I’ve been systematically removing my artwork from Facebook whenever a “Facebook Memory” presents it to me, because I’m disgusted with the way its automatic censor handles other people’s artwork, as well as mine at least once. But I think I’ll leave this Work In Progress note up…

…at least for another year maybe…and also put it here too…because I don’t have any other copies of this particular piece in progress. And I’m still very happy with how this one-off turned out. I called it The Rain, The Park, And Other Kids, riffing on one of the ultimate 60s songs by The Cowsills (The Partridge Family TV show band was modeled after them). The cartoon about growing up gay in a world that refuses to acknowledge that gay kids like you exist, and you end up mentally changing some pronouns as you’re listening to the radio, so you can imagine the songs are speaking to you too.

Because those teenage feelings are pretty universal…

It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance.
-Vito Russo, author of The Celluloid Closet

…but the world around you tells you that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. And there you are anyway…crushing on a classmate, listening to all the pop tunes about being in love, and on the one hand those songs are making your heart sigh, and on the other they’re telling you that your feelings aren’t real because you’re never in them. At best you maybe got a few gender neutral songs. Eventually you gravitate to female vocalists who could sing songs about being in love with a guy and nobody thought anything about it and you could imagine yourself into those songs. Stevie Nicks. Carole King. Carly Simon. Janis Ian singing At Seventeen.

I’m certain The Cowsills never intended anything like that about their gay and lesbian audience. They were just writing and singing songs about their own lives as artists do. It was the music industry, and the culture at large, that decreed back in the 1960s that songs about gay love and romance were unfit for the airwaves. That said, The Cowsills did do one song that hit me so hard I wore out several 45 rpm copies playing it over and over: In Need Of A Friend.

While I was working on this cartoon I decided to do something out of the ordinary for me and try to get it published. But it seemed then that nobody was doing a gay comics anthologie like the one Howard Cruse began a few decades ago. I asked Howard if he could point me to someone who was and he graciously gave me a pointer to someone I could ask. He would give me lots of encouragement on A Coming Out Story. But when I asked the person Howard pointed me to about submitting this one, they politely told me to go away (just self publish it). So I ended up putting it on my website that nobody reads. It’s okay…at least I got it out of me.

I have another one like it in the works, but it’s a struggle to get it out of me now. I just don’t have the energy I used to. And if I am honest, the interest. I haven’t touched my cameras or the film I still need to develop in almost a year either. Grant Snider, who is light years better than me at getting his stuff out there, has one with Dickens three ghosts, only they’re the ghosts of creativity. The last one, the Ghost Of Creativity Past, is telling him “Nobody will remember you unless you make something lasting.” I saw it just now, right before I saw this Facebook Memory, and it kinda hit me.

Fear of being forgotten is not why you make art of course. that’s just another way artists have of tormenting themselves. Social memory is a tricky thing and often what is remembered isn’t what actually was. But it would be nice if the artwork has a life after mine. Probably it won’t, and I’m getting too tired to make more.

I take a retrospective look at some of my stuff (there’s a bunch of it here on the website) and I see that I was actually pretty good at it. Then I regret not making more of it. But I had no focus, and dragging an emotional ball and chain around with you all the time doesn’t help. I needed a friend. A boyfriend. I never found one.

I did what I could.

The first thing to know is I am not calling out any one heterosexual person in particular in this post. Especially those I know personally. Mostly. You’re all good people. Mostly. This isn’t about you. Mostly

And the pulpit I’m thumping here probably only really applies to my own generation, and maybe a couple nearby ones. It’s not the 1950s/60s/70s/80s anymore. If you read the social media posts about this or that fictional same sex couple, or same sex celebrity couple, what you see is very heartwarming…

Fan art of Will Solice and Nico di Angelo, characters from
Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson & The Olympians

There is a lot of acceptance and friendship waiting for us out there now. The usual bellyaching by the usual suspects too of course…but anyway…

So…with that out of the way…

Long, long ago, in a Facebook far, far away, a straight friend I’d known since my teenage years finally signed up and friended me. I’d met him at a Jesus kids coffee hangout in the basement of the Rockville Baptist church mom and I used to go to. Back in the 70s, when coming out to Anyone was a risky business regardless of how safe you thought they were, he was one of the very few I felt safe coming out to. He was straight, but seemingly comfortable with the fact of my homosexuality. He just gave off that I’m cool about it vibe.

But it was an illusion. He was comfortable with me as long as he didn’t have to see or hear evidence of my sexual orientation. Which was easy because I had no love life. There was nothing for me to talk about. Much. But it was when he would talk about his current girlfriend, and I would try to talk about my own struggles trying and failing to find a boyfriend, that his discomfort would become apparent.

