peck on the cheek. My existence and family friendship is not in question.<br /><br />But as much as I would like to ignore this – such a little thing in another wise good relationship, I no longer can. Strange how something with so little day to day relevance seems to carry so much impact. Of course it is the little things, hearing Phil talk of a trip to Chicago, our trip to Chicago, and not knowing if I was there. If I had pressed the point, an excuse for my being there would have been found, no outing that way, but the fact that one has to consider such geography is strange. The daughter has a wedding date set and I wish her the happiest of weddings – not the time for a family drama, but after that… And of course there is that nice invitation on the parlor table (okay, I don’t have a parlor but it sounds so inviting) with a cute little RSVP card. The day comes with a built in conflict, just the excuse I need. But the card still sits, awaiting my pen.<br /><br />But let’s get back to the family. I have written of The Trauma, the one next to which being gay and breaking a family asunder pales by, if such a thing is possible: the soon to be ex son-in-law, still in jail, a pedophile, a blot on our landscape. Prior to the wheels coming off last July, things were settling in, Carrie and two children rebuilding, a quiet sort of life but quiet can sometimes be good. Then the arrest, an adult child moving home, a new baby crying for whatever it is they cry for – a bottle, a hug or maybe a diaper. And in a moment the peace shattered.<br /><br />So you see there are words, many of them, too many for one entry but there you have it, paradise lost.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-52479108329409966202010-05-06T18:20:00.003-04:002010-05-07T16:04:50.742-04:00Chicago 2010<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;"><strong>I must confess to writing in a half hearted fashion; without the angst and pain, the writing feels rather pedestrian, particularly writing about being gay. This is not to say that I am unaware of the ongoing issues and still do consider what I may say to someone: Is Phil a friend or my boyfriend – not much different on the surface but so different to the listener.<br /><br />This past weekend was the annual foray to Chicago, six consecutive years and all of them markers, as it turns out, on my journey from a straight married man to my current gay existence. I will not recount the journey here – feel free to read the prior May postings; suffice to say the changes have been dramatic. Last year was to have been the final Chicago post – attending dinner with Phil as my guest. But looking back I did introduce him as a friend, probably sufficient to most I met, but a tad evasive for my true friends.<br /><br />This year Phil was to join us again at dinner but due to his work he had to take a later flight – he would be there for the after dinner drinks at best. Towards the end of the dinner, as the table shifted I found myself sitting with two women, two of the three that I sat drinking with years ago, discussing their divorces and my uttering, not that I remember it, that I was lost. They were both there with their new lovers – the live in variety and were glowing with their good fortune. They talked and smiled and then looked at me: “how are you doing”? They know I am separated, we have known each other for a decade and beyond.<br /><br />The next moment came much more easily then I might have guessed. I announced that I had come to realize that I was gay, had a boyfriend and was happy. “Was he here with you last year?” They do have good memories. “Where is he this year?” They do ask good questions. I explain he will be here in an hour or two.<br /><br />After dinner our group coordinator has made plans for those who are young at heart: first stop a rooftop bar, tres chic, tres young. We drink a little, the women in our midst dance (my could one of them move) and then discuss the next stop. Where is Phil they ask – slightly delayed but on his way. Next stop it seems is a drag club. One friend asks if that is okay and I laugh – what could be more okay.<br /><br />We make our way to the club, seven strong with Phil on the way, and it is quite the show. These were not the drag queens of Harvey Fierstein stature; these are beautiful “women”. The men in our group cannot really wrap their arms around the knowledge these were men yet such clear evidence to the contrary. The women in our group, well they are jealous of the bod’s. And so there is movement as members of our group wind our way on occasion to the front, a few dollar bills for this one, a few more for that one. Lots of whooping and laughing, teasing of the friendliest nature, not of us but of themselves.<br /><br />Really how much better could it be? I imagined what if I had not come out just a few hours earlier. I would be sitting there with Phil, careful not to brush against him, feeling discomfort as to who I was, which role to play in that room. And instead such a pleasant evening, simply just being who I am.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-85416390257198131032010-01-30T13:57:00.002-05:002010-01-30T14:05:54.268-05:00Context<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;">I have been thinking of context a lot lately. The same words, same clothing, same look can appear totally different based on the surroundings. If I were to be having a glass of wine with a friend and in a discussion of my job say, referring to my boss, “I want to kill him”, my friend might chuckle and clink my glass. Someone at the next table might whisper to their dinner mate “Must have had a bad day”. If a sullen teenager were to make the same utterance, hopefully minus the wine and likely in some electronic fashion, at best they may find themselves in the guidance office and at worst may have precipitated a lock down. And the thing is that in both cases – the chuckle in the restaurant and the terror in the school – the responses are totally appropriate.<br /><br />This came to mind in a different realm the other day. I had dinner with Tammy, my thirty something lesbian friend, and we were discussing Phil. Now if this was a real diary I would describe him – slight of frame, “gay” beard…, but this is a public posting so suffice to say a good argument could be made that Phil looks gay. Tammy would change the phrasing from “a good argument” to “are you kidding?” Yet Phil remains to a great degree in that well appointed closet.<br /><br />The night before my dinner with Tammy, Phil and I went to our favorite informal restaurant – a nice dive in the very gay district. While in the middle of boys’ town, the clientele is pretty mixed – some nights almost fifty percent straight. We are taken to a booth in the back and Phil looks around and does a double take: there is a couple, the wife a friend of forty plus years, a couple I met last month at their holiday party. A table is quickly pulled over and they finish desert while we nurse our beers. Now these are highly intelligent, sophisticated human beings but I suspect later that evening they just commented that Phil’s friend seems nice or boring or whatever they thought; I sort of doubt they had a discussion of Phil’s orientation.