• I have a date tonight with a very cute younger guy (34).  We’re going out for chinese food and, then, probably back to my place.  I’ve decided I’m just going to be myself, not try to impress or show off in any way.  Just do what I do, be what I am.  (*Post date update:  We did not go back to my place.  We just had a really nice dinner with some good conversation. He was sweet, I had a good time)
• I got fooled by a Craigslist hoax last evening.  There was a listing that offering a free leather office chair and a Mac, just come on by to this address.  Turns out the guy who lived at the address was not giving away anything, somebody just decided to post his address in order to harrass him.  I was so aggravated!  I drove 45 minutes in rush-hour, rainy traffic just to unwittingly participate in someone elses revenge prank.  I felt bad for the guy whose door I knocked on.  He was upset, but not at those of us who fell for the hoax.  That won’t ever happen to me again. 
• There’s a special video post coming soon, I’ll do it over the weekend.  Rehearsing it now.
• I am so grateful that I work where I work.  Just love it.  This job is my BIG Thanksgiving gratitude recipient this year.  Along with our new president-elect Obama and a Democratic congress. 
• I’m all hooked up at Kaiser, now, and I have to say…I’m pretty impressed.  I went on Monday to get hooked up with the hiv portion of my healthcare, and it was a really good, very reassuring experience. They sent me over to give blood to the vampire (he took about 9 tubes worth) and a UA.   A couple of hours later at home, an email arrived… some of my test results were in and I could just click, sign on and see a very detailed analysis.  How cool is that??  My health is very good.  Another Gratitude situation.
• I cannot WAIT to see Sean Penn in Gus Van Sant’s Milk.  Just can’t wait.  Penn is such an amazing actor, and Harvey’s story is so meaningful to me…he is the gay MLK and…I’m fairly shaking with anticipation at how moving I know this film will be.  Remember The Times of Harvey Milk?  If you have never seen it…you have to stop what you are doing right now, go get a copy, plop down and watch it. 
• Interesting times, these days.  This Harvey Milk film coming out right around the time of Prop 8, Barak Obama about to ascend to the presidency, the American “Christian” Taliban Right-Wing freaking out about everything, Protests, Blogs flaming,  Bush’s New Depression…what’s going to happen?  What is going to happen?  Interesting times, they feel compustable.  Yet, I am calm.  And grateful. 

Had a nice weekend.  Went to a Join the Impact marriage rights rally downtown Portland on Saturday morning with my buddy Jerry. There was a nice big, loud crowd.  All these rallies across the country were pretty grassroots and impromptu, so there was no stage, no PA system…you couldn’t really hear the what the speakers were saying…but it didn’t matter.  It was still pretty great just being there. For those of us who missed out on Stonewall and ActUP it’s nice to get a chance to get out into the streets and have our voice heard.  Photos of the Portland rally are on my Flickr site, the link is just in that righthand column over there —>

I met some friends of Jerry’s, Roger and Mark and the four of us went to CC Slaughters afterwards for the post-rally Bloody Mary and hot dogs bar and some conversation.  It was really nice.  Went home, took a nap and then out again later in the evening for the Oregon Bears 3rd Saturday bust.  Enjoyable.

Slept in today, then some house-tidying and a movie with a friend.  

Now you’re all caught up!

You married gay guys probably won’t be able to relate, but I’m going to rant about this for, well…a post.

Trying to meet guys for dating online. It’s a fricking nightmare, and frankly, I’m not going to do it anymore.  From now on, my online chatting will be strictly reserved to talking to friends.

Gay.com, Bear411.com…the list goes on, but those two site are where I’ve spend most of my time trolling (pun intended) for men.  I have my little profiles, with my headshot and some pics of my dog, my dick…whatever.  The little message trying to communicate in a paragraph or two who I am, what I like…whatever.  

It’s not that I haven’t gotten attention, I have.  But for whatever reason…guys are so flaky when they talk to you online!  Bear411 is the worst…it takes 20 minutes for people to return a message…HELLO!  I’m still sitting here!  I typed my message to you…where is your fucking reply?  I can SEE that you are still online, what are you waiting for?  GRRRRR.

I’ve had some bad experiences. One guy who had me over from gay.com was completely falling down drunk when I got to his place.  Another guy was a total, boring, cold fish.  That last one has happened too many times!  You cannot get a feel for chemistry or genuine interest by looking at a photo, reading a blurb, and having a conversation in a chat window….especially when it takes HOURS for a 10-sentence conversation.  HELLO! STILL WAITING! GRRRRR.

So from now on…I’ll meet people in person.  I don’t like hanging out in bars much, so I’ll probably be single the rest of my life.  But when I DO get out, I’ll cruise actual live people who are there in front of me.  Get a feel for the chemistry.  No more trying to meet guys for dating or sex online.  Screw it!