Instead of pressing it, I wrote it off as a learning experience for him, and I thought that eventually he’d figure it all out. After all, I was taught the same horrible myths, lies, and superstitions about homosexuals he was, that everyone in my generation was, and I reckoned he just needed some time to work through how wrong all of that was, because I was living evidence of how wrong all that was. Not that I was this straight acting lumberjack kind of guy…

I was a little art and techno geek. But we come in all kinds of flavors. I figured he’d eventually get that. But…no.

Before social media we hung out together lots. Then, shortly after he friended me on Facebook, he defriended me. When I asked him why he said he didn’t want to see any of that “gay stuff” on his Facebook page. I was sad and disappointed, but by then not completely surprised.

Nominally I probably appear to be pretty low key about my sexual orientation. Put it down to the times I grew up and came of age in, and also being raised in a Baptist household. Perhaps I should have been more…FABULOUS. But I am geek tribe gay, not fabulous peacock tribe. And that comes with some unexpected difficulties beyond knowing you will never be one of the cool kids and your clothes will never fit quite right.

I’ve been documenting in cartoon form my own coming out story. There’s a point in the story I Still haven’t got to yet, where I finally figure, rightly, that it changed nearly nothing, except now I better understood why I had no interest in dating girls. In retrospect, had I known guys could fall in love with other guys and it was okay, I would have been all about it. In fact it was crushing hard on a classmate that made me realize how it was with me. But in 1971/72 what we got was a torrent of contempt, loathing and outright hate thrown at us from all directions. That, and the horrible sex ed class I’d had in 9th grade ,made me believe I couldn’t possibly be One Of Those Queers. So when it hit me it came at me all of a sudden. I fell in love and it was wonderful. But thinking about it I realized it didn’t really change anything about me. Still a long haired awkward art/techno geek. And that’s okay.

So from that point on I just let the fact of my sexual orientation rest loosely on my shoulders. What I eventually came to understand was that mindset confused some of the people around me. I didn’t “act gay”. I found that entire gay acting/straight acting concept offensive. We are not the stereotypes we are often imagined to be, and regardless studies have shown that given enough time people will figure you out no matter how “straight acting” you are or make yourself. In one of those studies volunteers were shown photos of the faces of a bunch of men and asked to identify the homosexuals. The volunteers were accurate much beyond random chance.

It shows. Somehow. The people you think you’re hiding that part of yourself from either already know, or at least will figure it out pretty quickly. So just be yourself…however fabulous or unfabulous that might be.

I recall a job interview I had once that I thought was going well until I saw a sudden change of expression in the HR person’s face. It was something that I’d become familiar with by then, that sudden realization that the person they were talking to was a homosexual. And at that point I knew I wasn’t getting the job. But given that reaction it was for the best.

The only thing closeting yourself accomplishes is a kind of internal self destruction. I’ve seen it. I’ve sworn I’d never let it happen to me. But when you raise a gay boy in a Baptist household they tend to get a bit…well…reserved about that whole dating and mating thing. It just comes with the territory. And some people in my life misinterpret that.

Besides the Baptist reticence about sex (y’all know that old joke about why Baptists don’t dance…right?), the fact was I never had a love life to be loud and proud about anyway. If I’d had a boyfriend Everyone would have seen just how gay Bruce is…all the open declarations of love, all the PDAs, the unambiguous acknowledgment of a sexual relationship, the silly couples t-shirts (I love you / I know).

Oh there were the occasional political fashion statements…a lambda necklace here, a rainbow t-shirt there. For a few decades I did political cartoons on the subject of gay civil rights, but that was for a local gay community newspaper which none of my straight friends ever read…because why would they? Among them I was always open about my political beliefs, which included a rock solid belief in gay equality. But about my own sex life I said very little, because there was very little to say apart from being lonely, and gay or straight Nobody wants to hear you talk about being lonely.

I remember the sister of a friend telling me once, approvingly no less, that I was a “discreet homosexual.” I told her I’m single and it’s very easy to be discreet about your love life when you don’t have one. But I’m pretty sure that went right over her head.

So I wasn’t hiding that part of me, and I wasn’t trying to be discreet. But all the same a number of straight friends from back in the day, and one or two classmates I’d had since I was a teenage boy, suddenly became shocked, shocked, at what a militant homosexual I really am, when they read my blog or my social media posts.

What…didn’t you Know?

My bad I guess.

Here’s something I’ve said many times:

A militant homosexual is a homosexual who doesn’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual. A militant homosexual activist is a homosexual who acts like they don’t think there is anything wrong with being a homosexual.

That’s it. That is all there is to it. You don’t have to march. You don’t have to wave your pride flag. You don’t have to be loud and proud. You just need to have that There Is Nothing Wrong With Me mindset. Because with that comes a willingness to stand up for yourself…the same as anyone else would.