<br /><br />One of Phil’s longest friends dates back to college – four plus decades – and is quite gay. A year or so ago after I had met him once or twice, Phil decided to come out to him. As we sat in his apartment – Phil and his new friend, his accountant, me! - Phil points out we met on Craigslist, a sure giveaway one would think yet a few days later he discovers the friend assumed I was found in the classifieds under tax services. I suspect the same phenomenon also occurs the other way; there are people I work with who surely know I am gay, who I suspect are not particularly gay friendly, yet they are my work friends. <br /><br />It is hard to separate context from content and maybe that is a good thing because it recognizes that who we really are exists in our own unique spaces: I am a man who happens to be gay (along with a few other attributes) as opposed to being defined primarily as a gay man. </span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;"></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;">As for the poor teenager, maybe someday we will live in a world where assuming the worst is not required protection.</span></strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-21620124125734442922010-01-08T12:12:00.003-05:002010-01-08T13:16:37.863-05:00Night Moves<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">Relationships are complicated – whether on the basic level of two friends or colleagues and more so when you toss in love and sex. And so it is with Phil despite our mutual mellowness and deep understanding of human imperfections. We are older, not looking to get married or have children and are quite laissez faire when it comes to comings and goings. This fits well into our parallel pathologies.</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">I still have the weekend wife who I speak with every day, extensively, and he still has the other boyfriend- Carrie and Stan, our bookends. Now Carrie was at an advantage knowing all there is to know and in theory a few weeks ago the imbalance was corrected for Stan as Phil explained to him the facts of life. When it comes to Carrie, there are no mysteries to me but all I know of Stan is through Phil’s eyes, a prism that at times is hard to gauge. </span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">New Year’s Eve has never been my favorite holiday – a strange combination of forced gaiety combined with social pressure. In our society sitting alone on New Years is probably considered worse than a solitary turkey sandwich on Thanksgiving. As Phil put it succinctly, it is fraught with emotional danger. It was not that long ago that as midnight struck, Carrie had a meltdown when faced with kissing what she knew to be her future ex and more recently a little after midnight we held each other – not sexually – taking a moment of comfort in each other’s arms. </span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;"><br />For the New Year’s we have known each other, Phil has conveniently been away – convenient for both of us – but not this year. Finally some weeks back we acknowledge that we should spend it together, albeit not really knowing what to do. I struggle with what to say to Carrie, my traditional New Year’s being with her and our children. She solves the problem asking "What are you and Phil doing for New Year’s". Problem solved.</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">Not so quick: As fraught as things are for me, things are equally fraught for Phil. He did explain the facts of life – his relationship with me – to Stan but I am not sure what was heard. As December quickly is winding down, Phil, a widower, announces he really wants to spend the evening with a group of old friends, friends from his married straight life, friends who know nothing of his present circumstances. He does not want to bring me, a combination of not wanting me to spend yet another evening in the closet I have left behind and also a fear: what happens as the bell tolls. Do we kiss, European cheek thing, or maybe just a handshake and pat on the shoulder. You get the picture.</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">I am not overly upset – spending the evening with my children is not exactly a punishment and is very much in my comfort zone. It is Anna’s first New Year’s as a mother and being alone under her circumstances is not easy, a fact that becomes clear as the evening and weekend unfolds. It is a good New Year’s as New Year’s goes, albeit not what was originally anticipated. It even was okay when a little after midnight we all hear my cell phone in the distance (no, I do not carry it on my hip like a modern day 38) and Carrie points out I should answer it, say hello to Phil. I would love to claim total comfort at those moments, but I am not there yet, but still I did answer the phone, express my New Year’s wishes to Phil.</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">Of course I think about everything, there are worse diseases, and come to realize that I could have gone to the party with Phil – it is not as if I have not met many of these people before, as the straight friend, and I have grudgingly accepted my place in his closet. The midnight moment, while potentially strange, was manageable, a guy hug if you would. No, the problem was Stan, or more accurately Phil’s loyalty to Stan. The thought of being disloyal to Stan, even though Stan would have been unaware of the circumstances weighed on Phil, weighed on him to the degree that he was willing to pull the plug that evening on both of us.</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">We have talked of this since that night and Phil has a little work to do. He needs to define who he is and where he is going. I am his friend and happy to stand by him as he works through this, but am also plain that like anyone I do have limits. The danger is that I, and of course Phil, do not know where these limits lie and unfortunately once the ramparts are breached they will be hard to repair.</span></strong><br /><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">So we are back at the parallel pathologies. I have a significant amount of my weekend time booked – appropriately with children and maybe inappropriately with Carrie. Phil gets his time with Stan – once again the appropriateness is a subject of some debate, but it all seems to work. The problem is that as my children continue to grow – it is rather inevitable – my weekends become more available, a trend that is already starting to kick in and with that will be the question of what my Saturday nights will look like, or maybe the question is really what Stan’s will be.<br /></span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">Bob Seger had a monster hit back in 1976 and one line from it has resonated as I have mulled the situation:<br /></span><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#990000;">I used her she used me </span></strong><br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#990000;"><strong>But neither one cared </strong></span><br /><strong><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#990000;">We were getting our share<br /> <br /></span><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;">Of course we all know that taking parallel pathologies and claiming everything is healthy because both sides are equally damaged is not a great formula. Relationships are tricky and some work lies ahead.