Relax and enjoy the inevitable…as Heinlein once said…

Answer: They have no people in them.

So…it’s come to my attention that certain folks seem to think my photography is notable for absence of people.  That’s not exactly true, or I probably wouldn’t be invited to take pictures so often of things like weddings and prom dates.  Oh…and drag performer award ceremonies.  But I’ll admit it’s true that I don’t often spotlight my people pictures in my art photography galleries.  Sad but true…what you mostly get there is this kind of thing…

That’s from the Puerto Vallarta gallery.  People were asking the other day where the hell the people were.  I’d depopulated the entire city, they joked.  I’d posted a private gallery with a bunch of snapshots of the friends who took me there, but I elected to omit those from the published gallery for two reasons.  First, those were private.  But the gallery was intended for my art photography, and yes, that stuff tends to run in this direction…

   
That’s a typical specimen from the Shadows and Light gallery.  I do that sort of thing.  And…this sort of thing too…

And this sort of thing…

Lots and lots of that sort of thing, actually.  It’s what comes out of me most of the time.  And for what it’s worth…I hate it.  I hate it so much that for just over a decade I put my cameras down and refused to take any more pictures because I was so sick of looking at it.  Even when I was trying to be playful, I kept seeing it…

They say there’s a fine line between artistic and crazy.  After just over a decade of not even so much as touching my cameras, I picked them up again because I just had to.  It sounds insufferably arrogant to stick the ‘artist’ label onto yourself, but if one symptom of it is you do it because you have to, even if you hate what you’re doing, because something deep down inside of you just keeps pushing you into it and you could stop breathing before you could stop making your art, well then that’s me. 

But…well…I don’t hate everything I do.  I really like my people pictures.  Back in high school, and my college years, back when the camera bug really got me, I actually did a lot more people stuff then shadows and light stuff.  I really got into it as a matter of fact.  Really, really into it…

Really…really…into it…

And…somehow…I stopped doing that kind of thing.  I just can’t imagine what happened.  Nobody who knows me seems to be able to figure it out either.  All they know is Bruce doesn’t take people pictures.

Well…Actually…yes I do.  When I get the chance.  When it’s something that strikes at my heart.  People I find doing noble work, and I just have to document it, because it’s so beautiful to see…

People I know…creative people…doing noble work… 

People taking a stand for life’s beauty…becoming beautiful themselves in the doing of it…

People…  Yes…I take pictures of them…

But…you know…sometimes it’s the artifacts we leave behind, the marks made on the earth by the human hand…by the human heart…those ephemeral footsteps along the shore we leave behind…that speak so profoundly to the human condition…to existence…  

And that’s what keeps calling to me.  That’s what I have to go find.  And bring back.  These are my little footsteps in the sand. 

There’s a difference between the carefree snaps I take of my friends when we go here and there, and my art photography.  And my artwork isn’t entirely devoid of people.  Furthermore, if you look closely, carefully, you can still see a spark of that sense of life I used to have…back when I could still be certain I would find my soulmate…back when I could still be certain beauty made life worth living.  At least I can still see it.  A little bit.

You know…beauty…

Yes, actually, I Can do people.  If all you can see in my photo imagery is the lack of people, you’re not really looking at it.  On the other hand, I really really wish my friends would quit thoughtlessly blaming me for the solitary, emotionally isolated life I’ve lived for so long, that I hate the sight of whenever I look at the brutalist imagery.  Particularly the friends in a position to at least try to help me out of here.  If I fucking hear "You just need to get out more" one more fucking time I swear I will go nuclear.   Yes, as a matter of fact, there Are people in my photos, and yes, as a matter of fact, I Do go out from time to time.  Just not into gay bars looking for this week’s trick every Friday night.  Does that make me a recluse? 