Let me repeat that: The Same As Anyone Else Would.

That’s all it takes. Just stand up for yourself and suddenly you are a militant homosexual.

In retrospect, the problem was that apart from my blog, which nobody reads (Hi…thanks for reading my blog btw!), and my artwork, which nobody sees…

…nobody ever really had to see that side of me because I had no boyfriend and no love life. It was as if…okay Bruce is gay, but only theoretically so I don’t really have to know it for a fact.

And then they catch a glimpse of it…maybe I’m gawking at some beautiful sexy guy that walks past, maybe it’s a casual remark correcting someone about some myth about gay male sexuality, or they read something I posted online, and suddenly it’s OMG Bruce Really Is Gay…and I get static. Which I don’t think I deserve, but in a way maybe I had it coming. Maybe I should have been louder about it all the time. But I’m not good at faking a loud personality. I’m not stage, I’m stage crew.

I like to think I have good manners. I might steal some glances at cute guys who happen by but I won’t be rude about it, even among other gay friends, although when among them I might point and raise a toast (something I’d probably also do if I was among heterosexual women). In a room full of males traditionally regarded as handsome I might not even glance at any of them, because my libido is so damn picky. But glance I will if I see a beautiful sexy guy and then it’s obvious. Like my jaw dropping obvious. That’s just how it hits me.

I remember a moment years ago…I was working as a mailrooom clerk for a data processing firm, and that afternoon we were all having a celebratory lunch at a nice restaurant. I was seated across from my supervisor and his deputy. A Very Cute waiter walked by and turned my head. When I turned it back to the table I caught the tail end of this short conversation…

Deputy: “What’s one step beyond a tendency?”

Supervisor: “I don’t know…actually being one?”

Then they see me looking back at them and they shut up. The very next day I got laid off.

Because I have never really had a love life, plus having that very picky libido, it probably made it a bit too easy for some of my straight friends and acquaintances to ignore the fact of my sexual orientation. Many times I have dug in my heels and been out with it when one of those sudden moments of truth hit me in the face. I’m intensely proud of those moments too. But apart from that I’m pretty low key I reckon.

So if you are new to my circle it may not seem obvious, but sooner or later you will have to deal with it. And then I get to see How you deal with it. What I’m finding is, generally, younger people deal with it very well, and that is very gratifying. There is hope for this poor angry world after all.

So that straight friend who I’d known since my teenage years that I met at a Jesus kids coffee hangout back in the 70s, called me the other week to ask about my maybe doing some video photography work for him. Then he asked if I’d seen the cat video he posted here on Facebook. So I went to look but he’d set it to friends only. I had to remind him that he defriended me and I couldn’t look at it.

So he messaged it to me. But didn’t change his mind about friending me again.

I’m fine with people I used to know keeping me at arm’s length as long as they’re fine with my keeping them at arm’s length too. I told him I was okay with doing some casual video photography work for him, largely because my photographic eye has been tightly closed since the trip to California, and I thought maybe that would pry it open a bit. But I never heard back. I’m okay with that too.

They say when someone tells you who they are, believe them. But also, when they tell you how close they’re willing to be, to the person you actually are, eventually you have to let them be that. The mistake I think a lot of us make is we keep reaching out long after it’s obviously pointless. Looking back on it, for decades while I thought I was teaching some of them that things they learned about homosexuals were almost all wrong, they probably thought they were teaching me to be discreet.

But I’m 70 years old now, and I’m tired of talking to brick walls.

If you get comfortable enough with someone that you were willing to let them into your heart, and they either bail when they see what’s in there, or just start keeping you at arm’s length, or Worse…being a friend only so long as you keep yourself closeted…just let them go.

Grieve about it if you need to. Then get on with your life. Your authentic life. The life you’ve already taken a lot of risks to live honestly.

They openly admit now, that the plan is to use the tools of democracy to destroy our democracy. But here’s the thing: only the tools of democracy can sustain democracy.

Resist. Not just fascism, not merely the tyrant, but also the beast within. When you fight fire with fire, everything burns. Defend democracy.

sig·na·ture /?si?n?CH?r,?si?n??CHo?or/
noun

1. a person’s name written in a distinctive way as a form of identification.

2. a distinctive pattern, product, or characteristic by which someone or something can be identified.

Or in other words…

This sweet little cartoon about a gay boy’s first crush was finally released to the public July 2017 and became an instant worldwide hit. It was shortlisted for the academy awards best animated short but of course it wasn’t even nominated because John Wayne was still rolling in his grave about Brokeback Mountain.

Go see it Here.

