Humble Beginnings

INDIVIDUALITY, FAMILY, LIFE

I made my humble appearance in the world a long time ago. How special each one is to his own place and people, no matter how humble and unremarkable to the world! Maybe one makes a parochial impression for a moment only to blend in quickly with the great sea of humanity. There’s nothing perverse or shameful about being small and unremarkable in this vast world. It is the nature of things and the fate that most of us share.

I was born an innocent child to the extent that I was ignorant of the world and my place in it. I inherited the mantle of my parents’ humanity. I was influenced by their culture, education, history, experience, and aspirations. I am not only what my parents were and wanted me to be. I am partly that, but I am also myself, something original and unique to my personality and experience. Bonnie and I experienced many things together and with our parents. The lives of children are extensions of their parents’ lives. Our parents live on in us along with the people and things we acquire along the way. We are not only our parents’ children, but nor can we divorce ourselves from them. They are always with us.

Sacred Time

SUCCESS, ACCOMPLISHMENT, DISAPPOINTMENT, MEDIOCRITY

This sacred time. This sacred hour. Writing. Journal. Story. Biography. O Lord! Poor, little man that I am, I do love this time that I spend writing. Praying. Sorting things out. Trying to communicate. Trying to be heard. Trying to hear myself. Trying to express myself. Trying to be true to myself and others. I might not be the best man on the planet, but I have tried to be good and to improve myself as I have gone along. Trying to be loving and kind. Wanting to be loved. Wanting to be honest. Enjoying sex. Enjoying friendship. Loving God. Loving prayer, contemplation, and worship. Not understanding many things. Trying to understand what I can. Trying to do my best based on the little that I do know. Loving God. Loving men. Loving women. Admiring men. Attracted to men. Appreciating the beauty of men. Being sexual. Being homosexual. Not being ashamed of my sexuality. Not understanding my sexuality. Not knowing what there is to understand about sex, other than pursuing and being pursued by men with mutual sexual interests. Not understanding the power and the importance of sex to me and the world I live in. I am a naïve man. Naïve, ignorant, or both.

It’s awful to want to be something and not be able to achieve it. It’s awful to try hard without succeeding. It’s no fun to fail. It’s no fun to be mediocre. I think everyone would like to succeed in life. Everyone would like to succeed at something. We have dreams, hopes, aspirations, goals. We go to school, work, study, pray, communicate, observe, promote, persevere, persist, improve, progress, learn. It often seems like the return on our investment of time and effort is inadequate, other than the satisfaction of having done something well, learning something new, and contributing to the accomplishment of a worthy goal.

We have images of ourselves that we try to cultivate. I have an image of the man I want to be. I have an image of the man I think I am. I might have an image of myself that I want others to accept and respond to. I might want to be treated in a way that confirms the way I see myself. I want to be successful. I want to be financially secure. I want to prosper. I want good friends. I want to bless others. I want to be a good housekeeper and host. I want to be happy. I want to meet hot men for sex. I want to have sexual friendships. I want to have sex with my male friends. I want to make friends with my sexual hook-ups. I don’t want to be ashamed of sex, or of my sexuality. I don’t want sex to be my top priority, but I want to learn how to be comfortable with it. I want to learn how to integrate my sexuality with the rest of my life. I want to reserve a place for sex with the more important aspects of my life.






Photo: Portrait of Jamie Wise (Cecilie Harris, 2012). ©2015 Boys by Girls. Retrieved September 10, 2015, from http://www.boysbygirls.co.uk/images/resized/images/uploads/JamieWise_NS24_900_1350_s.jpg

A Society with Secrets

SECRET, SEX, HOMOSEXUALITY, CRUISING

The kind of sex I like is like belonging to a secret society. Homosexuals find ways to identify each other, connect, and have sex. Lots of guys want to do it, but no one wants to admit it, or pursue relationships based on it. Guys want to do it, but they also want to sweep it under the rug. It’s not the kind of thing that comes up in polite conversation. I never thought of myself this way, but maybe I’m just a big pervert after all. I always thought I was more than that, better than that. But, it turns out that I’ve just been a big perv all along. Pity the fool! I am a big perv, and a religious man following a spiritual path. How does that work? I’m not sure, but I’ve been doing it for a long time.