</span> </strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-58854161958377870702009-12-30T14:10:00.002-05:002009-12-30T14:16:24.410-05:00Peace II<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#6633ff;">It seems that I have written of late and have covered the when and where’s of life – an important updating and stage setter I suppose, but I have not crawled underneath things very much. Last night I sat with an old friend – dinner and many drinks (no one drove) – and covered much ground, old stories / new events – the gamut. And as we talked I realized an interesting thing: I feel at peace. That is not to say that there are many issues and my plate is not overflowing. Maybe it is because of those issues – let’s face it, there is little you can throw at me to top the father of my grandchild being a jailed pedophile – but I think it goes beyond that. Maybe it is the self-acceptance and no longer fixating on returning to places I can never go. Maybe it is the bond of friendship that Carrie and I have – surviving family issues that either bring you together or tear you apart. I suppose in some sense all of the above.<br /><br />Phil is dealing with some issues of late – implications of the closet he has so carefully built and finally having told his “other boyfriend” that he really isn’t. What particularly comes to mind is a comment that Stan used to make about his relationship with Phil: he used to say that Phil was his other half. It always struck me as strange, not so much that I had in a way supplanted Stan, but the implications of the comment in general. I think I have spent my life trying to be another half, to girlfriends and wives, subsuming all and defining myself as part of a couple. <br /><br />Now, there is nothing wrong with being a couple and nothing wrong with a level of devotion but the implication of being someone’s half is that inherently you are not whole. And if they disappear you are left incomplete. I go into a new year with things constantly changing – the things that cannot even be predicted, finding the balance of friendship with Carrie while allowing both of us to personally grow, and the unpredictability of the relationship with Phil as he finely struggles with his own self definition. <br /><br />And while I go into another year with changes yet to be revealed, I also go into it with a new found constant: a sense of wholeness which begets a sense of peace.</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#6633ff;"><br /><br />As I was saving this document I discovered that I had already written a post titled “Peace” back in December 2006. Then it was a greeting of Peace to the readers I used to have. Today it is much simpler, a lot less words: my own inner peace.</span></strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-28140604853100498712009-12-14T22:08:00.002-05:002009-12-14T22:12:20.336-05:00Joy & Sorrow<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#663300;">Thanksgiving came a little late this year, the product of scattered adult children. It may have been a Friday but a perfect Turkey, multitudinous sides and a coalition of the willing; what else does one need. It is the coalition which was particularly striking: Carrie and most of our children including Anna and her new addition (in what is now also their home), another daughter's in-laws and in what may be the strangest twist Carrie's ex, the biological to the step-daughters I raised. He comes with the new wife, a kid, a partridge... Alright, no partridge.<br /><br />Carrie's house is getting used to it now that Anna is part of the mix, Anna and child. Her father, the ex, has become a regular and it almost seems normal. Stranger are the visits from the pedophile's parents. It is their grandchild also, distressing as it all may be.<br /><br />Dinner goes well - whatever discomfort some may have brought to the table, forgotten in the passing of dishes. Carrie did the toast - it is her home- and did it well. But I had my own, for me and now for this page.<br /><br />I still remember the lyrics of the first song I memorized - not because I was trying but based on the both incessant listening and the depth of the resonance in a fourteen year old’s brain:<br /><span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;color:#000066;">"It’s no matter if you’re born to play the King or pawn<br />For the line is thinly drawn 'tween joy and sorrow"</span> <span style="font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:78%;">(Paul Simon)<br /></span><br />It feels like we - our family - have spent the past number of years testing that line, frequently surging into it. And every time we border on breaking through and testing sorrow verging on despair, we seem to bounce back. The Jewish liturgy has a refrain that God offers us life or death and daily reminds: "Choose life". It is really all any of us can do. And with all of the problems, all of the issues and setbacks, we still manage to embrace life, particularly our newest testament to the magic of creation.</span></strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-11409744012920032672009-12-13T14:33:00.003-05:002009-12-13T14:41:37.394-05:00A Mid-Summers Nightmare<strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">It was a long time ago, three years back, that I posted “</span></strong><a href="http://bibydays.blogspot.com/2006/10/homeland-insecurity.html"><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">Homeland Insecurity</span></strong></a><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;">”, probably the most difficult post I had to write. The link is here but the story is simple enough. A daughter, an imminent marriage, a visit from the Fed’s… A soon to be son-in-law was being investigated for trading underage pictures. For reasons we can only guess, the problem went away – lack of the damning computer, issues of evidence: we don’t really know nor do we really want to. What we do know is that as time elapsed his family was quick to believe him, believe they weren’t really underage, a Playboy moment in the internet age.<br /><br />Bill and Anna saw a therapist, talked, and to our horror decided to reschedule the wedding. Our family, immediate and extended, would have done anything to stop it but ultimately it was the choice of our daughter and concerned as we were, she is still our daughter. I can feel the cringing starting but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.<br /><br />The wedding is rescheduled and we are troubled, deeply troubled. Time for a talk, not with Anna – she knows our views, time for a chat with Bill, a kitchen table talk. We sit across from each other and I express my concerns, my deep concerns. I don’t really accept that he was investigated for having pictures of buxom sixteen year olds. I tell him that the marriage is a big responsibility. He listens, sympathetically nodding; he assures me, he would never hurt my daughter.<br /><br />I remain concerned, look him in the eyes and tell him “You can’t choose your orgasms.” I stress that what excited him once, will yet again. He listens, not so happy now. That night my daughter tells me that he was okay with our talk, okay except for that one comment, that one uncalled for comment. I back off – my point was made, no need for a war.