What struck me…as it always does…about the comments, how they were all divided between the oh cute oh how sweet oh how darling comments from (gratefully) so many heterosexual viewers who were in this day and age finally getting it how gay kids have crushes and fall in love too, just like everyone else…and then also the comments about why are you forcing sex onto kids. There was not sex at all in the cartoon…not even so much as a kiss. But the negative comments were all about sex.

And there it is. Or as Vito Russo once wrote:

It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance.

The cartoon short was about a gay kid’s first crush. And it was like a Rorschach test for homophobia.

Some years ago when I began A Coming Out Story my intention was to do the artwork in the style of the old underground comix. It would be all ink line art with cross hatching instead of my usual charcoal shading. In addition to the object of my adolescent crush, Mom, and various friends whose names and faces I would change around a bit, I had a notion that my journey to sexual self discovery would also include three fantasy characters representing different aspects of my consciousness.

Left Brain and Right Brain would represent the art/spiritual versus the science/techno geek in me. Then, because this was a coming out story, there would be a character representing my libido. I visualized him as an unfailingly polite yet absolutely relentless nag who would be making me very anxious and irritated all through the story. Unlike the other two, who would only inhabit subconscious central, Libido would be able to interact with me in the real world, because he was a sudden pest whenever I least needed it.

And in the spirit of the underground comix I initially decided that he would embody as a naked version of me. Left Brain would embody as a stereotypical nerd with white business shirt, narrow tie and a pocket protector. Right Brain would be hippy child me with a flower in his long hair, a tie-dye t-shirt, bell bottoms and bare feet. But I figured Libido, because he represented my sexual self, had to be naked, just like nearly all my favorite underground cartoonists would sometimes represent themselves. To Hell with the comics code authority!

But as I began working out the first few episodes of the story, I kept feeling very uncomfortable about drawing myself naked. Let me see if I can illustrate that with a side story.

Back in sixth grade one day I arrived in class to see someone had written stuff on the big blackboard in the front of the classroom. It was some kids from the class ahead of us, who had gone on to Junior High (what they now call Middle School). They wrote a bunch of stuff on the blackboard to tell us what to expect because Junior High was a very different experience, according to them. Instead of just one classroom all day long, you went from this class room to that and each one taught a different subject. Also, there was no recess. But there was gym class.

My eyes came across the following verbiage: “Tell them not to worry about group showers, it’s no big deal.”

I could feel my jaw dropping. What?! WhAT??! WHAT!!!???

You might think a gay kid would be just delighted to shower naked with all the other boys, but I was in denial all the way to my senior year, and I never got past the embarrassment of showering with the others. I would just tune everything out. I love a good shower, especially after a lot of physical work. But I would just imagine I was the only one there and that got me through it.

And it’s a bit of a running joke in the story (and my life) about how mom and I would just avoid the subject of her boy’s emerging sexuality whenever it got dangerously close. To paraphrase Monty Python, are you embarrassed easily…I am…but don’t worry, it’s all part of growing up and being Baptist.

So there I am fretting about drawing my libido character as a naked me, but I felt I had to in order to respect the truth of my story, except it was too damn embarrassing to draw myself naked…but TRUTH…but…but…I just can’t do it…

..and then I realize…hey wait…that’s Truth. And I swear as soon as I thought that, the first four episodes of the story just immediately came to mind fully formed. And the punch line in that first episode is perfect; “I’m your libido, not Robert Crumb’s libido.” Yes…that.

And all this is a long drawn out way of saying that I’ve still been fussing with how to draw that cartoon riff on Randy Newman’s “You Can Leave Your Hat On” that I started about four years ago and couldn’t finish, because I couldn’t get comfortable with drawing the dancer in it naked but for the hat which they were told they could leave on. Last time I brought this cartoon up I said I was going to do it the way the song was written because TRUTH, instead of the way I started it which was to just let the dancer keep their tiny little briefs on. But no…TRUTH.

But I have my own truths to deal with, and this reticence about nudity and how to draw nudes is one of them. Maybe I’m a prude after all. Maybe this is what you get when you raise a gay boy in a Baptist household. But I dislike sexuality being turned into cheap push button entertainment and I would much rather be teased than doused with porn. Pornography is obvious. I like sensuality and romance, which is why porn never really did much for me. And there is a sweet sexy and romantic subtext that I see in that Randy Newman song. That is what I want to develop in the cartoon.

And I’m getting back to work on it because I think I see a way now, to respect the song’s truth and my own. An artist has to be faithful to their own truths or don’t even bother because it’s way too much work to be faking it.

Hoisted from today’s Facebook Memories…

On a “Worst First Date” challenge thread I see a story about a guy who met his date at the agreed upon restaurant and she never spoke a word the entire time, ate her food and left. Then he sees an earlier text message he missed from his date saying she couldn’t make it and could they reschedule, and now he’s wondering who it was he just fed.