I do have to say, though, that the guys I’ve met from the blogsophere are excellent people.  You know you’re not whom I’m ranting about.

Keith Olbermann 11/10/08 Proposition 8 Special Comment

You may have already seen this. I had to post it, it’s something worth seeing again - and keeping. It’s just fantastic. I always love Keith, but he has really gone above and beyond here.

Fall is definitely here…it’s rainy, cold and windy in Portland. 

I’ve been going to the same place for my healthcare for about 15 years, most of those with the same doctor.  Yesterday, though, I left there.  I now have Kaiser HMO and am seeing a new doctor.  I’m a bit veklempt about leaving Dr. McVeigh and the staff who’ve taken such great care of me for so many years, but it was a change that was forced upon me.  

Kaiser is kind of weird…I’ll have 2 doctors now, one for hiv and one for everything else, I guess.  I met the GP yesterday:  He looks like he’s from a 70’s crime drama.  Tall and thin, with a long face and a ponytail and a semi-gruff demeanor.  I have yet to meet the other new doctor. 

Kaiser kind of shuffles you around like cattle, but I’m sure it’ll all turn out fine.

I also am ready to move…I love my little neighborhood and my great apartment in Milwaukie, but…I feel the need to be in a more urban setting.  No one wants to drive to Milwaukie, I’m always alone in my apartment.  I feel like I may have a more robust social life if I get into the city proper.  So I’m going to start hunting around…the big problem is finding a place that will accept my dog.  He is, however, a companion animal with a doctor’s note…so I think places kind of have to take him. He’s a very good apartment dog, no reason he should be excluded.  He’s quiet and well-behaved, ever more so than I!We’ll see what happens.

I really like it when I hear straight guys refer to other guys as “man”, as in “Take care, man”, “Shove it in there, man”, etc.   I believe that guys calling each other “man” first sprouted from hippies, but I could be wrong.  Maybe surfers?  Why do they feel the need to refer to the other guys gender when addressing them, I wonder?

I especially like it when straight guys call me “man”.  I’m not really clear why having my gender named sends a little jingle-jangle through my scrotum, but it does.  Probably because, when I first came out, the gay people I initially became acquainted with were drag queens, and they all called me “girl” or “Miss Woman Thing” or some such.

There are some gay guys who use “man” when talking to other men.  “See ya later at the gym, man.”  Grrrrrr.  “Suck that fuckin’ dick, man!”   I have never been one to use the term.  If you’re one of my closest friends, I’m more likely to call you “Miss Lady-Thing”, even though I am not at all effeminate.  It’s likely because you started it!  (Not during sex, though - I wouldn’t tell you to “pound that ass, Miss Lady-Thing!” - I don’t have sex with my friends anyway).

 It used to really rankle me to be called “girlfriend” or “Miss Thing”, but not anymore.  It’s just an affectionate thing, it’s just a “gay thing”.  Wow, I’m really using a lot of quotation marks in this post!

Awright, man, gotta get back to work.  See ya later at the gym, man.

Portland Oregon post election OBAMA celebration

I’m excited for election day.  In Oregon, we vote by mail: No lines, no time off work, you just receive your ballot in the mail several weeks in advance - with your election guide - and take all the time you need to fill it out and send it in.  It’s pretty great.

After work tomorrow, I’m going downtown to an election night event with some friends to watch Barak Obama tear up that electoral map.  He will win, he must win…I won’t even think about the alternative.  Palin in the white house after McCain kicks?  No frickin’ way.

So sad to hear about President Obama’s grandmother dying today, on the eve of his historic victory.  I’m sure she’s watching and beaming with Pride.

I hope the Repubs don’t somehow manage to steal this election.  I worry about the electronic voting machines - just flip that switch and reverse the results!  I hope people in long lines don’t give up and go home.  I hope everyones gets out and votes…for Barak Obama!  The ones planning to vote for the Cryptkeeper and Caribou Barbie can stay home.

Happy Election Day, everyone!

Around 2003 I was approached by Bearfilms.com to do a porn movie.  A person with a pretty poor body image, I was flattered to be asked, and I said sure.  The bad body image wasn’t the only reason:  I have always liked porn - a lot - and wondered what it would be like to do a movie.  I also always had a kind of reverence for my porn idols/icons, especially Al Parker, Jack Radcliffe…the list goes on and on.  I appreciated them for baring themselves for my pleasure, and I also have always held the opinion that doing gay porn is (or was, back in the day at least) a bit of a political act.  A rejection of the rejection of the idea of gay sex, if you will.

