[New And Improved!]

I’ll endure a lot of things, but after I’ve worked so hard to earn a person’s trust a thin skin isn’t one of them.

So I see Gideon Sundbäck, the inventor of “Hookless No. 2”, essentially the modern metal zipper, was born today. And everyone who hits Google this morning will learn that fact too. Well most everyone. There will be some out there just as discomposed about it all as I and never work up the nerve to pull on that zipper.

I sat there for several minutes staring at the Google doodle not sure what to do, looked around to make sure none of my office mates could see, then finally went ahead an unzipped it, slightly embarrassed about the whole thing. Laugh at me, I was raised in a Baptist household. I never touched the zipper on Sticky Fingers either when they were real ones, deeply embarrassed that I was even tempted by it.

[Update…] The Christian Science Monitor reports that the zipper had a hard time catching on and notes…

Despite the devices attributes, the public was not receptive,” writes fashion historian Ronald Knoth. “The pulpit decried, ‘The Hookless Fastener’ as ‘the Devils fingers,’ [because it made it easier] to remove clothing with autonomy.

Saw it coming did ya?   And so as the years went by, the sound of zippers unzipping began to play in the background of every adolescent’s daydreams…

As I often do, I posted the last couple sketches here onto my Facebook page with a brief explanation…

I’m finding suddenly that technical pencil and a graphite stick work pretty well for me on these sorts of sketches. If I tweak the contrast up in Photoshop they almost look inked but they aren’t. Just pencil and graphite drawn on layout paper, then scanned in.

The models for these are mostly taken from fashion spreads I find here and there online and in magazines, like Out, Details and GQ. I have a filing cabinet folder full of poses I tore out of magazines I use as a reference. When I get in the mood to do one of these sorts of sketches I dig up a pose I like, do a rough sketch of the body, then just add whatever face, hair and clothes to it that come to mind.

It’s probably not as good as sketching from life would be but it’s the best I can manage. If I had it to do all over again I’d move mountains to be able to afford art school.

A friend there responded that I could always hire a model. But that doesn’t fit into how I work on these.   When I do a political cartoon I do almost the entire thing in my head before I even touch pencil to paper.   I know with a pretty good certainly what I want to see on the paper when I begin drawing it out.   But these drawings of beautiful guys are more like daydreams.   As I said in the previous post, the wistful daydreams of a single guy, who has been single just about all his life.

I wouldn’t know where to even begin with a professional, or even an amateur model. What I have are file cabinet folder full of pages I’ve torn over the years from fashion spreads in magazines like Out, Details and GQ.   I use those as a reference when I sit down to a little sexy sketching.   I do a rough of the body in the photo, and then I work on it, firming up the lines, moving them a tad here and there to get the body shape I want.   I add face, hairstyle and clothes purely from my imagination. I have done this for so long now I have no idea how I would work with a model.

When I was a lot younger…about the age of the guys you see me drawing here, I had a small group of friends I would hang out with and I would snap photos of them.  But I don’t have anyone that age in my local group of friends now, for pretty obvious reasons, and even if I did, they’d be of their own time and place and I strongly doubt I could talk any of them into dressing like they’d just stepped out of the 1970s. So those days are gone to me and with them I guess pretty much the last opportunities I would ever have to draw from life in a way that would be both helpful and inspiring. I might see spontaneous things and snap away with my camera, or if someone was patient enough, I’d ask them to pose. But that isn’t the life I have.   If I’d had a boyfriend I’d have probably driven him nuts by now with all my sudden requests to pose while we were out and about. But that wasn’t the life I had.

My art sketches, as you can plainly see, are mostly young twenty-somethings. If you look closely what you see is they’re from a time when I was that age too. I’m stuck. I think this is what happens when you don’t connect, miss out on that chance for first love. You get stuck in a passage of life you were always meant to move on from. That dating and mating thing is part of the maturity process and when you fail at it a part of you gets stuck in that younger mindset, that once upon a time frame. Yes, a part of you does go on to some sort of maturity. You get a job, you enter the workforce, you start earning a living on your own, and accumulate responsibilities in the normal course of life. And you learn to fulfill those responsibilities, be dependable, because others at your workplace depend on you. You earn trust, you manage your finances, you gain various kinds of life experience and it grows you inside. All but one life experience. All but one so very vital life experience. And so a part of you does not get that chance to grow.

And yes, it’s not a completely dire fate. Keeping that youthful mindset keeps a part of you inside awake that too many adults let go to sleep. You ask questions the middle age guy might shrug off. You stay curious, open to new ideas, willing to turn the box upside down, never mind think outside of it, just to see what happens when you do that. So many of my generational peers are still afraid of computers and the Internet and the new technologies, so afraid of being left behind, and to me the fact that the world is constantly changing before my eyes, growing, getting bigger, is the same feeling it always was back in grade school. Something I have learned from being stuck, is that there is no such thing as growing up…there is only growing.

