Learn From It

Sometimes ObS (the bf) likes to get me going—and this time I don't mean in physical ways, because he gets me going that way whether he intends to or not.

No, pervs, I mean he likes to get me all riled up about other stuff. I'm certain he does it on purpose, or rather, I'm certain that there's a significant “Devil's Advocate” pose when he does this. Why does he do this? I'm not altogether certain, but at times, it has made for some seriously-intense follow-on sex.

Hmmmm...getting off-track here. Let me try to stay on-message.

And what is the message? Well, I'm not entirely sure, but as is often the case, in writing about it, something will precipitate out of the neural solution debriding and irrigating my brain.

I think it might be a dare, of sorts. Not in any dysfunctional, flushing-quail kind of way. No. I think it's a dare to see how long and how well I can hold both tenderness and a sort of cold, analytical conviction at the fore, at the same time. Maybe there's a test of loyalty (toward him) in the tenderness (because that's all towards him), or an inspection of my priorities because in analytical arguments, I can roll over just about anyone with brute force, if not brute conviction.

His strength of personality is no less ineluctable, but perhaps it's more unified in his case.

Either way, it's a gloriously intense battle of wills. Battle isn't the right word, and, oddly, I'm at a loss for the right word, but there definitely is an arena.

Arena. I like that.

And how do I know for sure (and am not just in denial) that it's not a battle? Because we fight in other ways. Literally. Think boxing but without the gloves and without hitting in the face. All body blows. And why? Because it's real; because it's fun; because it's real fun; because it always leads to getting there.

On-message...on-message...on-message...

So no, it's definitely not a battle of wills. More like an engagement of them: two forces of forceful personality engaging for the purpose of whatever they will.

In a culture where people deem the worthiness or validity of relationships on the basis of where the two (or three—I am from San Francisco) individuals match, how much they match and how “well” they match, it's odd to have discovered that the mismatches are the most telling. No, I'm not about to poop out some aphoristic bumpersticker wisdom about opposites attracting, because that'd just be stupid, unworthy.

The mismatches illustrate what matches at the next level up: the respective forces of individuality, a sameness at a level which is itself ineffable. ObS (the bf) is strong of personality in ways I'm not sure that even he appreciates. It's not about pigheadedness, though he (and I) are often pigheaded. It's not about being headstrong, though we both are headstrong as well.

It's directly about a persona so intense that it leaks outside of mindspace, often observable to others as pigheadedness and/or being overly headstrong.

I think it's when two such strong personae find a mutual reflexive recognition that the crazy-wonderful stuff happens.

Anyone want to start a computer dating service based around that?

Not for me, of course. I'm otherwise engaged.

Posted by Jeff at 08:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nothing much going on today. Regina's mom & bro left Tucson very early this morning. Way before I rolled out of bed.

It's amazing how shut-down the brain gets when you spend an entire day watching “action” movies.

And, oh yeah, Angelina Jolie is either animatronic, or the Goddess. Or the Animatronic Goddess. And how subversive is it that millions of teenage boys have spent so much time being Lara Croft? In a video game...but, still.

The moral of the story? Any movie-watching is about a thousand times better when done beside the boyfriend.

Posted by Jeff at 06:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So we just got done eating Thanksgiving dinner. Turkey, trimmings, etc. etc. Regina's mom did all the cooking (thanks, Gail!). Holy shit, I'm stuffed. It's like I can't breathe, like my lungs collapsed just to make room for the leviathan haggis inside of me right now.

I'm thinking about dessert right now, though. There's always room for Jello, right? Except we're not having Jello. There's key lime pie, cheesecake and/or pumpkin pie. Still.....

I swear I didn't set out to write a “and then we did...and then we did....” entry, but honestly people, all the blood in my body is set to digesting the Brobdingnagian portion of food I just consumed, and there's none left over to do anything meaningful with. That includes Getting There.

Urrrrrp!

Hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving Day. I sure have. I'm most thankful for the boyfriend. It's a new life, folks.

Urrrrrp!

Posted by Jeff at 04:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Sometimes I wonder if he's stronger than I am, and other times I simply know that he is.

Posted by Jeff at 12:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Why is it that everyone knows what an ad hominem attack actually is, except those who make them? There ends up being so much wrong with what they say that you don't even fucking know where to start.

Posted by Jeff at 07:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, I guess I'm not that surprised. But after 10+ years of living in San Francisco, my Myers-Briggs profile has changed. I used to be an ENTP, but now....