I see a ghost story here…something along the lines of the trope about the hitch hiker or ride giving trucker who turns out to have been a ghost…but all this ghost does is eat your food and leave.

Oh…that was Eleanor, who died of starvation after waiting hours for the waiter to take her order…see, it was the shift change…oh yes, she’s a hungry one…

Why? Why on Earth?? When I have so many other things around the house that need doing.

So I’ve been doing some “downsizing” here at Casa del Garrett, mostly getting off of old computer manuals and documentation I will never need again (these go to recycling so at least the paper can have another life), plus some other items in my extensive (not kidding) library that I will probably never read again, and don’t seem likely to ever be reference material. I’m still trying to find a second hand book repository for these.

It began when I had to buy a new furnace/AC unit and had to move around a bunch of furniture for the contractors to work. That gave me an opportunity to clean in places that are otherwise hard to get at. In addition I had a duct cleaning done, which had probably not ever been done since the house was built, judging by what the duct cleaners found. So I had to move around a bunch of other furniture too. 

Before putting it all back, I decided to use the opportunity to do a little downsizing. The fact is I have too much Stuff. I’ve lived in this house since the summer of 2001, but moved into it with a lot of stuff I’d accumulated over the years. Much of that, like my hand and power tools, and all my spare parts, proved to be even more useful when owning a house than they were when I was living in apartments and the basement of friends. But I’d also managed to collect a pretty large library of books and LPs…a fact the movers probably didn’t appreciate since both are very heavy when boxed up. And I was already loaded with computer stuff, since I was by then making a living as a software engineer, which was what enabled me to buy a house of my own in the first place. And before that I was into computers partly as hobby, partly as a means of communicating over a modem. When I discovered modems and BBSs I dove into it. That led me to volunteering on a local gay BBS, and that led me to my first jobs writing software.

Which brings me to this. It’s an IBM PS2 Model 80…the top of the PS2 line once upon a time. My first big W-2 software gig was at Baltimore Gas and Electric Home Products and Services, which was an exclusively IBM worksite The big iron downtown was all IBM, and in the offices where I worked everything on the desktops was a PS2…usually a model 50. or 55. So when I came across this model 80 for sale at a computer flea market years later, I was already pretty familiar with them. 

Poor thing has just sat in my basement storage area for over a decade, beside an Apple PowerMac G5 I bought for the art room and eventually replaced with an Intel based Mac Pro. As I began deciding what to downsize around here, I looked at both of those computers and the space they were taking up. It seemed ridiculous to just be holding onto them when I knew I’d probably never need either one ever again. But I didn’t want to just take them to the city recycling place. This wasn’t like giving up an old VCR or TV…both those machines were the top of their lines back in the day. I knew some collector would want them both. But how to find them good homes? 

And the more I thought about the PS2, the more I remembered the days of DOS and how the advent of the personal computer seemed to open up fantastic new worlds…worlds which, surprisingly I found I could navigate pretty easily. I didn’t have a college degree in computer science and wasn’t likely to ever get one since I had no money for college. No matter in retrospect. Computer logic just seemed to click with me.

Long before that first job, and those first days volunteering at G.L.I.B. (The Gay and Lesbian Information Bureau) I discovered I could build my own IBM PC compatible from parts. There was no way I could afford an actual IBM PC, but I could buy a part here and a part there until I had all that I needed. I remember after I built that first IBM compatible and got it to boot, just sitting on the edge of my bed staring at the monitor with it’s 640k memory test still on the screen and an ‘A’ prompt (that first computer initially booted PC-DOS from a floppy disk) and looking at the blinking caret in something like awe. Until that moment my computer was a little Commodore C64. Now I had a Serious computer…and IBM no less. Well…a pretty good copy since it booted genuine PC-DOS, not the more generic MS-DOS. This was no toy. This was International Business Machines serious business. I sat there for I don’t know how long stunned at the awesome computing power I suddenly had at my control. What have I got myself into…

Well…what I’d got myself into, though I didn’t know it then, was a career that would pull me out of near poverty and eventually into the space program. Walt Disney was fond of saying his success story all began with a mouse. Well mine began with a boot to DOS. And I rode it all the way to the James Webb Space Telescope Mission Operations Center and Integration and Test Lab.

So that PS2 machine had more of my life wrapped up in it than the PowerMac by light years. I began to wonder if I could just find a place for it in my den where I could work on it again as a kind of hobby.