One of the most powerful things that ever happened to me was to learn about sex. Pure and simple. That might be true for most people, a lot of people, some people? It seems like sex is an important part of most people’s lives, why not mine? Am I special? I have been tempted at times to believe that I am, for a number of reasons. But, here I am still schlepping through life, a mediocre mortal just doing the best I can. Still trying to figure things out. Still trying to make the best of things. Trying to enjoy my life. I don’t want to save the world. I just want to enjoy it while I'm in it. It doesn't matter how special I am if no one notices, and I have never been one to conduct a campaign to make people notice me. I like the idea of leaving people alone, and being left alone. If I have to make you, I don't want it.

I still like sex. It isn’t pretty any way you look at it, but it can be especially gruesome with age and unfit physiques. I am not body beautiful, but there are still guys and girls out there who want to have sex with me. I don’t know why. They probably don’t know why. Sex isn't intellectual. It just happens. I know it when I see it. I don’t have to figure it out to enjoy it. I don’t have to figure it out at all.

Photo: The Meat Rack on Fire Island. ©2015 David Shankbone. Retrieved August 15, 2015, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruising_for_sex#/media/File:A_man_racking_himself_in_The_Meatrack_on_Fire_Island.jpg.

Prom Night

BOYS, FRIENDS, PROM, FUN

Straight boy asks gay friend to go to prom with him. That’s kind of cool. Interesting. A comment on friendship, love, sexuality, and proms. Friendship is better than sex. Love is the force that makes friendship happen. What better way to enjoy a special event than to share it with a friend? What better way to enjoy life than to share it with people you love. Friendship is the thing. Love is the thing. It turns out that sex is not the thing after all. Two boys going to the prom together, because they’re friends, is what it’s all about.

Having It Both Ways

CELIBACY, SEX, SPIRITUALITY, MARRIAGE

I don’t have to be sexual if I don’t want to be. It’s up to me. I can be celibate if I want to, if I think that it would be a good thing. No one is holding a gun to my head about sex. The thing with sex is to have it with the people you are sexually attracted to. Don’t twist it into some kind of a moral or social obligation. Sexual adventure. Sexual adventurism. Getting sex where you find it. Finding sex where you get it. I’m not going to find the kind of sex I want by marrying a nice girl. I will find a dishonest, unstable relationship with a nice a girl by marrying her, and I will still want to find attractive guys to have sex with. Girls deserve guys who are sexually attracted to them. I’m not necessarily looking for a relationship with a guy by having sex with him. I’m not necessarily trying to befriend a guy by having sex with him. We don’t have to become lifelong buddies to have sex together. I don’t have to marry a guy to jerk off with him. Marriage would be an extreme investment to make for the privilege of jerking off with a sexy guy. Who came up with this idea of gay marriage? I’d like to punch him in the nose. Society wants to make sex serious, and it’s not. There’s a reason why they call it gay sex. I don’t want to make sex something more than it is. I’m not saying that it’s a little, inconsequential thing. Let’s just not attach more importance to it than it deserves, or call it something that it isn’t.

Can I be both a spiritual man and a sexual man? Can I be both spiritual and sexual? Isn’t that what I have been all these years? Isn’t that what I’ve been doing? Can I enjoy the spiritual blessings of Christianity and the pleasure of gay sex? I won’t even go so far as to address gay marriage. That’s more of a political issue than anything else, and I become more averse to politics as time goes on. I’m more interested in having good sex with a hot guy than I am in getting married to him. That’s always been true for me. I have led a double life that is not conducive to the contemplation of gay marriage as a realistic possibility. Gay marriage hasn’t been on my radar. I’m too busy trying to survive and prosper as a homosexual man with delusions of spiritual grandeur.

