Posted: April 30th, 2003 | Filed under: daily, space monkey | No Comments »

The other day at the gym I was in the locker room, changing after my shower. Depending on the hour and other incalculable factors, the little section of the locker room I usually gravitate towards can either be very quiet or very crowded. Murphy’s Law: if there are only two men in the locker room, they will have unknowingly chosen adjoining lockers.

So there were only three of us in the section, one guy was using the locker right above mine (which reminds me of the time this couple was leaving the locker room as I entered. One of the guys pointed to the locker he had just vacated and said “There’s a top, if you want.”)

Now I had noticed the guy on top of me plenty of times before. That thick-muscled, scruffy-faced type I like, he was usually alone and rather quiet, a selling point in a gym full of Chatty Cathys. A little mystery always helps. As he reached over me, spinning the dial on his combination lock, he accidentally closed my locker. “Oh, sorry about that,” he said.

“No problem,” I said.

He opened his locker and dug around in his bag. He then walked over to the only other guy in our area, another cute boy with muscles and a tribal tattoo etched across his lower back

“Hey there,” Guy #1 said to him.

“Hey,” the Tattoo Guy said.

“Here, I brought something for you.” He held out his hand, his fingers wrapped around something metal. For a moment I thought it was a combination lock, but then he dropped it into the Tattooed Guy’s outstretched hand and I saw it was actually a shiny cock ring. The Tattooed Guy blushed a little.

“James found it at home and was like ‘whose is this’?” Guy #1 said. “I was like ‘it’s not mine.’ It took us awhile to figure out it was yours. So I thought I’d bring it in.”

“Thanks.”

I finished dressing and left. I realized that Guy #1 had suddenly become a lot less interesting to me. The mystery had vanished. I certainly don’t think open relationships or group sex are wrong, (I’m not innocent when it comes to either) just wrong for me.

Lately I often feel like I’m out of step with big-city gay culture when it comes to sex. Or rather, I’ve always been this way but youth and drugs obscured my instincts and let me do things with a lot of different men when all along I’ve only wanted one man. I mean, I’m no prude. I can be a total pig. But only with someone I trust. I could certainly bore you to tears trying to analyze my need to be special at all costs. Maybe my parents didn’t shower me with enough love, who the hell knows.

I cheated on my Ex until I got sober, and I don’t have a good excuse, aside from the boring alcoholic fear that there were never enough drugs, sex and love for me.

Until last year I logged more than my fair share of hours in chat rooms. But most of those hours were a complete waste of time because my raging hormones were battling my dislike of fleeting encounters, leaving me paralyzed, which wasn’t very hot. I would actually sit there looking at some guy’s photo, thinking “My God, he’s really hot. But will he respect me as a person?”

I haven’t had sex since November. I realized back then that the space monkey deserved my complete attention. I decided I would wait. Not because he asked, but because I wanted to do things differently this time. I wanted my actions to fall in line with my desires. I wanted to see if I could do it, and if I could, what it felt like. Even more importantly, how that colored the sex we would hopefully have together.

I have rather bizarre thoughts. Namely, that if something comes too easily I won’t appreciate it. Maybe it’s my Midwestern work ethic. I think the harder I have to fight, the sweeter the reward. Good things come to those who wait.

Hopefully in seventeen days the space monkey won’t be disappointed when I meet him at the airport. God knows we’ve waited long enough. I’m only hoping that when he tells me he’s actually a 300-lb Korean woman, he’s only joking. No offense to 300 lb. Korean women or anything.

Posted: April 28th, 2003 | Filed under: daily, father, gay family, mom | No Comments »

Last night I dreamed my father had died. I arrived at the funeral service in an enormous church that was packed and rather boisterous, considering the circumstances. I wound my way up the center aisle around clusters of people talking, the sanctuary humming with energy and chatter. Being his son I figured I should sit up front. I pushed my way past the revelers till I reached the front row. I sat down in the last spot. I glanced over to my left, across the aisle, and there was my mother, sitting with her partner. She was beautiful, brimming with her own barely-contained energy, the way she looked before the disease. They smiled and waved at me and suddenly I realized that I should be sitting on their side of the aisle, as if we were at a wedding. Unfortunately, as my mother indicated with a shrug of her shoulders, there wasn’t any room.