And if you’ve gotten on with the business of life with your eyes open, both to the inner and outer world, then you know well that a younger lover would not get you unstuck. What I need is someone my own age, or nearby. Someone who remembers what the world was like when John Lennon was still alive, before personal computers, cell phones and the Internet. Before cable TV and twenty-four hour cable TV news and over the horizon line was a beautiful tempting mysterious other world only expensive long distance phone calls could penetrate before the six o:clock news or the morning newspaper. Back when cars had lots of chrome and the teachers passed out assignment papers that smelled of mimeograph fluid and Jimi Hendrx played on the radio, not Rush Limbaugh. I could be a kid again with that guy. I could find my way to the rest of growing up that I missed out on.

Maybe then my artwork would grow up a little too. Or go in some different direction that I would have never known or suspected was even there had I not, finally, found my lover, and had my eyes opened to things I’d only imagined before, but never really knew anything about.

[Edited a tad for clarity in a few spots…]

Here’s a little something for the (according to my server logs) fans of my sketches of cute guys in cutoffs. They’re just wistful daydreaming on my part…I had no idea anyone really liked these. But while I was on vacation my web site got Google hits from people specifically looking for my name and cutoffs. Wow. I may be no Tom of Finland (whose males I never found attractive but I was in awe of his skill with a pencil) but I could do worse then be known for drawing beautiful guys in cutoffs.

Normally you Google for images of nice looking guys in cutoffs and what you get are a lot of pictures of guys who really shouldn’t be wearing these at all, which people post as a way of ridiculing cutoffs…or at any rate, cutoffs on guys. Yes, yes…you need the physique for it…but lotsa guys have that and in any case the ridicule isn’t about guys who have no fashion common sense, it’s about reenforcing the male fear of looking too sexy below the waste because that’s teh gay.

When I was a young adult this look wasn’t uncommon even on straight guys (though admittedly straight guys didn’t usually wear them quite This short…) and I guess my emerging libido just glommed onto it. But damn I like this look and I reckon I’ll just keep drawing it…

If this means I’m stuck in the past so be it. As I said, these are just the random wistful daydreams of a single guy. If you like them then I’m happy. If you think they’re ridiculous then go away.

Every now and then, like yesterday morning I run into a fellow American who has spent time in Germany.  When I tell them I want to visit there someday they all tell me I should definitely go.  They always say Germany is a really great place and their time there was just wonderful.  And if some of their time was spent in Bavaria, I always ask them what Bavaria is like compared to the rest of Germany.  And the first thing they always say about Bavaria is that it is a Very Conservative part of Germany.  Also, generally very expensive to live in.  But Very Conservative is always the first thing that comes to their minds, when it comes to Bavaria.  Not just conservative, but Very Conservative.

So I’m guessing it would probably be hard to be a gay kid there.  Or to be a gay kid whose family is from there.

On the other hand, it’s hard for gay kids here in the U.S. too, in some states.  The mostly rural conservative states anyway.  You see a lot of them who have fled to the more liberal, tolerant states or cities to get away.  But it’s hard to get away from your family.  Those kids, they always have the most difficult time of it, even when they’re out and proud and living in the gay ghettos.  What happens is they just learn to live with the stress of family relationships and move on with their lives.  Because one way or another it’s going to be hard.  Everyone who comes out of the closet does so knowing what is on the other side of that closet door.  So you might as well just be yourself.  You can’t please everyone.  But you can be real.

That’s something I learned ages ago, ironically well before I entered adolescence and found myself having to deal with being gay.  See…mom’s family positively hated dad, and dad’s family.  After my parents divorced when I was about two, mom moved me back across the country and I grew up here in Maryland instead of California (which I will probably go to my grave regretting except for the fact that I met you).  And since I had dad’s face, I got a lot of flack growing up just for being his son.  Stinking Rotten Good-For-Nothing Garrett Just Like Your Pap was grandma’s favorite name for me (where mom couldn’t hear it), even though I was a pretty well behaved kid.  But I had his face, and grandma hated dad, and I was handy.  So I caught the flack.  And gay people catch a lot of flack too, simply because we are handy.

So you see, when I turned seventeen and came out to myself I’d already had a childhood knowing that some people would hate me just for something I was and couldn’t help being.  But I knew I was loved too.  Mom never let me doubt that.  So much as it distressed me, I just learned to live with the fact that grandma and others just didn’t like me because I was my father’s son and I would never change that, and I got on with my life.  Mom loved me.  I knew I was loved.  I knew I could be loved.  That was all I needed to grow up on.

Here’s what gay people know: strangers can gay bash you, beat the living crap out of you, take your life from you, but only relatives can chew your heart up and spit it out.  What we learn from it is this: your family are the people who love you just as you are.  That’s the real family you have.  Everyone else is just a relative.

Just a fact.