What right do I have to approach the throne of God? Maybe I have as much right as any other man. Maybe. What right do I have to pray and read the Bible? What right do I have to be and do good to others? What right do I have to rely on God for healing? Am I good enough to worship God? Am I good enough to lead a spiritual life? Do I lead a spiritual life? Can I lead a spiritual life as a homosexual man? Can I rejoice spiritually and enjoy gay sex? That’s what I’d like to do.

Photo: F. Jimenez Meca ©2003 - 2015 Shutterstock. Retrieved July 28, 2015, from http://www.shutterstock.com/pic.mhtml?irgwc=1&id=123837982&tpl=10078-42119

Alexander and I

ALEXANDER, STRIFE, LOVE

Life is more difficult and complex than I thought it would be. Follow your bliss. I thought that was all it took. I thought I would go along and get along, that everything would fall into place for me. What was I thinking! I thought the world would love, endorse, and support me, because I’m such an attractive, amazing man. So nice to have around, right? Charismatic, like a homosexual Billy Graham. O Lord, what a naïve little twerp I was.

All I have to do is figure things out to make them work, right? If I can just figure it out, everything will be fine. Alas, my ability to make things work is limited by time, energy, intelligence, talent, and relationships. I can’t do everything I want to do, and I don’t always get to do things the way I’d like to. Sometimes I have to settle for less. Sometimes I have to settle for making other people happy, rather than getting exactly what I want. That's what families do. We don’t breeze through life like kings in chariots. Even Alexander did not breeze through life. He fought his way through to an early death in a foreign land. The key to Alexander was that he was loved. The world feared him too. But, he accomplished what he did because of the love he inspired in the men and women who knew him.

Photograph: Mosaic of Alexander fighting King Darius III. Naples National Archaeological Museum. Retrieved June 17, 2015, from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Alexander_the_Great_mosaic.jpg.

Till the Cows Come Home

WORK, PRAY, REWARD

Follow your bliss. There is some logic to it. There is some truth to it. But, it’s not the key to everything. Is there any one key to everything? Can life be reduced down to the one thing that matters more than anything else? If it can, it’s not easy or obvious. Life can be and tends to be very complex. There’s a lot of different things to think about and do. Sometimes it's hard to keep up with everything that needs to be done and everything that others expect us to do. We go along and do the best we can. We have a tolerance for imperfection and human frailty or we don’t. Better to be tolerant of our own and others faults, or life becomes very unpleasant indeed.

I have tried to do the right thing. I have tried to live rightly. I have tried to be and do good. Our lives are full of narratives, our own and other’s. Some are true and some express our fondest wishes. Some narratives are true for some people, but they won't cut cookies consistently. A narrative that works for one man doesn’t necessarily bear up for all. Your happy ending might be my disappointment.

Poor mortals think in terms of rewards for their actions and efforts. We want and expect to be rewarded for doing the right thing. But, the reality is that you can do the right thing till the cows come home and not be rewarded for it. There are tangible rewards and spiritual rewards. Eternal and temporal. Earthy and heavenly. As is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly (I Corinthians 15: 48). We should be and do good as is the heavenly, not as is the earthy. We get swept away by compelling narratives about people who were rewarded for doing the right thing. Happy endings. Positive outcomes. Earthy rewards. We forget that the best reason for being good is a heavenly reward. Things don’t always end happily. How do we comport ourselves when things end badly? Do we forsake goodness if we don’t get our earthy reward? Ye seek me . . . because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life (John 6: 26-27). The standard of goodness is its own reward, which is hard to accept and prove.

We think that if we do x, y, and z, then a, b, and c will happily follow. Sometimes the formula works. How do we comport ourselves when it fails? Do we stop working when our formulas don’t work the way we want them to?






Photograph: Double Trinity with Saint Augustine and Saint Catherine of Siena. Retrieved June 13, 2015, from http://apostolatestjoseph.com/resources/The%20Heaven%20and%20Earth%20Trinities%20with%20Saints%20Augustine%20and%20Catherine%20of%20Sienna%2018th%20Century,%20Peru.jpg