ENFP - “Journalist”. Uncanny sense of the motivations of others. Life is an exciting drama. 8.1% of total population.

Take Free Myers-Briggs Personality Test

Thanks to Michael's blog for the pointer to this.

Posted by Jeff at 01:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So today I got to meet Richard, finally! This is a big deal. I've wanted to meet him for a while now, and this morning, that happened.

The pictures don't do him justice, handsome as they show him to be, and the effusiveness of creative intellect in his blog is matched only by effusiveness of warmth in person. I'm looking forward to hanging out with him some more while I'm in town.

And he's coming up to San Francisco for another visit, coincidentally, on the day I get back there. How cool is that?

Posted by Jeff at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

So I finally got to Tucsam again (listen to me! the last time was only two weeks ago). That was Friday night. Which fully and completely explains why there have been no postings since Thursday. I've been busy. And busy. After I got here, I got there, having arrived several times after that. (winks to him and him).

Saturday afternoon, ObS (the bf) and I drove up to Phoenix to hang out at bars and Hang Out in other places. Just a bit of native fun before meeting up with my brother and his girlfriend on Sunday.

We stayed in a Motel 6 that was probably the single grossest national-chain hotelroom I've ever been in. It was a non-smoking room with ashtrays and stale smoke stench, with a shower but no real soap and no real water, and with towels that didn't so much dry you as push the water around from place to place on your body.

But we made it to my brother's apartment and hung out for a while with him and Jess, his girlfriend (who is stunning, and stunningly likeable). This was the first time Sam met any of my family, and it was a freakish set of circumstances that had Anthony (the brother) being the first one to meet Sam: it was not so long after meeting Sam, the first real reason I've ever had to visit Arizona, that my brother announced that he and Jess were moving to Phoenix. Bonus!

So there we were, after eating at some surprisingly good restaurant (a chain called Mimi's Cafe), driving to “Dynamite Mountain Ranch” to look at the house that they'd just bought. While we were there, we looked at all three models. Damn, there's a lot of open space within and without, in suburban AZ! Just for kicks, we also went to the next sub-division over to look at even larger houses, all cloyingly named after tv families (that's television, not transvestite).

So there we were, walking through the “Cunningham's”, the “Ricardo's” and the “Brady's” models (yes, they include the “'s” in the official model name), ranging from just under 2000 sq ft to just over 2400 sq ft. I have no idea what I would do with all that space. Likely just hunker down in a small upstairs room—or small wing in these houses—and forget the rest of the house is there for anything other than “extra space”.

While I was flattered that Jess kept asking me when I was going to buy one, the whole experience cannot be further from what I see myself getting into. I kept hearing the words of Jeff, one of my San Francisco “Dad's”, saying “location! location! location!”, meaning quite specifically “NOT San Francisco”.

That said, I'd still love to own a house, but it's something I have never entertained seriously as a solo endeavor, both for financial (read: blemished credit) and emotional (read: nesting) reasons. Now that the solo part isn't solo no mo', I guess that's back on the table....or at least occasionally bent over the table for a quick ride.

It's a keen illustration of what Family is all about, though. I found myself getting completely into the Phoenix house-buying thing on behalf of Anthony and Jess for no other reason than he is my brother and the two of us have just Always Been. As I have written before, he and I had never been close, but now that he is rising from the ashes of a dysfunctional marriage with a sociopath of a (soon to be) ex-wife, he's Himself. And interestingly, that's a person that I happen to like. A lot.

Posted by Jeff at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I'm in love. I'm in lust. Everything is better because of Sam.

Posted by Jeff at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There is an ongoing superiority-over/revulsion-to/dismissal-of so-called twinks and “boys” on the 'dancingbearssf' yahoo group. They don't like boys, they like M-E-N. They don't like muscle, unless it's properly trussed up in a certain amount of gristle.

I can understand this, I suppose. I mean, what's not to make fun of?

A self-selecting sub-group of a sub-group of the general population, who dictate terms to one another on such topics as where and when it's ok and not ok to cut or trim the hair anywhere on one's body; who prefer to stick to their “own kind”; who exhibit a set of easily observable common, individual behaviors within the group; and who look down their noses and point at other groups who blatantly contradict the prevailing conduct they themselves have espoused?

Disapprobation tickles.