My father had a consistently updated stack of porn magazines and 8mm films and, being a “latchkey kid”, I spent my hours between the time I came home from school and the time my parents came home from work examining this material.  It also came to my attention that most adults I knew, even the religious ones, had their secret stash of porn.  How did I know this?  Well…I was kind of a snoopy kid. 

So my fondness for erotica was established very early on. On the day of my 18th birthday, I went to my first porn theater.  Then I discovered the arcades and could go into those sticky-floored places and watch the old $.25 loops.  Not too long after that, I came out of the closet (1981), and VCR’s began commonplace in the homes of America, and with them, porn videotapes.  I watched just about every one I could get my hands on.  I rented a lot of them.  I have an encyclopedic knowledge of gay porn from the 70’s on.  And straight porn, too.

So when I was asked to do one, I thought…why not?  Porn is good, people like porn.  Everybody likes erotica, wether they admit it to others or not.  It provides an outlet for sexuality.  What’s wrong with it?

I know that a lot of people think porn is wrong, or dirty.  I’m sure that part of me still thinks it’s wrong and dirty…but I like that about it.  Porn is supposed to be dirty.  But wrong?  Where does the wrongness come in? The fact of having sex?  Or the the fact of photographing, recording people having sex?  It’s not wrong to have sex, it’s not wrong to photograph or record things.  Why is it that when you combine the two…suddenly something dirty and wrong has happened?

Another justification I had in my decision to go ahead and make naughty on camera, and this may be silly, but…just…the sheer number of people who have been in adult movies!  So many thousands of people have done it and there is always someone new appearing on the scene…what’s the big “diff” if I join that number?  Who’d even really notice? 

I don’t have much shame about having made “Bear Essentials”.  Or the other two, “Night Vision Party” and “Woofstrapped”. Or any of the Xtube videos I’ve made myself. Or the many photoshoots. I wouldn’t want my mother to know, simply because I think it would upset her greatly, not because I think I did anything wrong. (When I was twelve and the movie JAWS came out, there was a rear view of the hind-end of the actress in the very first scene as she runs across the beach towards the water - and her doom.  When I said something in reaction to seeing the woman’s naked butt, my mother stated that the actress “had no respect for herself”.  I didn’t really understand that.  Why did her showing her butt deny her any self-respect? Especially if she was confident enough of her ass to show it on the Silver Screen?)

Still, I feel judged by people.  I had a pretty good readership going on here at my blog, until I decided to make it a NSF, porn-related blog.  Readership fell off greatly.  I subsequently decided to can that idea and make it a PG (maybe R) rated blog again, but I have never gotten those readers back.  I have a Flickr page, and I see people I know who can post a picture of their big toe and get 50 hits and comments.  I get very few.  So I started putting up some of the erotic photos of me, probably just to get attention.  They do get some, but…then I start to feeling that nobody takes any of my other photography seriously.

I also think I made a big mistake by letting it slip to some members of the theater community that I have done some erotica…nobody’s ever called me out on it, really, but I think it may have hindered me getting more work.  I don’t know for sure.

I heard someone say once that, once you decide to show that part of yourself, it’s all anyone’s going to care about.  Have I made a big mistake by being such an exhibitionist?  The ship has certainly sailed, I can’t get that stuff back…but sometimes I think I should delete all the pictures, move somewhere where I’m not known and never speak of it again.  

I wonder if it’s part of the reason I spend almost every night alone, and lonely.  Maybe I need to re-invent myself as a G or PG-rated gay man, if I can.  

What do you think?

ONSTAGE at SPRING AWAKENING

I went back to see Spring Awakening again.  This time, I saw onstage with the cast and the band.  It was like watching a Broadway musical in a black-box theater.  One of the most dynamic experiences I have ever had in a theater.  The unspeakably talented cast was swirling all around me, they were so close I could see every facial twitch, watch their tears hit the floor…it was so great.  During the song “Left Behind” in Act 2, a funeral scene, my chin started quivering, and tears began streaming down my face.  Such a great musical.  Unforgettable.

FOUNTAIN

I hadn’t done any work on the play I’m writing, A Fountain Filled With Blood, since I started rehearsals for Prelude to A Kiss. and I was a little afraid to go back to it and re-read what has been written so far.  I was afraid it would be clunky and I would hate it and have to throw it all out. BUT…it turns out…it’s solid!  I was very happy with everything. I’ve added a character and changed some things.  Anyway, it’s coming right along.  Whoo hoo!

RIVER

Yesterday was a gorgeous, perfect Indian summer day here in Portland, and I was off, so I took my pretty ass down by the riverside.  To the nude beach at Sauvie Island to soak up the rays and wander in the bushes.  So nice.

Now you’re all caught up! My life is so exciting…hehe.