Posted: April 18th, 2003 | Filed under: HIV, etc | No Comments »

“Certain Words Can Trip Up AIDS Grants, Scientists Say”
By ERICA GOODE
New York Times
April 18th, 2003

Scientists who study AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases say they have been warned by federal health officials that their research may come under unusual scrutiny by the Department of Health and Human Services or by members of Congress, because the topics are politically controversial.

The scientists, who spoke on condition they not be identified, say they have been advised they can avoid unfavorable attention by keeping certain “key words” out of their applications for grants from the National Institutes of Health or the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those words include “sex workers,” “men who sleep with men,” “anal sex” and “needle exchange,” the scientists said.

Bill Pierce, a spokesman for the health and human services department, said the department does not screen grant applications for politically delicate content. He said that when the department singles out grants it is usually to send out a news release about them. But an official at the National Institutes of Health, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said project officers at the agency, the people who deal with grant applicants and recipients, were telling researchers at meetings and in telephone conversations to avoid so-called sensitive language. But the official added, “You won’t find any paper or anything that advises people to do this.”

The official said researchers had long been advised to avoid phrases that might mark their work as controversial. But the degree of scrutiny under the Bush administration was “much worse and more intense,” the official said.

Dr. Alfred Sommer, the dean of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, said a researcher at his institution had been advised by a project officer at N.I.H. to change the term “sex worker” to something more euphemistic in a grant proposal for a study of H.I.V. prevention among prostitutes. He said the idea that grants might be subject to political surveillance was creating a “pernicious sense of insecurity” among researchers.

Dr. Sommer said that if researchers feared that federal support for their work might be affected by politics, whether it was true or untrue, it could take a toll. “If people feel intimidated and start clouding the language they use, then your mind starts to get cloudy and the science gets cloudy,” he said, adding that the federal financing of medical research had traditionally been free from political influence.

At the National Institutes of Health, for example, grant applications are evaluated and rated by a panel of independent reviewers. The grant application is then given a score.

In another example of the scrutiny the scientists described, a researcher at the University of California said he had been advised by an N.I.H. project officer that the abstract of a grant application he was submitting “should be `cleansed’ and should not contain any contentious wording like `gay’ or `homosexual’ or `transgender.’ ”

The researcher said the project officer told him that grants that included those words were “being screened out and targeted for more intense scrutiny.”

He said he was now struggling with how to write the grant proposal, which dealt with a study of gay men and H.I.V. testing. When the subjects were gay men, he said, “It’s hard not to mention them in your abstract.”

Yeah, this administration is full of heroes. Fuck off.

Posted: April 17th, 2003 | Filed under: daily, depression, shelter, sobriety | No Comments »

I’m having one of those demoralizing weeks at work (actually, they’re all pretty demoralizing) where I wake up later each day, go in later each day, and flee a little earlier, each day. Where people hang up on me when I make myself answer the phone. Where people who don’t work in the office consider the office a free doggie day care for their neurotic canines, many of whom would make great case studies in separation anxiety. And to top it off, someone has just stolen my lunch from the office mini-fridge. We keep our office locked, so this narrows the field of suspects to the ten people with keys. This does not make me feel any better. This has pushed me over the edge, and I am so demoralized and completely bereft of blood sugar that I can barely type. Human beings are overrated.