Posted by Jeff at 09:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Now I am given to waking up Before, so that the abrupt consciousness does not upset the delicate in-between; the rat-a-tat of the ringing will be jarring enough.

Though the sun won't make a difference in the sky for over an hour, and its full force and effect will not occur until that much later, gray is the color. Gray, in this odd time, is the lack of any particular color, the equal balance of constituent colors. The lack of contrast spills into everything; edges fade. Objects go fluid, gaseous even. Waking dreams are sleeping dreams, the world has not yet made itself concrete.

His voice begins softly, tentatively, joining me in the bed, claiming its own space, its own pillow, adding its special comfort.

The waking is slow sometimes; sometimes the presence of mind is immediate and full. But the interlucent familiarity comes, a soft glow or an intense throbbing, often both. But always, it comes.

It makes me smile a smile big enough to wake the whole state.

Posted by Jeff at 07:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Have I mentioned that I get to spend 11 days with Sam, starting Friday night?

Only two fucking days away! My big round charlie-brown head is going to just fly off, I swear.

Posted by Jeff at 01:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The one and other Diomed embraces.
Our bloods are now in calm; and, so long, health!
But when contention and occasion meet,
By Jove, I'll play the hunter for thy life
With all my force, pursuit and policy.

...Diomedes, to Aeneas, from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida

I know that many of you will think, “Oh, honey, DUH” when I say this, but being as I am and being no other than I am, I must say it explicitly: I am a man of rather blunt disposition.

This is not to say I am rude, even though I have been called such. All ad hominem arguments, I assure you.

This is not to say I am judgemental. Oh, hell, of course I am. And so are you, so are we all. Language requires judgement, from what to say in the first place, all the way down to deeming exactly which words will suit. And don't forget, I'm writing this in a blog, which is really just a hobby-kit pulpit.

This is not to say that I expect others to assume the complete burden of figuring out what I mean. In fact, it's entirely the opposite. I am assuming the larger burden here.

Being blunt as I am usually only gets me into trouble with those who are as blunt as I am, for whom, perhaps, I am an unwelcome or unexpected mirror, but more likely, for whom I provide unwanted contention. Competition, even.

I can take that, too. I'm a smart fucker. When did it become unfashionable to possess intelligence? Are we at that stage in our increasingly despotic government and culture where those in possession of gifts are suspect? Are people like me, people perhaps different than you, to be distrusted, to be sources of paranoia?

The upside of this is that you always know what I feel, and often what I think (there's not enough bandwidth in realtime to express all the things I think about). There is no second-guessing with me. Question my motives if you will (you know who you are), but never wonder about the content.

This is not to say I am crass, nor to say that I am blunt for the purposes of causing discomfort. That would be contrary and ironic. I am blunt because propriety runs counterpoised to friendship. I am blunt because over the last ten years, I have discovered that Northern Californians speak more and say less than many other people, though by now, I'd be willing to bet the rest have caught up.

I've discovered that it's often those who insist on politesse are merely those who would never stab you in the front because they only go for the kill when you're not facing them. They'd rather be nice, than decent. They'd rather be believed to be decent than actually decent. Charm is more important that care and derision of others makes you superior, that's what those types believe.

And it's more often than not that those who state that “sounding moral or preachy” is a bad thing are usually in the midst of preaching at you about their moral superiority.

I'm not superior to you, except when I am. And when I state that calling you stupid would be an insult to stupid people, I'm just being blunt.

And isn't it charming that I'm quoting a movie while I'm at it?

Posted by Jeff at 07:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It moves of itself, yet I cannot bring it to motion. It stops, stopping. Turns, turning. Eludes elision. Alludes illusion. It is what it will; it does what it is. A deed in action, indeed!

Carefully chosen beliefs, just ignorance codified. Nothingness is totality, when approached with humility.

Tautological wisdom, soporific of the vulgar. Chemical panegyrics, palmable euphoria.

Bombast as ballast. Haploid humanity, hapless, stops, stopping. Turns, turning. Capsules of misery popping capsules of happy, breathing rapture through crystal-clear glass.

They disappoint, they disappear, they die but they don't.

The Spagyric Wedding of C. Dumbfuck.

Disapprobation itches.

Posted by Jeff at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Which Peeg are you?
Brought to you by Rum and Monkey

Posted by Jeff at 11:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Apologies for access weirdness over the past few days.

Things I've learned:

• One shouldn't try to fix what ain't broken.
• DoS attacks suck ass.
• DNS is the only non-instant part of the internet.
• Damn, I'm busy these days.