I tried booting it the other day and it threw a couple error codes that I needed to look up, but I was pretty sure what they were. The PS2s need a small internal battery to maintain their configuration memory and the one in mine had likely died many years ago. It’s a simple fix…replace the battery and boot with the configuration disk and restore your configuration. But while Googling the error codes I discovered there are hobbyists out there who love to work on these machines. And they know where you can get parts. So that notion of keeping the PS2 as a hobby became lots more attractive.

So I got it running again and I’m just going to let it run for now and see what I can make of it. See if I can give the PowerMac to a good home later. 

And try to get all my other stuff around the house done. I still have a lot of Stuff to sort through and decide what to get off of, and what to keep. It’s going to take weeks, but I’m 70, on retirement income, and I need to simplify. 

I went to the little whiskey bar just off The Avenue yesterday evening. It would be a favorite place except it’s only open Friday and Saturday evenings. But in a way that only helps it maintain a speakeasy vibe. It’s halfway below sidewalk level in the Bluebird Lounge building, and it has some of the same menu items as the Bluebird. The bartenders there make the best Old Fashioned I have ever had.

As I’m sitting off to the side in one of the nice leather club chairs, two skateboard kids come in and sit down at the bar. They’re served drinks so they must be at least 21, and otherworldly though they are they look kinda cute to my eye. I say “otherworldly” partly because of the tats (arms and legs), the hairstyles (man bun on one, long, very long dreadlocks on the other), the t-shirt logos, and the stickers all over their skateboards. They live in a different world from the one my inner 20-something still lives in. Generally I am not in favor of tats. Naked skin has it’s own mysterious beauty. But these two are very cute. I wonder if they’re a couple.

I keep trying to remember to bring a book to read with me when I go to this place. Cellular reception down here below sidewalk level is very bad. But I don’t want to be distracted by social media today, so I do something I’ve done ever since I was a small boy; I withdraw into my own private world. I have some artwork I want to think about, and some stories I want to eventually write. I sit there savoring my old fashioned and think about what I need to do to get my darkroom live again. I think about the process of downsizing all the Stuff in my house. Do I really want to get rid of all those Microsoft Developer’s Network CDs I have. Maybe I should put that old IBM PS2 Model 80 in storage, along with the PowerPC Mac Pro. Am I ever going to boot either of those up again?

Occasionally I pop back into the real world to sip my old fashioned, look the bar menu over again (am I hungry now?), and steal some glances at the two younglings at the bar. Every now and then I see the one with the bun stealing a curious glance back at me. Probably I strike a very weird old man drinking whiskey and staring off into nowhere vibe. Actually I’ve probably carried that vibe with me all my life.

I see them chat easily with the bartenders and other Bluebird staff that come and go. So they are either regulars or friends of the staff there. Scruffy as they are I can tell they’re not homeless street kids. Their clothes have that clean but tattered look that is too deliberate to be the result of poverty. It is style. Their skateboards are well worn. Probably they were at the skateboard park across Falls before they came here.

Then the kid with the bun takes down his man bun…and a full head of long, luxurious hair flows down around his neck and over his shoulders. I’m stunned. What the hell are you doing tying all that up into a bun for chrissakes! You’re beautiful! Don’t do that to your hair! Let it be free! But that’s not the world they live in. And I can only observe from outside.

Kids these days…

I could swear I saw a ghost just now. But no…for one thing I’m pretty sure ghosts aren’t real (good props for story telling though…). No…most likely just a striking resemblance to someone I once knew long, long ago, in a Rockville far, far away…

Stay golden George…

I’m reading a Vanity Fair article about a young photographer for the Daily Express who was assigned in January 1964 to tag along with The Beatles as they went on tour, first in France and then on to their first tour in the US.

These couple paragraphs of the article really took me back. The band is in Paris and the photographer, Harry Benson, has to get his photos back to the paper in London for the paper’s next daily edition. This was Way before digital cameras and the Internet…

That evening they knocked about in the suite again. But my day didn’t end when the Beatle’s day ended. Every night I’d stay up in my hotel bathroom, developing and printing pictures, so the Express could pick one to run in the paper. I’d use gaffer’s tape to seal any openings around the door, wedge towels under the door, and put a bedsheet on the floor to kneel on. In the pitch dark, I’d put the exposed rolls of black-and-white film in little tanks with D-76 developer, usually spilling developer all over the place. I’d hang the rolls of negatives on the shower rack to dry. I ruined more toilets developing my photographs than I can count.

I’d then put my enlarger on the commode. I’d choose the best frames, print them wet, then fix them with fixer in a small tank. When you flipped the light on, you’d see a hellish mess: your hands and bedsheet stained yellow. You used the bathtub to wash the prints and negatives, drying them with a hair dryer. By then it’s 5am. You’d set up a transmitter and attach it to the bedroom phone and send three or four “selects”; it would take about eight minutes to transmit each picture.