Last night I told my therapist about the daily inner battle between my higher self and my lower self. My higher self knows that certain activities are almost guaranteed to bring me serenity: writing, reading, going to the gym, going to an AA meeting, talking with friends. The lower self, however, prefers lying in bed in front of the television, computer solitaire, Internet surfing, and screening phone calls. These activities are almost guaranteed to make me feel worse, but the lower self doesn’t care. The lower self is all about “let’s just do these things for an hour and relax”, knowing full well that four hours will pass and then it’s bedtime. After demoralizing workdays it’s a toss-up over who will win the evening; higher self certainly plans on winning, but lower self is a sneaky little cheat.

Okay, yes, I am Sybil. But you knew that by now. Cut me some slack.

I told my therapist that I didn’t think I could work another year at this job, assuming it will be at least that long before grad school. She gently suggested that I focus instead on getting through the next month, and letting a week with the space monkey give me a little perspective. She said it’s hard sometimes, to do all the things I do, alone. Two years ago today I moved out of the apartment I shared with the Ex. And I haven’t touched another man with anything resembling love in my heart since. It’s not like I need anyone to feel complete. But sometimes it helps. And why not? Don’t we all want someone? Someone who will smile when we enter the room? Ah, don’t answer. It doesn’t matter. I know what I want.

Posted: April 13th, 2003 | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Please visit Chad (formerly of “Long Ride Home”) at his new digs. Like me, he is unable to leave a link at his old site, so help me spread the word. I know you drive a hot Welcome Wagon.

As for me, I’m uh…restless, irritable, and discontent. I know this comes as a complete surprise, I’ll let you have a moment alone while you gather yourself.

Posted: April 11th, 2003 | Filed under: daily, depression, space monkey, writing | No Comments »

I miss you, but I haven’t met you yet…you are gorgeous, but I haven’t met you yet

When your life has become a Bjork song, you know you’re blessed, just in a peculiar way. You are the misfit wearing a swan dress to the Oscars while everyone else is dressed in Dior. You know you’ve got something pretty fucking rare and beautiful but everyone still thinks you’re a dork. You’ll end up on everyone’s worst-dressed list, but you don’t care because you just know. You know, and they never will.

Writing is how I reconcile myself to the world, how I pay tribute to beauty and pain. How I honor the past, how I tell myself what certain moments meant. I write, as a good friend once said, because I can’t shut up.

I’ve honored that past time and again here, little stories from my life, from the past. But what about the present, what about the future? After enduring the twelve labors of Hercules, my life is opening outwards, and suddenly I’m afraid to say anything, lest the gifts of the present disappear. The stakes are raised. I place my bets and suddenly, because I care, the possibility of losing constrains my breath. It was easy when everything just happened to me, I just held on, I took it. Now I am happening, I am happening upon the world. I want to tell you, because you’ve stuck by me through the hard shit. I want to show you what happens if you keep fighting, if you stay in the game.

I want to write on and on about the space monkey. I want to replay every sweet word, every kindness, every moment where I’ve thought “I’ve been looking for this. I’ve been looking a long time.” I want the world to bear witness to this falling in, falling towards. Against all odds, even misfits get loved.

But to say it out loud. I don’t want to hear a word of warning or cynicism, I don’t want caution or well-meaning sabotage. Haven’t you figured it out yet? I’m a pitbull when I know what I want. I bite down and I won’t let go. See that fighter above, see the man with the boxing gloves? That fighter is me. I’m strong and I’m patient. I’ll swing my fists and then I’ll wait, for the next opening, for the cynics of the world to show me their chin.

Posted: April 10th, 2003 | Filed under: daily, space monkey | No Comments »

So you thought the photo of that guy was hot?
- Hell yeah.
- Hmm. I think I’m actually jealous.
- Hey, I got a healthy appetite but I know where my bacon is!

Posted: April 10th, 2003 | Filed under: daily, space monkey | No Comments »

The space monkey gave me a date to circle on the calendar. I’d prefer something a little sooner (like, this afternoon maybe) but it gives me one of those short-term goals that are so helpful at the gym. All this lifting makes me hungry. I’ve started making myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every morning to eat at work mid-morning. Louie waits patiently by the front door. Yesterday the sandwich was particularly messy, and there were no napkins around. So this morning I find myself taking a paper towell and folding it in the bag next to my sandwich.