<br /><br /><br />This summer was off to a quiet start and one week night while laying in bed with Phil the phone rings – yes, a late night call. It is close to midnight and it is Anna. She is in her newly purchased house after a day of work and evening of school, resting her pregnant body. Yes, she is with child, six months worth. And Bill is missing. Family is gathering, police are called: maybe a wreck on a highway. Bill is responsible, not one to disappear, not one to ignore his phone. Finally at 2 AM the police are there to take the missing persons report when they get some news – he has been arrested one county over. No word on why, the arraignment will be in the morning. <br /><br />Now we are secretly hoping for something “easy” – drunk driving, disorderly conduct or the like. Hope as we do, I can only think of one thing: you can’t choose your orgasms. The next day we gather at the courthouse and get the word. A police officer saw a car parked in front of a school and went to investigate: Bill, pants down, in the act, a fifteen year old girl with him. A life, in an instant unraveled. No, many lives, so many lives, unraveled in that instant. <br /><br />I would love to say that was the worst: it was not. A month later a second arrest: earlier in the summer there was a thirteen and fourteen year old, a drive back to his house, my daughter’s house, and a sexual act in the bedroom – in my daughter’s bedroom. No low bail this time, the courts seem to finally get it.<br /><br />What is there to say? I am a proud grandpa, the divorce is in the works, the house sold, the bedroom furniture abandoned. Bill is in jail – a plea bargain in the works, presumably real jail time in his future. <br /><br />Over the last few months, in different venues, I have recalled the kitchen table conversation and I have recounted “the” quote and the response. Looking back clearly it did touch some sort of nerve. But what has been most fascinating has been the reaction of others. Five simple words, a mere six syllables and yet such power, such discomfort. Carrie has suggested that I lose the story, clearly more trouble than it is worth. But I am loathe to acquiesce, to distance myself from what I hold to be such a basic truth: “you can’t choose your orgasm.” True for him, true for me, true for us all. For most of us a truth and a non-issue but for the sick few a sad truth that is inescapable.</span></strong>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-89869565665642435472009-12-11T03:10:00.003-05:002009-12-15T15:28:06.149-05:00Gypsy<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;"><strong>It is almost four years since I started this blog and more importantly since I started my journey. While I no longer write often - pressures of time, sometimes too little to say and more often too much, it seems wrong to ignore an anniversary. Not so much wrong for you, anyone left reading, but wrong for me.<br /><br />So where am I with my life? When people question where am I living I typically respond that I am a gypsy. I have my apartment in the 'burbs. It's been two years and I just signed on for two more. By the time the four years draws to a close maybe I will have spent a years worth of nights there.<br /><br />And then there is Phil’s apartment in the City: another third of my life. (Let's be honest - an evening in a very quiet suburb or the center of one of the world’s great Cities. Throw in a boyfriend and the choice is pretty easy.)<br /><br />And then, yes then, there are the weekends. The country "home", seeing the kids, time with family and of course Carrie. Now I would love to say she is the add-on, there because of the kids, not central to my experience. But that would be disingenuous bordering on pathological.<br /><br />I do spend time with my children but at age thirteen, they come and go and as any parent should be, I am there but am also aware of the futility of forced face time. So Carrie and I share the house - her house - on the weekends. As I recently told a friend we share everything but bodily fluids.<br /><br />As I started writing this in my head I realized that the gypsy description was broader than I first envisioned. I fear that I am an emotional gypsy, dancing in many camps yet not "all in" in any of them. Carrie would scoff at this saying I have it all. And she is correct, in most ways I do - Carrie who still allows me in her life, Phil who is learning to say the"L" word even without a few too many drinks and the many friends and colleagues who continue to accept me gay or straight.<br /><br />So why the trouble with "all in"? I am the king of jumping feet first and assessing the long term consequences later. But I also have been a serial lover – always in love, always with one person, just not always the same person - but always one at a time. For one with my track record it may seem a bit self-serving, but there is an honesty to it all, one that allows me to look in the mirror with some sense of comfort.<br /><br />As this post is written over the course of days, I share some of it with Phil who points out that I am “all in”, just with Carrie. I ask how that can be when she and I rarely touch. But he has a point; Carrie and I speak daily, the kids as the base but so much more in our lives (another post when I have real fortitude). I readily admit to loving her while accepting the inherent impossibility – I am gay and fear there is no changing and truth be told, not sure that I would if I could.<br /><br />Phil is trickier. There are the structural issues. The eleven year age difference does not overly faze me.But he is semi-retired and as he eases into that world, he can float freely, time here but also time there, oh so many there’s, while I remain rooted – job and family. What will happen when he takes the “sabbatical”, a month in Florida, three months in Europe? I suspect there is a defense mechanism at work, hedging my emotional bets. Meanwhile, we also speak daily, share most evenings and even more nights. Sort of like the line from Fiddler – if that’s not love, what is?<br /><br />I sit here – typing and thinking, looking for some magical words to elegantly end this post but uncharacteristically they do not easily flow… Four years is a long time and the words that come to mind are grateful and humbled: grateful for all that I emotionally have, “all in” or not, and humbled that I have it, considering how rough this road has been on so many.</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;"><strong></strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;"><strong>As I do my final edit I realize that I glossed over what might be the essence of where I find myself emotionally – maintaining two "all in’s" simultaneously. It is so much easier to claim gypsy status than to address two “all in’s and the inherent instability that represents.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-33016216851043082632009-09-12T14:22:00.002-04:002009-09-12T14:26:02.611-04:00Stirrings<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"><strong>Recently Phil and I were driving along the west side – an area that now gives new meaning to urban renewal but once was the seamy side of town. While being gay is not seamy per se, let’s face it – gay leather biker bars… not exactly part of mainstream society. As we drove I realized that the tenement buildings that once housed the Ramrod were now high rises – expensive high rises.