So…some months ago we all went to this bar we’d never gone to because our usual hangout had been invaded by bears.  And yeah…you all noticed how immediately taken I became by the bartender that night.  You started joking about it.  That’s Bruce’s type all right…  And there I was…gawking away like a schoolboy again.  Somebody did me a really big favor that night.  A favor nobody else had ever done for me before.  They got his name for me.  Sweet.  And then I was able to talk to him.  And some of you may have noticed that I put some effort into getting to know him a bit more in the weeks and months afterward.  Yeah…nothing eventually came of it.  But to the guy who did me that favor…Thank You!  I had a chance I wouldn’t otherwise have had because of your kindness.  Nobody ever did that sort of thing for me before.  I am not kidding.  That was the first time in my life someone ever did that for me…and I note that you not only didn’t think twice about it when you sized up the situation, but that you enjoyed doing it.  Wow.  Never mind a boyfriend…where were You all my life! 

For a while there, I didn’t feel so disconnected from…people.  It’s nice to feel like you’re a part of the world from time to time.  I really don’t want the brutalist imagery to define me.  You know what I really hate more then the thought of dying alone?  It’s the thought of people picking over the body of my work after I’m gone from this earth and going "Oh how tragic that he was so lonely…but Such Wonderful Artwork that tragedy produced!  No.  Please.  I’m going to put it in my will that if I die never having found that intimate other in my life, my executor is to burn it all.  All the film and prints and hard drives with the digital library.  All the paintings and drawings.  Take down the web galleries and the cartoon pages.  No collector’s joy in my desolation…please.  One way or another, I will not be defined in death by my sorrow.

Another Friday Happy Hour…another drive back home.  This was supposed to keep me sane and it isn’t anymore.  Now I’m not just feeling sad and lonely…I’m feeling trapped.  I need a way out.

Hoping and praying for someone to care
Always moving and goin to where
What becomes of the broken hearted…

  
 

• Walking around in the hot sun wearing a suit and tie and carrying around heavy bags of camera equipment will make you aware of how out of shape you are.

• On the other hand, if you have the camera bug you don’t notice that, until the day after, when your legs start telling you all about how much work they were doing the day before.

• Taking photos of young couples in love is fun, and never fails to warm the heart.  After a few hours of seeing so much happiness and joy all around you, you almost forget that they and everyone in the party would all vote to take away your own ability to marry without giving it a second thought.

• No trip to visit the Southern Baptist side of your family tree is complete without a lecture on the bible and hellfire.

• While driving south of the Potomac, you can add to your Jack Chick collection by checking the top of the toilet paper dispensers in the men’s room stalls everywhere you stop for a bladder break.  I found two Chick tracts this trip that I didn’t have.

• I am helping out with small tasks before the wedding, and I see arriving family members gathering around my Mercedes.  They are peeking though the windows and pointing to this and that around the grill.  The headlight washers seem to fascinate them.  One person touches the little three pointed star hood ornament lightly.  I’d given Traveler a good washing that morning so it would look its best for the wedding.  Now I’ve been given signs to plant near the entrance to the parking lots, directing folks to the gazebo where the wedding will take place, and to the reception hall, and as I walk past on my way to the entrance they ask me about the car.  Yes, it’s a new model Mercedes.  Yes, it drives really nice.  Yes, I’m a very happy owner.  Yes, I know that kids like to steal the hood ornament.  No, I didn’t know they were wearing them as necklaces nowadays.  They ask me about the odd little doors just below the headlights.  Oh, says I, those are where the headlight washers pop out.  I explain that they work only when the headlights are on, and only with the first, and then each tenth squirt of the wiper washer button.  One of them jokes that since it’s a German car, they’d thought the little doors might have been for machine guns.

• I think it’s a good sign when you see the happy marrieds-to-be being playful with each other during the rehearsal, and the reception and not all dire and serious.  They gather together at the wedding cake to do the cake cutting ceremony, and he looks into her eyes and says ‘I just want you to know I love you’ and she gives him a look back and says she loves him too, and they cut the cake together and then just before they each take a bite they both mash cake into each others faces laughing delightedly.  And then of course they’re all affectionately wiping each other’s faces off and share another kiss. 