So Zimmerman is out of touch. Nobody could have predicted this obviously.   Here’s my two cents: What I have been seeing, admittedly from a distance and in second third and forth hand telling, is a man who is fundamentally stupid in some ways, has anger problems, but is remarkably quick witted.

Consider: if he shot that kid after he had him down on the ground and the kid was crying out for help, and then told the first witness on the scene that he was the one crying for help, that says a lot.   A very disturbing lot.   Stupid people can still be very quick witted like that.   Especially if they’ve had a lot of practice at it.   My hunch is he’s been good up until now at getting away with things.   And this time his lack of internal brakes finally took him into a very bad place and he’s out of his depth and now he’s afraid.

This is what I see…from a distance…second, third and forth hand…take it for what it’s worth: He was never hiding from black anger.   He knew what he did that day.   He knew.   It’s been replaying in an infinite loop over and over again in his thoughts.   What he did.   What could happen to him if people find out.   The public posturing is that he is afraid of black revenge.   No.   He has been in hiding all this time from the law.   It isn’t black anger he’s afraid of.   It’s the Florida gas chamber. Remote as that possibility may be in actuality, because let’s face it, the kid was black and this is Florida, it’s been looming over him ever since he pulled the trigger.   Pulled the trigger on a teenaged boy who was crying desperately for anyone to come help.   He knows what he did that night.

This sudden escape…his attorneys backing out…I’m guessing there is evidence out there that is terrifying him right now and that these lawyers just don’t want their names remembered in what is to come.

[Update…] I’m reading now that Florida special prosecutor Angela Corey may charge Zimmerman as early as today.   This is interesting:

Corey has indicated in recent weeks that she might not need a grand jury to bring charges against Zimmerman.

My hunch here since Zimmerman’s lawyers announced they lost contact with him has been that there is evidence out there that he hoped or trusted the Standford police would simply ignore once he claimed a “stand your ground” defense.   Then the shooting of Trayvon Martin became national news and that evidence is still out there and it is terrifying him.   I think Corey saying she did not need a grand jury to press charges is indicative that she has that evidence. Of course I could be spectacularly wrong about all of this.   Like everyone else in the nation (except Zimmerman and Corey) I know what I know many steps removed from the actual evidence.   But this seems to fit.   Also this from Zimmerman’s former lawyers:

Lawyers Craig Sonner and Hal Uhrig on Tuesday expressed concern about Zimmerman’s emotional and physical well-being, saying he has taken actions without consulting them. They also said they do not know where Zimmerman is.

“You can stop looking in Florida,” Uhrig told reporters. “Look much further away than that.”

At a guess…he’s no longer in the country.   His father is a retired judge.   Be interesting to know if Zimmerman’s former lawyers had any talks with the father before they bailed.

[Update…]   I’m reading now that in Florida you can’t charge someone with first degree murder without a grand jury indictment.   So whatever Corey has, or thinks she does, it seems it’s not enough for that.

Thing is…she would know what a high hurtle she is facing because of “stand your ground.”   If it’s not a serious charge with evidence to back it up then it may as well be no charge at all.

[Update…] He’s in custody so I hear, which means he didn’t flee so far after all.   Why is lawyers lost contact with him and one of them said “look much further away” beats me.   But he has a new lawyer who I’m hearing was calling “stand your ground” a license to murder just a few days ago.   But a good lawyer defends their client regardless of personal belief or they don’t take that client on.   Zimmerman is charged with second degree murder, which as I understand it in Florida is you didn’t plan it, but you did it deliberately nonetheless.   I’ve heard nothing so far about the evidence she has.

I’m wondering what the autopsy showed.   I keep hearing that Trayvon Martin was found face down on the grass.   The witnesses say they saw, unclearly, two figures, one on top of the other and then there was a shot.   One witness, who was later “corrected” by the police says she saw Zimmerman on top and then heard two shots.   So did the autopsy show that Martin was shot in the back?   Was the bullet found?   Was it in the ground below Martin or somewhere else?   Did Corey spend all this time knowing the evidence at least supported second degree murder but trying to find evidence to support first degree murder and she decided she could not successfully prove that much?

Roy Edroso writes gleefully about the argument Andrew Sullivan and Rod Dreher are having about what it means to be a good Christian. I won’t go into detail about it here, you should just go read Roy’s post over at Alicublog. But (since I can’t post comments over there because the JS-Kit commenting engine he uses is just too goddamned cranky) I want to just take note of one thing that leaped out at me. This is Dreher speaking…

It’s interesting how so many liberal Christians accuse conservatives of being obsessed with sex, yet so much of their own writing and activism focuses on sex and sexuality, especially homosexuality.

In case you missed it, Dreher is saying right there that whenever you talk about Teh Gay you are talking about sex. Equal marriage rights for gay couples? Sex. Protecting gay people from discrimination in the workplace? Sex. Anti-bullying campaigns in the schools to protect gay kids? Sex. The horrific rise in anti-gay violence in recent years? Sex.