<br /><br />Many years ago – had to be 1974 – I had a college roommate. When we reached a certain moment in our senior year I walked over to the hair stylist – a trendy East Village place at the time – and cut off my pony tail, put on a suit and joined the working world. Michael was cut from a different cloth – he imagined being a writer but his vision was not so much of a typewriter as it was a bottle of Bushmills and a pack of Camels or maybe Gauloises if he was feeling both flush and French at the time. <br /><br />As you might expect he did not have much money in his pockets and found cheap housing – a third floor walk up above the Ramrod, a view of an elevated highway and abandoned piers. Now he was straight and with a cigarette dangling walked the streets unaware of the surroundings and, I suspect, the surroundings were happy to give him his berth.<br /><br />All of this came back to me as we drove past the spot or more specifically a moment was recalled. One night Michael and I were out and I drove him home – yes, with the real job came a real car. I cannot remember the circumstances of our being together but I can tell you it was a Saturday night in the fall, somewhere around that midnight hour and the Ramrod was happening – Harleys lined up, men without shirts, a world before aids. I rolled to the curb and he hopped out and scampered up the stairs. I watched the scene for a moment and then eased back into traffic, heading home. I cannot tell you where I was living – an age of moving around, cannot remember any faces on the street, but in some sense I can still feel the evening, in a vivid sense emotionally.<br /><br />There are other stories like that from that era. Being in an elevator – the Friday night visit to my Village friend – with a man whose nipples stood out. Even now knee deep in the gay world, I have not seen a pair quite like those. A fleeting moment yet a clear memory. There are others… <br /><br />I share this with Phil, struggling to explain it. I did not think of it as being gay – did not think of me as being gay – yet the moments were undeniable. Phil says “stirrings” and the word catches me. Indeed there were stirrings, stirrings as one barely approaching puberty, stirrings as a college student, and stirrings beyond. <br /><br />There came a point when I suppose I graduated. I had different words then. If I lay in bed and imagined a man it wasn’t that I was a homosexual or bisexual: I was just sexual. It was easy to do, especially when having a more than satisfactory heterosexual relationship. Though I suppose if I was to write of those times I would need to change the title of the story. I guess if you have enough stirrings it is inevitable that one day you will wake up to longings. <br /><br />Last night I had a quiet evening and at one point was online watching a gay video chat room. Usually the fare is someone showing their thing, lazily jerking off until the moment when it is no longer lazy. Last night had an addition – a popular one at that: a man most noticeable by his bulging midriff lying back while a boy gave him quite the blow job. The boy looked about eighteen or nineteen – too young for my tastes and bordering on questionable judgment on the part of all. Yet I did watch for a while and as I thought about it afterwards I came to understand the attraction. I did not want to be receiving a blow job from him – I am quite happy with the experience of age. I wanted to be him, to be eighteen, to be giving a blow job, to be accepting this part of who I am. To have had more than just stirrings. </strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-62381506170811015062009-08-05T16:17:00.002-04:002009-08-05T16:28:19.870-04:00Just A Story<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#333300;"><strong>As I head off on vacation, I read an e-mail from my new friend Tammy – she likes my stories, so here's one to hold her. A brief background - Phil has a gay first cousin who lives in Chelsea with his partner. Of course Phil is not out to them. A year and a half ago he is invited to a football playoff party and I tag along - there I am, a gay man at a gay party acting straight. Really. We had dinner with them last summer and they asked about summer vacations - Phil and I were going to the Pines in a few weeks but Phil, not being stupid, quickly jumps in that he is going to see a friend in PA. Afterwards I swore I would not see them again, not until he was out - I have my pride and I have my limits.</strong></span><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#333300;"><strong><br />Fast forward to Sunday night, A Viagra at the apartment, a burger at the Viceroy and then a night cap at Rawhide. We are in the zone, kissing, touching and at one point just at the front of the bar, drinking. Phil all of a sudden whispers: “Don't look up and follow me to the back.” Head down I quickly shuffle and once there ask why. He nods to the front - his cousin is there, with his partner, sitting in the seats we just vacated. <br /><br />Shocking turn of events. Phil's first reaction was how to get out unseen - he had not planned on this, he was not ready. As we talked he came to realize both the silliness of it and also the difficulty of slipping by someone sitting by the door. He is ready. We walk up and say hello. Maybe a raised eyebrow on their part - maybe. Big hugs hello and then some conversation. Surprised they were not. Not even close. So a good resolution and now I can even see them again.<br /><br />Anyway, my story for the road, a non-story really. There will be more non-stories I suspect, more people who if they raise an eyebrow at all, it will be to acknowledge the moment more than to register surprise. </strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-25264619303118065362009-07-16T19:43:00.002-04:002009-07-16T19:51:57.763-04:00Winning and Losing<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#333300;"><strong>Recently I have been e-mailing with a new friend Tammy, a very pretty lesbian in her early thirties. She lives with a woman but the excitement has long faded and there is a world of women out there, one in particular who makes her heart pound and juices flow. She is not ready to walk away from what she has – the comfort, friendship and emotional bond, but she is also not ready to resign herself to a life of, to use a term, quiet desperation.<br /><br />As I listen to her story I try to think of words of wisdom and I go back in time – December 1981. A client has a holiday party that was ahead of its time – a warehouse space, top shelf all the way, a harbinger of the excesses that the current decade perfected. What made the night special was the opportunity to be with Karen, a cute little legal secretary I was infatuated with. At this point in my very straight life I had a girlfriend I semi-lived with – Stephanie and I were the proverbial square peg in the round hill, only in our twenties and already playing out the string.