I’m assuming the transmitter worked along the same principle as a radio fax machine. Those would have been international dialing costs, plus hotel dialing charges, and all that even more astronomical when they got to the US. But his newspaper would have gladly paid for all of it along with the other travel expenses given how popular The Beatles already were. That was how you did it back in the 1960s. It would have been how you did it all the way up to the 1980s and the first personal computers and modems I think.

I remember developing my photos in the one bathroom in the apartment mom and and I shared. I don’t remember making that much of a mess and I’m guessing it’s because this guy wasn’t familiar with working in a darkroom, but would just hand off his rolls to the newspaper darkroom guys. If you’re in the darkroom you’re not out in the field getting some shots. Also, I think the Brits make a distinction between “toilet” and “commode” but I’m not sure what it is. I remember setting up my enlarger on the toilet seat. When it came time to make prints I had my trays positioned in and around the bathroom sink. I had a plastic tub with a hole I’d drilled into it that I put my prints in to be washed under the bathtub faucet. I’d hang blankets around the bathroom door to light proof it. For printing I had a safelight I’d attached to the wall above the clothes hamper.

I still have some of that equipment down in the darkroom I’ve made out of the basement bathroom in my house today, including that safelight. Much better enlarger though.

His process seems weird. I can see printing wet given his deadlines. But printing negatives “wet” should only be do-able After fixing because the fixing part of the process takes the unexposed silver nitrates off the film. If you look at film after developing but before fixing (use stop bath!!!!!) you can see the negative in there but the rest of it is milky white because that’s the silver nitrates that weren’t developed because they were not exposed to light. Fixer takes that off the film and now you have a negative you can print.

His film tank should have allowed him to turn on the lights after it was loaded and then he can see what he’s doing pouring the chemistry in and out. I’m wondering what sort of camera he used, but it was a roll film camera of some sort, so I don’t understand why he didn’t have a light proof tank with him that he needed to develop his rolls in total darkness and splash developer everywhere (the Nikor tank was patented in 1937). “By the 1960s the Nikor tanks and reels were pretty much the industry standard.” There were tanks and reels back then for 35mm and 120 roll film. He would have still needed either total darkness or a safelight to print. If he’s printing in total darkness I can see him splashing chemistry everywhere. In the article he doesn’t talk any about the equipment he used and I can understand why since the focus was on being there when The Beatles were just becoming huge. But I’ve done film developing since I was a teenage boy and I have questions.

But…obviously he knew what he was doing because he got his shots and got them back to the paper. And he had the tenacity I didn’t have to make it in that incredibly competitive world…especially since it was a Fleet Street paper he worked for. And he got some of the earliest shots of The Beatles as they were on the cusp of becoming huge, embedded with them on their first tour in the US. Weird as his process was he has my respect, and a maybe more than a little envy.

I got up early for my morning coffee walk through the neighborhood. It was 5:30am and the air outside already had that sort of morning humidity that tells you the rest of the day is going to be brutal. 

As I write this it’s only just past 8am and already it’s too hot for 70 year old accustomed to air conditioning me to be out and about. At least on foot, the car has air conditioning. Which came in handy when I took a quick grocery run at 6:30 am. It was about as hot then as you’d expect at 10am. Though the grocery store is only a ten minute walk from the house I drove it because I wanted to bring back some distilled water for the darkroom.

I used what morning time I had before the heatwave to finally put out the last of the solar garden stuff. Well…except for the little solar beach trailer that suddenly stopped lighting up a couple nights ago. I’ll need to take that apart and see what I can accomplish. I ran a voltmeter across the solar cell and it’s producing electricity, but the on off switch was a little sketchy when I first tested it and it might have failed. I can replace the guts of it if it comes to that and it’s work I can do indoors.

I can water my flowers later in the day, which won’t keep me outside for more than a few minutes.

Meantime I’m sorting through a bunch of old computer books I probably don’t need to hold onto anymore. That’s also indoor work.

I’m going to be basically trapped inside all weekend here in Charm City. Tomorrow and Sunday they’re calling for 100 degree plus temperatures and with our mid Atlantic humidity it’s going to be brutal. I have a new high efficiency AC/Furnace system in the house so there’s that. But with the stress this weekend on the electrical grid I worry about brownouts and power outages happening. Now we get to see if BGE sized the feeds for the new rowhomes around here adequately. My plan B is to go get a motel room if it comes to that. But I would really rather my perishables in the fridge and chest freezer didn’t perish. 

Stop! You’re breaking my heart!

This was the view in my front yard just now.

There were two of them, munching away on the ground cover. Bon Appétit! My lawn cutter doesn’t do the front because of the steep hillside. Would you like dressing with that salad? Some croutons maybe?

Life in the big city…who knew?