But no, he’s not obsessed with sex.   He’s a bigot who can’t see the people for the homosexuals. He is a man who simply cannot grasp that homosexuals might have lives too, apart from their bedroom shenanigans, just like the heterosexuals do. Heterosexuals have lives, homosexuals have sex.

Remember, this is the guy who wrote an entire post off of a news story about a man surviving the home invasion massacre that killed his entire family, to vent about how shocked he was to discover “a bisexual culture” in East Texas.   No he’s not obsessed with sex, he’s a bigot. His hated other is that ingrown hair, that burr under his saddle, that itch he just can’t scratch. Everything he reads that even remotely touches on gay people, even the massacre of an entire family, becomes a story about sex because that is all homosexuals amount to.   He is not obsessed with sex.   He’s obsessed with homosexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexsexuals.

To the gentleman about my own age in the bar I was just in who got Very friendly with me while I was trying to enjoy my crabcakes and a drink: No, you are not the married man who has permission to hit on me.   And no, I don’t care if your wife is cool about it either.

I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated, “all my homosexual patients
are quite sick”, to which I finally replied “so are all my heterosexual patients.”
-Ernest van den Haag, psychotherapist

There is nothing wrong with homosexuals.   That is a simple statement of fact.   Not opinion.   Fact.   Well researched, well established, scientific fact. And it has been well established fact for quite a very long time.   If you were born in the 1960s or later, then this fact is older then you are.

Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin writes…

Study of 100 Homosexuals: 1957. There had been a string of high profile arrests of very prominent and well-known men in Britain in the early 1950s, including Lord Montagu, his cousin, Maj. Michael Pitt-Rivers, and journalist Peter Wildeblood,  all of whom had been charged and convicted of homosexual offenses. Their arrests opened the debate over whether homosexual acts between consenting adults should remain criminalized.

So in 1954 a study was convened under the leadership of Lord Wolfenden whose name would later be attached to a report recommending the complete decriminalization of homosexual relationships among consenting adults in Britain.   And how did they come to this conclusion?   Well they didn’t consult the bible, and they didn’t ask the prejudices of their day.   They did something positively unique for that day when it came to the subject of homosexuality.

They looked for evidence.

One problem with the published research on gay men was that virtually all of it was based on clinical or criminal populations, which Curran and Parr acknowledged would not necessarily be representative of the general population of gay men. In their report, they acknowledged that their sample would likely exhibit higher rates of psychiatric problems or criminal recidivism. But when they looked into the files of these 100 men who had been referred to their practice, the authors observed:

…[I]n spite of the probability that any group of homosexuals referred to a psychiatrist might be expected to be heavily weighted in the direction of psychiatric abnormality, no fewer than 51 % were considered to be free from gross personality disorder, neurosis, or psychosis during their adult lives. Only one was certifiably defective and none certifiably insane. They included a number of important and talented individuals of high integrity, successful, efficient, and respected members of the community. Only two had been on any criminal charge other than homosexuality. Very few showed the traditional “pansy” picture of homosexuals; indeed, only 21 were noted to have at all obvious homosexual personality traits, only one of these being a paedophiliac.

So in spite of their having difficulty recruiting a completely representative sample of gay men, in spite of their sample being weighted toward mental patents and criminals, they found less mental aberration then they would have otherwise expected. In fact slightly better then half their sample showed no signs of gross mental illness at all.

Only half the patients showed significant psychiatric abnormality other than their sexual deviation, and such associated abnormalities were often slight. Moreover, many of these abnormalities were explicable as a reaction to the difficulties of being homosexual. Symptomatic homosexuality was rare.

And then it gets down to brass tacks.   Is homosexuality a disease?   Is this even a problem?

If homosexuality is a disease (as has often been suggested), it is in a vast number of cases monosymptomatic, non-progressive, and compatible with subjective well-being and objective efficiency. In our series, both practicing and non-practicing homosexuals were on the whole successful and valuable members of society, quite unlike the popular conception of such persons as vicious, criminal, effete, or depraved. Only one-fifth were at all obviously ” pansy,” and we found no reason to regard most of the patients as physically, intellectually, or emotionally immature (unless the basic criterion for ” immaturity” is that of being homosexual-a circular argument).

What they’re saying here is that if homosexuality is a disease then its one that has only one symptom (homosexuality) does not get worse if untreated, and does not negatively impact the overall health and well being of the individual who has it.   Really…can you even call it a disease in that case?

This is similar to what American researcher Evelyn Hooker in her 1957 paper The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual found: well adjusted homosexuals are clinically indistinguishable from well adjusted heterosexuals. From her Wiki entry…

She gathered two groups of men: one group would be exclusively homosexual, the other exclusively heterosexual. She contacted the Mattachine Society to find homosexual men. She had greater difficulty finding heterosexual men. She also had to use her home to conduct the interview to protect people’s anonymity…

Hooker realized that all extant science on homosexuality consisted of studies conducted on homosexual men who had already been committed to mental institutions or imprisoned for sexual offenses. Her experiment was simple and elegant and beautiful in the way all great science is simple and elegant and beautiful.