<br /><br />The party had raffles – everyone got a ticket as they walked in the door. My partner, older and supportive of my intentions, joined me as we sought out Karen and as we sat down for dinner we spread the three tickets – ours and hers – in front of Karen, a peace offering of sorts. Eventually they get to the drawings and my partners number comes up – lunch in a famous New York restaurant. Well a McDonald’s gift certificate is always useful. A few other winners and then Karen’s number: a swatch watch, or the equivalent of the day. A few other winners and then we hear my number: two tickets to 42nd Street, orchestra seats, a Saturday night. Primo tickets to the Broadway show of the season.<br /><br />The evening ends and back home to Steph. Now I should have been quite talkative – a raffle, three tickets, three winners, and one of the best prizes to moi! I don’t say a word. I think she is my girlfriend; we tend to spend our Saturday nights together. And I think I did win these with Karen and to be honest what a great opportunity to extend a new friendship – hell maybe even get into her pants. A balancing act: the existing, albeit not particularly healthy relationship or throwing it all away for the dream. I still remember the back and forth and the way I came to decide. It was clear that the relationship at home had gotten off track and I decided that I would blow the roof off and maybe, just maybe, things would end up back on course. Or possibly we would be blown so far off the tracks that we could no longer ignore the pathology. Either possibility seemed better than where we were, bordering on the quiet desperation. Karen it was.<br /><br />The beginning of the end of the Stephanie era: it would take another year or so, a long playing swan song but eventually the end came and I suspect we were both much better for it, even if I did not know it at the time. Karen – a wonderful night at the theatre, a friendship which years later I single handedly destroyed: a story for another day.<br /><br />It all comes to my mind as I think about Tammy and particularly as I think about my relationship with Phil. The last group of posts written for a person who does not read my blog, a pretty silly way of communicating. It is time to talk more openly, to risk putting things back on the tracks or maybe blow them up. Phil and I talk, more than once, no revelations, no magic bullets, but we talk. And an interesting thing happens: we get along better, the sex is wonderful, and there is a sense of optimism.<br /><br />Sometimes in order to win you have to be willing to lose.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-79062857788575686142009-07-07T10:07:00.001-04:002009-07-07T15:37:56.290-04:00Personal pride<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#990000;"><strong>Everyone loves fireworks and this year the “tweenage” children decide they want the full show – Macy’s fireworks over the Hudson River, one of those things you do with a million of your closest friends. I can’t blame them and actually look forward to the adventure. We park the car in suburbia – this is a train night, stupid I’m not. Before leaving the car I prepare – pull my drivers license and credit card, train tickets and cash: no need to carry everything I own.<br /><br />My key chain seems to always have more on it than one would think necessary so car and house key are on one ring and all sorts of things are on the other. I remove a key from the everything ring and start to slide it on with the car and house key – the “real’ ring. The kids notice – there is not much they do not – and ask what That key is?<br /><br />Now they have heard Phil’s name over the years, usually by accident, always fleeting, almost with shame, a mirror of my own insecurities. However a theme has emerged over the last few months, one sponsored by Carrie, welcomed by me, and tolerated by Phil: it is time for Phil to meet the family. Not in a Meet The In-Laws formal weekend visit: a more unstructured whenever the paths cross moment.<br /><br />“What is the key for?” they ask again in unison. I answer simply: We will be in the vicinity of Phil’s apartment and in case we need a place to go – whatever the reason – it is good to have the key. “What if Phil is there?” I answer “Phil is not there.” “How do you know?” “Because I know where he is. And if he is there, you will meet him”<br /><br />We did not need the key – I never expected we would – but what a liberating moment: his name spoken, not whispered, his existence and my key acknowledged. They may not have met tangibly last night, but in some sense I feel a bridge was crossed, more by me than by them. I suspect they had crossed that bridge a while ago – stupid they’re not.<br /><br />Somehow it all seems to tie in: “Pride” is important, a group believing in itself, but I suppose that pride as reflected in our day to day lives is much more important for without that there never could have been “Pride”. And when one can banish shame, if only for a moment, there is a vacuum that pride will eventually fill.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-38515207285353406022009-07-06T08:24:00.000-04:002009-07-06T08:24:29.107-04:00Pride – Part 3: Why<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;"><strong>Why as in “why am I writing this, what is my point.” The evening festivities are no surprise – a quick bite to eat in the Village, parade vestiges all around, up to Chelsea for a drink in Rawhide, a bar worthy of its name and then way uptown to the Townhouse, as upscale as it sounds. Some drinks surrounded by our community and home to bed though not to sleep.<br /><br />It all does make sense to me, a full day, time for me, time for us. But I do realize, having written this over a few days and having re-read it a number of times that it does not really make sense: I have described a situation of inherent imbalance as if it was as stable as Manhattan’s bedrock base. There is a part of me that can explain why it all works: I have my children and get to spend time with them while Phil is occupied with Stan. I am not ready to jump all in and say let’s play house together. Makes sense…<br /><br />Yet we are playing house, together most weeknights and the ones where we are not we know where the other is, what the other is doing. We talk every day; we are best friends and lovers. So the question is do I have the best of all worlds or am I just willing to ignore the downsides? And whose downsides are they? While I do not agree with Phil’s management of the situation – his children or Stan, that seemingly endless ability to compartmentalize, is it really my concern?<br /><br />There are two answers here. Clearly on one level it is not my concern so long as it has no direct impact upon me. But I fear the other answer is that it is my concern. The fact that Word tells me I am approaching fifteen hundred words on the “Pride” posts, the fact that I felt the need to circumnavigate my boyfriend, fearing an uncomfortable moment, these are tangible events, measurable and real. I suppose that is the nature of relationships, the baggage becomes shared.