I don’t know if I’m getting older, or if I’ve always been this big of a dork.

Posted: April 10th, 2003 | Filed under: columbia mfa, daily, nyc, writing | No Comments »

A few months after I moved to San Francisco, I had lunch with a friend of mine who had also moved here from Minneapolis. We had worked together at the Walker Art Center, and he had moved on to an even more prestigious position with a San Francisco art institution. He had been here perhaps a year before I moved, and we caught up over lunch in the museum’s cafe.

“How do you like it here?” I asked.

“I hate it here,” he said, without the slightest hesitation. I looked up at him quickly, the coffee cup in my hand frozen in its path from the table to my mouth.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any criticism about my new home, but I asked anyway. “Why?”

“It’s so conservative here.”

“Conservative?” I blinked at him. Were we talking about the same city?

“Everyone here supports the traditional institutions; the ballet, the opera, the symphony. Nobody here will give money to new art. Even Minneapolis was more progressive.”

I stayed quiet. I knew he spent the majority of his working hours raising money for the institution.

“And the local art itself isn’t very strong. I don’t know. I think…” he paused, his eyes scanning the traffic passing outside. “It’s so beautiful here. I think artists get lazy, it’s just so easy, it’s easy to go outside and enjoy the sun and the weather. I think artists need winter, they need those long periods of hibernation to create art that’s, well, deep. For lack of a better word.”

I looked out at the traffic, too. I wasn’t sure I agreed. Even more, I didn’t really want to believe him. This was my new home.

I believe, more or less, that if you look for something, you’ll find it. If you look for all the ugliness and shortcomings of a city, you’ll find them. If you look for the beauty, you’ll find that too.

But five years later, I can still hear his words.

I haven’t talked to him for awhile; I know he’s still in San Francisco, working for another organization now. I don’t know if he still hates it here, or if he’s simply adjusted his expectations. But I’ve been thinking a lot about what he said that day.

When I was living in Minneapolis, restless for a bigger city, I had begun saving my money to move. I hadn’t yet decided between San Francisco or New York, but I was leaning towards the latter. I wanted to be in the center of it, the art world and the literary world and the excitement. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to live there, but I wanted to try.

Then I met the man who would eventually become my Ex, and the moving plans were put on hold. After a couple of years he too became restless. But he didn’t want to move to New York. He preferred San Francisco, and so on Halloween of 1997 we pulled into town in a Ryder truck, towing our pick-up on a trailer behind us.

When I decided last week to apply to grad school, I looked around for a local program. I didn’t have much luck. UC-Berkeley doesn’t offer an MFA in writing. SF State doesn’t focus on creative nonfiction. I haven’t heard great things about either New College or USF.

But really, their reputations are beside the point.

There are more and more schools offering low residency programs, where students come to campus for 7-10 days each semester for workshops, seminars, and meetings, then they write at home the next few months, sending work to their advisors for feedback. The advantage to these programs is that you can do them from anywhere. I could stay in SF. After five years here I have a beautiful, affordable apartment, a new car, an okay job. Great friends.

But my gut says no. If I love classroom learning and dialogue, if I feel energized by working with other writers, then a low residency program doesn’t make any sense. I want immersion, I want to squeeze every drop out of this.

The writing is on the wall. So to speak.

I’ve been looking at the websites of schools all over the country. But I keep coming back to one particular city.

I don’t want to be one of those people who sit around wondering what life might have been like if-only. If only I had jumped, if only I had taken a risk.

I really don’t know where I’ll be in a year. I thought San Francisco was home. But maybe it was just a stop along the way.

Posted: April 5th, 2003 | Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »

Thank you for the birthday wishes. This is gonna be a damn good year. I just know it.