She recruited two groups of sexually active young men, one gay and one straight.   From both groups she eliminated anyone who had ever been in therapy or trouble with the law.   Then she gave each group a battery of what were then standard clinical psychiatric tests…

Hooker used three different psychological tests for her study: the TAT, the Make-a-Picture-Story test (MAPS test), and the Rorschach inkblot test.

She used trained professionals who were skilled in administering each of the tests.   The testers did not know whether they were testing a homosexual man or a heterosexual. When she got the results back she further anonymized them so nobody looking at the tests could tell who administered the test.   Standard double-blind technique.

Then she did something simple and beautiful…

After a year of work, Hooker presented a team of 3 expert evaluators with 60 unmarked psychological profiles.

…she passed the results out to the experts and asked them if they could identify the homosexuals.

No one could.

First, she contacted Bruno Klopfer, an expert on Rorschach tests to see if he would be able to identify the sexual orientation of people through their results at those tests. His ability to differentiate was no better than chance.

Then Edwin Shneidman, creator of the MAPS test, also analyzed the 60 profiles. It took him six months and he too found that both groups were highly similar in their psychological make-up.

The third expert was Dr Mortimer Mayer who was so certain he would be able to tell the two groups apart that he went through the process twice.

The three evaluators agreed that in terms of adjustment, there were no differences between the members of each group

Well adjusted homosexuals are clinically indistinguishable from well adjusted heterosexuals.   This was what the Wolfsden researchers also found.   And this is what everyone who objectively studies gay people has found ever since.

The experiment, which other researchers subsequently repeated, demonstrates that most self-identified homosexuals are no worse in social adjustment than the general population

When you study sick homosexuals, people who have already been committed to mental institutions or sent to jail for sex crimes, then what you find are sick homosexuals.   But if you did the same thing with heterosexuals, only studying those in mental institutions or jail,   you would also conclude the same about heterosexuals and nobody does that.   The Christianist web site Lifesite tries to downplay Hooker’s study thusly…

Despite the fact that  the purpose of the study was ostensibly to examine the possibility of mental instability in homosexuals, individuals who showed signs of mental instability were  removed  from the groups, which further predetermined the study’s  conclusion.

But that was the point.   If homosexuality was the result of mental dysfunction, as NARTH and their companions in the anti-gay industrial complex insist, then removing the individuals who showed signs of mental instability would have made not a whit of difference in the outcome. The experts Hooker contacted to evaluate her test results would have still been able to identify the homosexuals because homosexuals are mentally unstable, whether they show it outwardly or not.   That the experts could not identify the homosexuals with those mentally unstable individuals removed proved decisively that the old models of homosexuality were wrong.

I am reminded of a colleague who reiterated, “all my homosexual patients are quite sick”, to which I finally replied “so are all my heterosexual patients”…

“If homosexuality is a disease (as has often been suggested), it is in a vast number of cases monosymptomatic, non-progressive, and compatible with subjective well-being and objective efficiency. In our series, both practicing and non-practicing homosexuals were on the whole successful and valuable members of society, quite unlike the popular conception of such persons as vicious, criminal, effete, or depraved”…

“The three evaluators agreed that in terms of adjustment, there were no differences between the members of each group”…

Understand this if you understand nothing else about the anti-gay industrial complex: this is knowledge that is over a half century old now.   There is nothing new here.   Most of the people reading this post will have been born after modern science clearly and unambiguously established this fact: there is nothing wrong with homosexuals.   This has been understood in the science for over half a century.

I’ve been meaning to post this since I saw it back in January…

Memories of a gay man’s suicide loom over Fremont Presbyterian Church

On July 23, 1992, Thomas Paniccia, an Air Force sergeant, announced he was gay on national television. On the anniversary of that day 15 years later, Paniccia drove to an undeveloped cul-de-sac in Roseville several blocks from his home and waited to die.

Paniccia, 43, had swallowed an overdose of prescription pills and placed a three-page letter on his dashboard.

The Rev. Donald Baird, pastor of Fremont Presbyterian Church, was one of the people who received copies of the letter. Baird was his mentor, friend and pastor…

Pastor. Mentor. Ahem. Yes. And such a good one.

Fremont, the largest Presbyterian congregation in the Sacramento area, has faced the biggest crisis in its 129-year history: the decision to leave the national church. Fremont leaders believe the national church has strayed from biblical teachings, and they decided to break ties after the denomination approved the ordination of openly gay clergy.

During the debate and following that decision, some church members raised Paniccia’s name. What about Tom, they asked. His death three years ago reminded them that the decision they made would affect people who called the church home.

Despite Paniccia’s struggle, he had felt accepted. They didn’t want that welcoming and inclusive environment to change.