<br /><br />It is all comfortable for now and I am a patient man. Things will not change today or tomorrow but life like water does find its own level. The excitement of this journey and the Blog which tracks it, has been that unlike a novel, no one, least of all me, knows the ending, probably because short of death there is no ending, just the ride with its pleasures and its pains. </strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-71302738952602943172009-07-05T08:52:00.001-04:002009-07-05T09:30:27.498-04:00Pride – Part 2: Hitting the Streets<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000099;"><strong>Sunday arrives and after a weekend with my kids I head south to New York City. The parade covers miles but I head down to the Village, where forty years ago at the Stonewall one might say the parade began and is now where it ends. The streets are crowded and as a middle aged white male I blend into the background and watch the show. Parades, even “my” parade, don’t do much for me so after a few minutes I head down to the Dugout, a bear bar, to get a beer. It is packed, the type of environment where Phil is instantly best friends with the person pressed next to him but where I quietly sip my drink. After a while I head out to the street, some people hanging around, and most importantly air to breathe.<br /><br />As I am standing there a fellow starts to talk with me – a few years older and one who has been there for the past forty years. Mark brings a different perspective, we are both wandering alone, so we decide to wander together, and wander we do for the next three hours. There is talking and a certain element of sexuality. We talk of life, relationships and hooking up. At some point I check my cell phone and there is a missed call from Phil. It seems that Stan and his friend have wandered off and Phil is available. We arrange to meet – me, my new friend Mark and of course Phil; we pick a spot but with the parade, closed streets, crowd control, this is more an odyssey than a stroll.<br /><br />We arrive and it is strangely uncomfortable – Phil and Mark are not cut out for each other and Phil decides to head back to the Dugout where his friends have gone while Mark and I wander the other direction, potentially back to the apartment…. As we wander Mark’s desires cool with the air and the moment, if there was one, is gone. Mark thinks his old boyfriend may be at the Dugout and wants to walk back there. Now it is getting interesting – the Dugout is where Phil went to reconnect with Stan and his friend. It is not a big place – running into them is almost assured. I call Phil – he knows the dilemma quite well – and he tells me to do what I like, not exactly a ringing endorsement for running into them. I am happy to skip it all but Mark is hell bent on going and at that point we were still wandering together.<br /><br />We approach the bar and I immediately spot Phil and the crew – standing on the street talking among themselves. And I realize that I am not ready for this, I cannot go and make believe that I have not seen Phil in weeks or months. Presumably Stan has a good idea that I am still in the picture but while I may write like a drama queen, I try not to live like one. Circumnavigating them is not difficult and Mark and I check out the scene. Now Mark is nice but three hours was just fine so I excuse myself to head into the bar for a beer before hitting the streets again. As I approach, there is Phil and Stan, presumably saying good bye, arms wrapped around each other, a very private moment in a very public place.<br /><br />Now this is no surprise – they spend a night or so together each week, close friends for upwards of seven years. I quickly slide into the bar and over a Bud light consider it. Of course they were saying good bye and after downing my beer, out comes the cell. Phil, on his own now, is not far away – we speak for a moment and five minutes later it is time for the evening festivities to begin…</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-40162483811953112912009-07-03T17:10:00.002-04:002009-07-04T08:44:26.258-04:00Pride - Part 1: Setting the Stage<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#3333ff;"><strong>I am not sure if this is a diary entry more than a blog post, but not having a little book with a clasp this seems to be the only repository for my thoughts, even when it is more for me than for you. Last weekend was “Pride” – an event which, like some artists, has been reduced to a word. I am not inherently big on Pride or similar events: I am not a parade goer, not one for public displays with strangers. It sort of reminds me of the two vegans in my office – one high on the pecking order and the other working the mailroom. The mailroom fellow thinks of the two of them as kindred spirits and the other fellow thinks they are incredibly different unrelated people who happen to share one thing. But yet again I digress.<br /><br />Last year I went to Pride with Phil and Stan – a party high above the fray at one of their acquaintances and then wandering the streets and a beer at the Dugout. Now that we are in the era of Phil having bifurcated his life, I assumed that Pride would be a Stan day and the thought of wandering myself was not sending me.<br /><br />A few days before that weekend I am at a cocktail party – a networking event for us white collar types and in spite of my gayness (or maybe becasue of it) I find myself chatting up a cute tall blond maybe twenty years my junior. I confess, there is still a bi next to the gay and while I am not hitting on her, the company is nice. As we talk some more a few comments – references to Chelsea and the Pines – so being me I point out that I have been to those places. In an instant high fives and my new lesbian friend confesses she thought I was gay but was confused by the talk of my children. Tammy and I are friends. She does not so much ask if I am going to Pride as assume I am. And at that moment I realized that I needed to go – it is the life I have chosen, or maybe the life that chose me.<br /><br />That night Phil tells me that Stan has a friend coming up for the weekend so I think, great, Phil is no longer tethered. It turns out I was half right: Phil would be around that evening but for the day it was a threesome again, just I was not one of the three. At first there was some disappointment, but then I realized this was a good thing: so much of my gay life has been not only with Phil, but through Phil; his friends have become mine, but of course they are still his. A day on my own would be a healthy enough event, maybe a dose of some reality for better or worse.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-41753617021368998632009-06-14T13:58:00.002-04:002009-06-15T03:20:56.837-04:00Unreality<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000066;"><strong>It seems that over time I have written much of reality – I am sure there is at least one post with that as its title. Yet it seems that much more of my current life is devoted to unreality, or so I tell Phil and so Carrie tells me. Of course in Phil I see it but I am sure that Carrie is confused which can only mean that as usual she is on to something.<br /><br />Phil’s unreality has to do with that capacious closet – after seven plus years as a gay man, it still remains a mystery to those closest to him. He likes to remind me that his sex life is his own business – would a straight couple tell their children their favorite positions: “Morning Johnny – your Mom gave me an awesome BJ last night.” Yet as Phil will be off at a local gay pride event today I cannot help but wonder how many of those men and women define their gayness solely as a matter of sexuality. Do old fags who don’t do it anymore turn straight? While my activities at times may tend to belie it, I would like to think that I am more than the Craigslist “Sr8t man giving bj’s.”