Hopefully, things will be back to normal, or at least as normal as they can get.

Posted by Jeff at 09:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This morning, Sam's friend Bill and I, while waiting for tires to be installed on Sam's Jeep, spent some time in a Borders Books. I got a copy of Al Franken's book, Lies and the Liars Who Tell Them, and Bill was looking for calendars with pictures of Tucson. He no longer lives in Tucson, and he misses it.

And while I was looking through the calendars with him, I found one put out by the magazine Arizona Highways. Back when I was a little kid (age 7, to be exact), my parents found a drawing I had made and decided to see if a locally-well-known artist, Mary Hughes, would consider taking me into her weekly class. She agreed to it.

It started with basic color theory (both of pigment and of light) and then went through various media: watercolors, water- and oil-based pastels, temperas, India Ink, scratchboard, acrylic paints, oil paints.

Oil painting was the end-all-be-all for the class, the big leagues. Once you got there, you were in a different world. It wasn't about being done with learning, it was about being done with learning the basics and moving on to learn about composition and content, about cause and effect. What was actually going on, now that I think about it, was the move from compulsory to freeform, from physical law to Choice.

Often the subject matter would come from the various scenery magazines that Mrs. Hughes had available. The name of the magazine that contained largely still-life and other indoor scenes escapes me at the moment. The one with the desertscapes was called Arizona Highways

It's strange, for all the talk about not having spent any time in Arizona before I met Sam, and then remembering that I'd driven through it with Allen—on our way from Midland, TX to San Francisco when he moved there with me—and having stayed overnight in a featureless hotel in featureless interstate-side Kingman, AZ. Then I'd remembered that I'd flown to Phoenix to meet a then-boyfriend and spent a weekend there. The first can be forgiven because, well, it's Kingman. What's to remember about a Motel 6 in Kingman, except for having smuggled a certain black miniature schnauzer into our hotelroom? The latter, well, I can explain that by way of having stupidly participated in the Undocumented Nature of that boyfriend's life. No anchors, no happenings. No happenings, nothing to apologize for or explain away later, where short-term memories cannot brest the hostile waters into the long-term vault.

But now, Tucson. Ahhhh, Tucson. Did I ever think I'd say that without sarcasm? Where's the damned irony? Yet here I am, taking such a stand. There is a brutality to the beauty of the desert. And there is a beauty to the abject hostility of the environment. Sands, not dust. Rock, not mud. Even the hottest air cannot hold the moisture. The dry heat is a thing that comes from above, whereas humidity—absent in Tucson—would come up from below. Dry heat stops frivolous thought; mugginess stops unnecessary movement.

The Sonoran Desert holds no charm for Sam. I'd be lying if I said it held any particular charm for me, even in light of the above admissions. Sam will be done with it, gone from it, soon enough in a big picture view (and nowhere near soon enough in personal terms).

And honestly, even as a child-artstudent, the stack of Arizona Highways issues were rarely a choice for subject matter, but that's not the point I'm trying to make.

That a place or a person or a thing can seemingly hold so much sway over the selectivity of memory astounds me. I always considered that certain things/places/people could serve as memory prods for this or that, evoking by touch, or sight, or even better, by smell. But it never occurred to me that a place could take such an active role in shuffling and dealing individual memories onto the table of conscious remembrance while keeping others close to the vest.

Frank Herbert called it “adab, the demanding memory”, those which burst into the fore without warning and without choice. He had no word for the opposite, for those memories which refuse to float to the front.

And I suppose there's that irony I was looking for.

Posted by Jeff at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The air is just plain clearer in San Francisco. Yes, I'm being snobby again, but it's not really bragging if you can actually pull it off, is it?

I'm being literal here...someone write down the date. The thing I noticed about the Las Vegas airport—except for the bong-clang-click of the slot machines and, god bless them all, the aluminum palm trees—is the air quality inside the terminal. It just plain sucks. Do people not understand the physics of smoke, where erecting 8 ft high glass walls around the 'smoking area' actually does little, if anything, to keep smoke-laden air away from the rest of us?

When you can actually see the air, it's time to think about the air, don't you suppose?

I grew up in a house with a smoker. Marie smoked for a long long time. In that different planet that was the 1970s, a 12 yr old kid could run to the store and buy smokes for his mom. Which I did. Which I never really thought about. Still don't think much is wrong with it. I enjoy the smell of cigarette smoke, from time to time, but usualy that's in specific places, usually in very small doses (whiffs, you might say), not as my breathable atmosphere for what will be almost two hours by the time I'm out of it.