Welcoming. Inclusive.

Outside of a small circle, Paniccia’s story has never been told, yet has weighed on many of those making decisions about the church’s future. They remembered a gay man who loved his church.

“He wasn’t open about it. It didn’t matter anyway,” said Donna Cavness, who was a friend and had worked with Paniccia. “He had a lot of wonderful gifts. He was good to be around.”

Paniccia’s close friends said he was conflicted about his faith and sexuality.

David Larson rented a room in his home to Paniccia and knew him for more than a decade. He also received a copy of Paniccia’s suicide note.

“As a close personal friend, I unfortunately realized Tom’s inability to accept being gay combined with his religious views is what I believe led to his suicide,” Larson said.

Welcoming. Inclusive. Now let’s talk about what it means to be a friend to a gay man…

Baird does not believe Paniccia’s struggle to reconcile his faith with his sexuality drove him to suicide and said that Paniccia would support the church’s decision to leave the national denomination.

Since the October vote, longtime members have left the congregation. As pastor, Baird has received hate mail. Church members may have to pay millions of dollars to the national church to keep the 5-acre church property across from California State University, Sacramento.

And next week, local Presbytery officials will call for an investigation of the Fremont vote to determine whether there are enough church members opposed to the split and who want to stay with the national denomination.

Still, Baird said Fremont must leave.

Following Christ is not supposed to be easy or convenient, he said. “If a church loses its integrity, it ceases to be a church,” Baird said. “The world changes. God’s word doesn’t.”

The pastor said Paniccia believed the same. He was committed to the teachings of his faith, Baird said. “Tom had the same beliefs, he understood.”

He sat in his office looking at a photo of Paniccia in the church directory.

“He was like a son to me.”

Consider for a moment, the horrifying possibility that this is true. Some parents of gay children throw their kids into the street with undisguised contempt. Others buy them the poison, the bottle of pills, buy the rope, hand them the gun, lovingly gift wrapped with a little card that says, I Love You Very Much…

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Dead air.”

“Dead air who?”

I updated my depressing blog post of yesterday to include something that strikes me as an extra added burden on late fifties gay male dating. It’s a situation that will hopefully be done with, or mostly so, beyond my generation of gay folk. It’s better now for gay people in a lot of ways and especially for gay kids, even accounting for the fact that bullying still takes a frightful toll.   But millennials who reach their fifties and suddenly find themselves tossed back into the dating pool should be in one that is mostly as full as it should be of randomly available older gay singles. That isn’t the case with my generation.   A lot of gay guys in the general vicinity of my age are still deeply closeted because that’s what they felt they needed to be in order to survive when they were young men back in the 70s.

Being a homosexual back when I was a gay teenager was worse then being a murderer, worse then being a rapist, worse even then being a communist. A lot of us took that to heart and never found the inner strength to live openly and honestly because the risks were just too much, the pressure was just too much.   So a lot of us put on a mask of heterosexuality back then. It was a matter of survival. And as they grew older they lived that life even if it wasn’t the life their soul was meant to live.

Now some of them have wives, some have kids, and they just can’t leave that life without doing a lot of damage to a lot of people around them.   And if at this late stage of that one chance for a decent life you get, they find themselves looking in a mirror and knowing it could have been different…harder, more of a struggle initially, but better, more honorable, more decent…they have to ask themselves if getting their self respect back, their honor back, is really worth the toll it is going to take on a lot of people, not just themselves.   And a lot of them are simply going to choose to go to their grave wearing that mask and I can’t find it in my heart to judge them for it.

And what that means for those of us of this generation who took the risk and lived honest open lives is our dating pool is a lot smaller then it should be and if we are still single at this age we’re basically fighting against really horrible odds on top of the fact that gay males are a minority to begin with. And that can’t be helped. It just is what it is.

Millennials…don’t be looking at lonely older gay guys like me in fear that this is your future.   I am not your future.   I am your past.   For gay guys of my generation it will always be a time before Stonewall.

I am grocery shopping and paused between isles with my shopping cart, when a middle aged (I think…I didn’t get a good look at her) woman strides quickly past and says “Nice ass”. Startled I snap out of my hunter-gatherer mindset and look up. She doesn’t look back, just walks quickly away and down another isle. Well I’m gay, so I don’t follow.

It’s nice to be reminded from time to time that a guy physically like me can be desirable…at least to some small segment of the human population. Once some years ago while I was waiting to be seated at a restaurant in Kayenta, a young Navajo (I think…Kayenta is in the Navajo reservation) woman actually put a hand on my butt as she walked quickly by. Had I the kind of love life other people have I’d probably take offense. But starved as I am at this late stage in my life for any kind of romance, burdened by the kinds of doubts about my desirability you would naturally have in the autumn of a life spent single, I take some heart when I get those, like the starving man suddenly presented with a dry loaf of bread. I see how others get complements on their desirability and I know I get them a lot less, and there are just more heterosexual women out there then gay males so it isn’t unusual that I’d hear it more often from that direction then the one I’d really thrill to get it from. But it’s a two edged knife. On the one hand it’s a comfort to know your Use By date isn’t past just yet. On the other, you’re still single and you have no prospects.