<br /><br />Of course the scary part is that my unreality may in some ways top Phil’s. I live in many worlds which seems fine to me though maybe not to those floating in my various orbits. A recent day stands out: In the morning I e-mailed my first wife in anticipation of a visit to her and my grown children all of whom have relocated out west. I was staying in her home and she wanted to join me in a visit to some friends from grade school. Why not? Later that day I arranged a Saturday night dinner with a friend from college and his wife with Carrie in her home. (Last night was the dinner – we will get to that in a moment.) After arranging dinners involving my first ex (as she likes to describe herself) and with Carrie, I left the office and went home, pure Ozzie and Harriet in the alternate universe, to Phil, the boyfriend “of sorts”.<br /><br />Last night was the dinner – Carrie and I as hosts. She cooked up a storm, wine for all, conversations flowing from topic to topic. Four hours after they arrived, hugs, kisses and goodbyes. All seemed well to me. Then as we started the clean up Carrie points out how she had once assumed she would be our friends – a couple going home after an evening out, a couple retiring to their bedroom, to their bed, to their life. She points out the evening was wrong – this was my old friend, my “turf”: Phil and I should have been having them to dinner. She is amazed – at me. To her mind our guests, while to polite to say anything, shared her discomfort, her sheer amazement at the bizarreness of it all. While this last piece can be confirmed – my friend while discrete is incapable of not being honest. He would answer fairly.<br /><br />Maybe someday I will ask, a conversation over a glass of wine or coffee. But the answer seems irrelevant because Carrie’s point seems well taken. We may still be a family, a bond that survives much, but how can we be a couple. We speak daily, we share so much, but ultimately we retire to our separate corners with nary a hug or a peck. I may harbor some dreams of climbing into her bed, snuggling close but it is as likely as my lottery dreams: wonderful diversions grounded in total awareness that it is not happening.<br /><br />It is a Sunday early afternoon as I type – the children watching a movie and then hopefully some time together. Frank is likely on his way to that gay pride parade. It is a distance and I am happy to be with the family, but Carrie has a point. If one is creating a new life, if one is willing, right or wrong, to sacrifice so much, then at some point one has to also embrace that life. But to me it is much simpler: in my haste to create one life, I have ended up with many lives – too many. The goal has to remain to bring the strands together and create whatever tapestry is me.</strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20589943.post-76544722167451962002009-05-08T17:10:00.004-04:002009-05-08T17:21:34.537-04:00Sorted Details<span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"><strong>A few weeks after that first meeting, Phil e-mails: a friend from out of town, Saturday night, what could be bad. Back to the sub-division and into the car for our night out. I have written of that night, a post well named, </strong></span><a href="http://bibydays.blogspot.com/2007/05/inexorable.html"><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"><strong>Inexorable</strong></span></a><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#000000;"><strong>, a post I choose not to read today. The back seat with the friend, who knew what could happen back there, a night of dancing and drinking, and yes, a night of sucking and fucking: what could be bad. And the next day, arriving home not before dawn, but well afterwards, but I digress…<br /><br />A week or so later, I get up my courage and suggest to Phil we grab dinner after work, two guys with the jacket and tie. In a testimony to my insecurities, I am surprised when he agrees. I am sure we played, but remember the walk after dinner, talking, taking in the familiar sights. So it started, white collar weeknights, not in the sub-division but in the City. As in any relationship, not so much steps as a ramp gently escalating from acquaintances to friends to more.<br /><br />Of course I still have my family, children, Carrie, a life, so while I spend time with them, particularly weekend time with them, Phil has his time with Stan. Our circles continue to overlap – Phil may spend a day with Stan at the beach and I will join them for dinner, comfortable affairs, no expectations, no disappointments: a pattern that sounds strange in the telling but seemed quite normal in the being.<br /><br />Stan was a confirmed bachelor of the gay world, happy with his friendships and his freedoms, not looking to get “married”, not capable of love as us straight guys once knew it. But a funny thing happened with the arrival of Nate: as Phil split his time and presumably his emotions, Stan realized that after seven years he had also been on that gently sloping ramp, he realized that he had quietly fallen in love. Ah, the plot thickens.<br /><br />Not bad – I have managed to compress more than a year into a few paragraphs – the changes in dynamics gradual, the ramp ever so gentle. So a new pattern emerges. Phil has his time with Stan, I with my family, and we have our time together. But now the triangle is gone, and while I suspect that Stan can connect the dots, he no longer has any dots to connect. Phil doesn’t deny me, my existence secure, but he does not discuss me either. He is with Stan or he is not, my name left off the playbill. This iteration has lasted for maybe eight months now and it has been easy enough. Winters are a busy time, short days, busy at work, throw in some holidays and before you know it, spring.<br /><br />But now that spring is sprung, I wonder how it continues to play out. Last summer we had those dinners in the sub-division, the triangle and more, salmon and wine. This summer I will see my family and I will see Phil. But it is inevitable that there will be days I will work and Phil will go to the beach with Stan and afterwards, there will be salmon and wine: I just won’t be there. <br /><br />I of course am guilty in this also, on the positive side being cognizant of my family responsibilities – no, responsibilities sounds like a chore, more like family opportunities. But on the other side is also a bit of continuing to hedge my bets, this strange belief that I can go home again.<br /><br />I have stretched my legs, wandered a bit, trying to end this post, but there is no end, yet another work in progress. And that is okay. When I found myself leaving the basement, moving to the apartment and realizing I had a boyfriend, all at once, my friends were concerned, fearful that I traded straight marriage for gay marriage, on the rebound no less, concerned that there needed to be some time to define myself not as Carrie’s husband or Phil’s boyfriend, not as my children’s parent, but as me. Not bad advice and not an easy task. As long as that ramp eases upward, the trip should be fine, where ever it may lead. </strong></span>Natehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13642480079983859304noreply@blogger.com1