On June 12, 2016, a madman hopped up on religious zealotry and armed with a military assault style rifle, a nine millimeter handgun and multiple clips full of military grade ammunition entered the Pulse nightclub, a gay discothèque, killed 49 people and was himself killed by the police. Statements the perpetrator made during the attack indicated it was in retaliation for US bombings in the middle east, but his singling out a gay nightclub for the attack cannot be swept under the carpet as coincidence or simply due to the venue’s alleged lack of security (there was a security guard stationed at the front door, whom the attacker evaded by going in a side door). The man was said to have been angered by the sight of a gay male couple holding hands, and his own father had taunted him homophobically. There is no doubt in my mind, and in the community at large, that homophobia played a decisive role in the attack, regardless of his other motivations.

I had to resist the urge to call my former high school crush just to make sure he was okay. This was only a few months after his family found out he was talking with me again and the notice came down not to contact him in any way shape or form (how do you contact someone with a shape?). I’ve often wondered if he worried that I might have been there, because I visited Orlando often, mostly to go to Disney World, or how I was feeling when I heard the news. But the next day I posted my thoughts on it on this blog, which he always insisted that he never reads, so he would have known.

I’d previously scheduled a July 4th vacation at Disney World, so I was there just a few weeks after the attack. I couldn’t do Gay Days that year because of the schedule at work, but federal holidays were usually good times to request vacation. Driving into the city that week I saw billboards everywhere expressing grief and solidarity with the LGBT community. The entire city seemed to be in shock.

It changed everything.

Before this Disney was keeping Gay Days at arm’s length, and whenever the usual suspects started bellyaching about it they’d say they’re in the hospitality business and everyone is welcome. When I was there after the attack I was wearing my rainbow Mickey pin. It wasn’t the actual Pride rainbow, it was the Peace Rainbow that some United Nations group created. But it was close enough to the Pride rainbow that lots of us wore in in the parks during Gay Days and everyone knew what it was supposed to signify. As I wandered inside the parks every now and then a Cast Member would notice the pin and start a conversation with me about what happened at Pulse. It seemed everyone had to talk about it, because they were all in shock. We were a community in shock.

And so I heard the stories…horrible, horrible stories. And I am certain all that shock and horror went all the way from the cast members and vendors and managers to the boardroom. Because they would all have had family, friends, co-workers, who they were frightened for that night.

The commercial media does a really bad job of explaining to the rest of the country the venomous hate directed at us. Because that would be taking sides in what the media boardrooms regard as a partisan argument, and anyway in that mindset we’re still a perversion best left unspoken of during family time. That day everyone in the country saw the hate for what it was, but especially the people of central Florida. And it wasn’t just that the people who died either were, or could easily have been, a family member, a friend, a co-worker, they saw all the gleeful contempt for the dead and wounded afterward by local preachers and republican pundits and politicians. Some publicly expressed regret they weren’t all killed that night. They saw the right wing politicians that kept insisting that regardless of what happened, the homosexual menace had to be fought for the sake of god and family. And in that one moment they saw, clearly saw, all of them for what they were.

And all that corporate keeping us at arm’s length changed decisively afterward.

A year later on the anniversary, at the end of the day in Magic Kingdom, they turned the lights off of Cinderella’s castle and had a 49 second moment of silence for the victims. The year after that an entire line of actual Pride rainbow merchandise appeared.

This year, DeSantis ordered all the bridges in Florida to only display red, white, and blue lights from the end of May to the middle of July, allegedly to salute our veterans. Hahahaha…no. Notice how his order blocks out the entire month of June, not July. It was to prevent displays of the Pride rainbow. The people see you Ron. And you republicans in the Florida statehouse. We saw all of you on the night of June 12, 2016. And in the days that followed.

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) – Walt Disney Company is donating $1 million to a fund established by Orlando officials to help people affected by the nightclub shooting.

Disney officials also said they would match dollar-for-dollar individual contributions by the company’s employees to the OneOrlando fund, established by Mayor Buddy Dyer following Sunday’s shooting that killed 49 people and wounded 53 others.

Disney has about 74,000 employees in the Orlando area, which is home to its Walt Disney World resort. Disney also lost an employee, or Cast Member, in the shooting. The name of Jerald Arthur Wright, 31, was added to the victims list on Monday.

“We mourn the loss of one of our own Cast Members, Jerry Wright, as well as others within our extended Disney family, and we offer our most heartfelt condolences to their families, friends and loved ones as well as all who were affected by yesterday’s senseless acts,” said George A. Kalogridis, President of Walt Disney World Resort.

The FBI’s director has said the agency is trying to determine whether the Orlando nightclub shooter had recently scouted Walt Disney World and other locations as potential targets.