I’m gay. As perfect a Kinsey 6 as they come. What seems to confuse a lot of my gay friends is I am not about über masculine guys, which is unfortunate in that the only time I ever seem to get that “nice ass” complement from another guy it’s a bear and I am not about bear. I’ve had gay friends ask me outright if I’m not actually Bi because…well you’ve probably seen the random sketches of beautiful guys I’ve posted here. Here’s one I did recently that I put up on Facebook…

One gay friend cracked about this one…

…that he was one estrogen shot away from a job a Hooters. Thing of it is, I thought I was sketching a fairly butch sort of guy. Gay obviously, in the sense that a straight guy would never call attention to his body in the same way a gay guy does let alone strike that kind of pose.   But as far as I can tell I drew a guy there.   Ah…but his hair…   Yes…it’s a tad long isn’t it.   Must be a girly boy then.   Maybe I relied too much on the basketball shirt with the University of Maryland insignia on it to make the attitude of the subject plain.   On the other hand, there is a strain of human male…I’ve seen them both gay and straight…that seem to feel nothing but contempt for other males who aren’t 200 percent über masculine. Get A Haircut you goddamned fairy…

Here’s the thing: that period of time when we walk out of adolescence into our young adulthood really leaves its mark on your libido.

I came of age in a period of time in America when guys felt free to wear their hair long and their jeans tight to the body and low around the waste and be sexy and show off in a way they just can’t now without being terrified of getting labeled GAY, and I guess I just glommed onto that look as an ideal of male beauty.   But there was more then just eye candy to it because with that look usually came a mindset that I found very agreeable to the soul.   The über masculine guys my age back then were all either dumb jocks or Nixon republicans who I didn’t want anything to do with.   The longhairs more often then not, struck me as beautiful on the inside as outside.   Some of them made my heart skip a beat.   In high school I hung out with the longhaired art geeks for half my day and the longhaired techno geeks the other half and it was bliss.   That was my perfect world.   But it didn’t last.

And I think regrettably my libido is still living in that world that does not exist anymore.   And really, when I think about that time logically and rationally, I would not want to go back.   It wasn’t the best place for a gay kid.   Lots of eye candy yes, but you didn’t dare tell anyone you found them desirable or you’d get packed off to a mental ward.

I find myself thinking often at night now, alone in my house, that if only that world had been as accepting of gay kids, as incomplete and spotty as acceptance nowadays is, as this one, maybe I wouldn’t still be single.   You see, I was always about finding The One and the problem is the longer you go without finding them the more your social group becomes people who are still in the singles scene because that’s where they always wanted to be and they just don’t get you.

A few years ago I found myself at a new bar my gay friends down in D.C. decided to try out as a change of scenery. With us was a guy who was somewhat new to the group…”D”.   D was someone I was always happy to see join us. I wasn’t attracted to him in a romantic sense and I figure neither was he to me or else he’d have probably said something. But at a deep down in the heart place I sensed we were two of a kind.   Well practically the moment I walked into that bar my jaw dropped at the sight of one of the bartenders.   The friends I’d socialized for decades with simply sat and watched my rapture and confusion as they always did, waiting I guess for me to finally get up and do something about it.   D, seeing my eyes never left this guy did something no one else had ever done for me before.   He stood beside me at the bar and ordered something from the beautiful bartender and asked him his name where I could hear it given.   And once given D looked aside at me with a smile and a nod…

There you go…

It was enough. Instantly I struck up a conversation with the guy. Well, nothing came of it, but it was a chance, small as it was and I was touched by the gesture on the part of D. It wasn’t until some time later, heartbroken at how longtime gay friends let an opportunity for me to meet a guy who, it was said, might actually have been a very good match for me, wither on the vine and die like my desperate loneliness mattered not one wit to any of them, that I really saw that moment with D in that bar for what it was.   D and I really were two of a kind.   He eventually found his soulmate and dropped out of the happy hour group and I miss seeing him.   But I’m happy for him too.   And I understand what has happened to me a little better now.   For romantics like myself, the social opportunities at this late stage in life are mostly with other singles who are just fine in the singles scene and that’s why they’re still there, not why you’re still there.   And thus time passes, the universe expands, and you end up older, less desirable, searching for love in a rapidly depleting dating pool situated in a minority of a minority, surrounded by a lot of very very nice people who just get a little confused as to why, if you’re attracted to some guy you see, you would need to know his name.