And what's to eat here, at 11pm? Burger King. Pizza Hut. A combo Mrs. Fields/Wienerschnizel, because everyone knows that nothing goes with a big overstuffed cookie like a vile Chicago dog. Yes, folks, the people who brought you reversed rivers, non-vital St Patty's Day dyes and the giant “D” lever in voting booths could be the only ones who'd figure cucumber and celery salt, among other things, on a hotdog to be a good idea.

But I digress. I'm on a trip I wasn't expecting to take. I'm sleepy as fuck and punchy as hell (can you tell?), but I'm getting to spend a couple of stolen days with Sam, so I'm crazy-excited about that, duh. But I'm about to meet Sam's best friend in the world here in the LV airport—he's making the same trip to Tucson as I am and we'll be on the same fight from LV to Tucson—and I'm just a wee bit nervous about meeting someone who's so important to my significant other.

I'm sure it will be fine. I'm a fucking sweetheart, right? But still, why pass up a chance to kvetch?

Posted by Jeff at 11:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In a town where 'cheap seats' can mean anything from center field benches to an easy lay from the back pages of the B.A.R., for me, tonight, it means that I'm climbing on an unexpected plane to Tucson.

No snickers from the outfield benches about easy lays, ok?

Posted by Jeff at 06:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For those of you wondering, Sam's blog is no more. Apparently there are those who love freedom so much they're willing to play the spoiler if you're critical of those who are the so-called defenders of such freedoms.

And those defenders, having absolutely no sense of irony nor hyperbole, are not the audience you want to have, especially when they're your employer.

For those of you who'd like to reach him, you can still email him.

Other than that, things are as good or better than they've ever been.

Posted by Jeff at 08:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I just wanted to thank him for his help this morning. It was invaluable.

Posted by Jeff at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You may want to hide your children from this one. Scaaaary stuff:

For my current work, I needed to be able to look at behaviors & metrics of a PC app while developing the Mac OS X version of it, and using Virtual PC was preferable to actually having to struggle with a real, live Winders box. Still, it scares me. I now have to think about viruses and patches and the fact that the colors are so garish in the XP user interface that when I switch back to my lovely, elegant, easy-on-the-eyes Mac OS X apps, there's an after image burnt into my retinas. I honestly don't know how you Winders folks do it.

Posted by Jeff at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you live in San Francisco and you're a registered voter, get your ass to the polls today.

If you're already planning on voting, think about this: isn't there already enough politics of fear out there? Politics of pessimism? Find the mayoral candidate who's talking about the bright future of San Francisco and who does so without resorting to playing on your fear and xenophobia.

Angela Alioto points fingers like Arianna did, without offering anything of benefit except to herself, seemingly.

And Gavin Newsom. He's just a hateful pretty rich boy, the nasty fucker who foisted a bill intended on cleaning up the “homeless problem”, Prop N (also called “Care not Cash”) on the public, playing to fear, to the idea of threat, and by appealing to individual greed. I took to calling it “Cake not Care” or the Marie Antoinette Proposition. I remember billboards with some whiny business man complaining that he has to smell urine as he walks by an alley in downtown San Francisco. I wondered if the man could appreciate the fact that some human beings didn't have any option but to use the alley as a bathroom. So, No on Newsom for me.

I tend to take—dare I say it—an organic approach to such things. San Francisco doesn't do well with rigidity in any form, much less in her own government, so I go for the one whose politics I tend to agree with and who, most importantly to my way of thinking, is of San Francisco and not just here to win more personal power.

Me, I'm voting for Tom Ammiano. He's been here for a long time. He's seen the worst and the best of San Francisco (often they are the same thing), and he's generally a good guy. Since I moved here 10+ years ago, I have voted for Tom at every opportunity.

While I'm sure those rare bird Republicans in San Francisco will be out there voting with their stomachs, their wallets, and their cultural xenophobia, the larger population will remember more pragmatic concerns, the longer-term view and will remember the optimism that keeps fueling the fight to overcome hatred masquerading as Tradition.

California may be stuck with Arnold, but San Francisco is a world unto herself. Remember that when you vote.

I'm rarely “proud” to be an American. I have never ever been ashamed to be a San Franciscan.

Posted by Jeff at 08:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)