What…you’re not on GRINDR? And so they won’t get his name for you when they see your jaw dropping or even bother trying to introduce you or get the two of you together because the mindset is you just go over to him and say “My place or yours” and get it on and be done with it and then on to the next guy and if that guy turns out to be The One all well and good but if not no bother here comes the next guy.   They just don’t get how that love thing mixes with that libido thing inside of you and how that keeps you behaving differently from how they would when they see an attractive guy.   They just don’t get how you don’t simply walk up to someone who is making your heart skip a beat and offer them a quick fuck in the backroom because that is simply how it’s done in the singles scene.   And don’t try to tell me it’s any different for heterosexuals either because I’ve watched that singles scene too and the only difference between them I can discern is the gay singles scene is less hypocritical and more to the point. Backrooms instead of cheap motels then.   It saves time and money.

But at least heterosexuals have a bigger potential dating pool, and live for that matter in a culture that for all its hypocrisy at least somewhat supports love and romance among heterosexuals, if not homosexuals.   It’s better now for younger gay guys, but you carry those first years of your dating life with you always it seems.   When I was seventeen and just coming out to myself it would still be a few more years before the APA decided kids like me weren’t mentally ill and decades before I could lie down with a guy I loved and not risk being thrown into jail in many states.   And a problem I run into time and again is a lot of very nice guys roughly my own age are either still in the closet or deep in denial, having spent a lifetime masquerading as heterosexual for that career, for that share of the American dream we were all told we could have when we were kids.   It’s what a lot of us had to do to survive.   And now they have wives and maybe kids and they’re in that life and there is no getting out of it without a lot of pain and damage to everyone around them and they have to ask themselves at this late stage in their lives is if it’s worth it, or do they just go to their grave wearing the mask.   When I was a young man I was determined to avoid that fate for myself.   I came out to friends who were mostly accepting, and in the workplace where I felt I could not be openly gay I simply refused to invent imaginary girlfriends let alone actually date girls and build a faux heterosexual life around me as a wall against my inner self. So now I’m in my late fifties and I can say I have always lived the honest life and I am proud of that, but I’m still single and consigned to a pool of other singles of my age group made smaller then it should be for all the guys my age who Still after all these years cannot bring themselves to live openly as gay for reasons I cannot find it in my heart to judge.   I feel some nights as if I never had a chance.   For gay people of a certain age it seems, it will always be a time before Stonewall.

So at the autumn of your life you are gay and single and your prospects are doubly limited because gay males are simply a minority and in your age group openly gay males are an even smaller minority, and your bar pals solution to your loneliness will always be to just get out and meet people but what they’re really saying is go out and trick because that’s meeting people for them.   And they just don’t understand and never will how meeting people is a slightly different process if what you want to come of it is a relationship and not a random fuck in the night with someone whose name you don’t need to know anyway.

The others, your kind, are mostly settled down now.   If you had a spouse the two of you could probably still socialize with them but as you are single you represent a world they understandably wish to keep at a safe distance.   So you are left to the “scene” and you don’t belong there and you never belonged there but in your youth it was all there was and now it is all that keeps you from going mad from total social isolation and so you keep going back, keep saying to yourself that maybe tonight I’ll find The One.   But you know he isn’t there and even if he was your friends would be oblivious and unsupportive.   And the “nice ass” you occasionally get from random strangers still elicits a vague hope within you that you are still in the game, but that hope is only an echo from a distant world whose ship you missed long, long ago.

[Updated a tad to clarify some things that I felt needed it.]

This is mostly a growl at a certain someone who bellyaches about how I overdo the packaging of the randoms gifts I send his way, which I am posting here (and on Facebook) even though he doesn’t bother reading my blog (So He Claims) or do Facebook (So He Claims) because I just need to vent about the unfairness of it all. I do not overpack and thereby “waste postage” as has been claimed.

So I bought two (count ’em) +1 diopters for my Nikon SLRs to replace one I lost at Disney World a few weeks ago.   If you’ve never seen a diopter for the old all mechanical film SLRs they’re about the size of a dime and they correct for…er…older eyes.   Nikon diopters, unlike the Canon diopters apparently, have this tendency to unscrew themselves and drop off the eyepiece.   If you’re lucky you hear the delicate little ‘clink’ as it hits the pavement and if you’re not you just walk blithely on without realizing you’re walking away from a piece of hardware that nobody makes anymore and is hard-to-find on the used market without which you will have serious difficulty seeing and focusing on your subjects.

So I was lucky enough to find and buy two (count ’em) more +1 diopters for my Nikons. I bought them both at the same time from the same online company. They came in separate packages, one of which was a small bubble pack envelope which was about right for something the size of an SLR diopter. The other one came packaged as follows…

Now stop complaining about how I pack things. In the grand scheme of things I am actually very sensible about how I pack gifts I’d like my friends to have.   Particularly when it’s breakable…like a couple of latte mugs.   I appreciate and share your waste not, want not attitude, (though probably not to the degree a German would) but if you’d opened a box from me that was full of broken glass you might have gotten the wrong impression.