• Ever since puberty I’ve always felt somewhat detached from all the life I see going on around me, and I know that’s mostly what prejudice and hate have done to me and I hate it.  But I also know it’s given my photographic eye its distinctive voice, and honed my skill as a photographer.  To get the very best shots you need to concentrate on what you are seeing.  You can’t be a part of the moment and do that.  You have to step back from it, which is easy if you’ve never really felt like you were part of most things to begin with. 

  I took just under six-hundred shots on the digital camera, and roughly another sixty with the Hasselblad.  After I got back home I imported the digital shots into Aperture and gave them a once-over, feeling a strange kind of perfect joy in being able to capture a few really expressive moments of love and happiness that I’ll probably never experience myself.  It’s looking like I’ll be going into that long night never having a wedding of my own.  But as I studied my shoot last night it didn’t feel as though I was living it vicariously through someone else’s.  In the end everything a photographer does, regardless of who they do it for, is a personal statement, and I really believe in love.  I think this is what most of my friends just don’t get.  I really believe in it.  By all rights I shouldn’t, considering that love doesn’t seem to even know I exist.  And yet I do. 

  So the blissful pleasure I took in doing that wedding shoot was genuine.  All the more so as the newlyweds seem to have between them exactly the kind of playful romance I’ve always searched for.  It was a pure pleasure to capture some images of it.  But also genuine was the grief I drove home with, and which I knew would be waiting for me when I got done importing and examining my shoot last night.  This is the other thing my friends just don’t get: how much of my day is spent dealing with grief.  Problem is, at age 54, drink and cigars aren’t making me forget it anymore.  All that did for me last night was remind me how old I’m getting…how far beyond my ‘use by’ date I am…

I’d never have thought that viewing all the photos of the happy couples out in California over the past couple of days would have had this effect on me.  I’m happy for them.  Delighted actually.  It’s good to see love succeeding somewhere in this poor angry world.  And particularly in California, the land of my birth.  I should be happy.  And I am.  For them.

But…  A wave of utter fatigue has washed over me, simultaneously with the arrival of those images on my computer screen.  I’m happy for them…but it’s all passing me by.  Don’t be fooled by career and money and status.  Don’t be lulled into thinking they mean anything.  They don’t.  Nothing else matters if you don’t have that intimate other in your life.  Nothing.

I’ve failed.  I am a senior systems engineer for the Space Telescope Science Institute…I own a nice house within walking distance of work and shopping, own a Mercedes, and can look back on a life that never once cheated anyone for profit nor broke anyone’s heart.  I never lied my way into anyone’s pants, or their company, or their trust.  I never met a bill I couldn’t pay.  My word and my money and my credit are good.  And…I failed.  None of it really matters.  For the past several days I’ve seen what matters in so many happy couple’s faces.  I’m 54 years old and…I failed.

I have, ironically enough, a wedding to go to this weekend.  A relative on mom’s side of the family in southern Virgina invited me to her wedding, and as she and her brother helped give mom some of the best years of her life in retirement, I feel obliged to go.  This is the Southern Baptist side of my family tree.  They would all probably cheerfully vote my right to marry away without a second thought, and tell me they did it with love in their hearts.  But I’m genuinely happy for her, and I hope she and her husband to be have a long and happy life together.  There needs to be more of what they have for each other in this world, not less.

I think, at long last, I’m finally giving up on this.  I just don’t have the energy anymore to keep holding on to it.  I have no idea what that change holds in store for me.  None.  All I know is, I failed.

So far away; Doesn’t anybody stay in one place any more?
It would be so fine to see your face at my door;
Doesn’t help to know you’re just time away…

Long ago I reached for you and there you stood;
Holding you again could only do me good;
How I wish I could, but you’re so far away

One more song about movin’ along the highway;
Can’t say much of anything that’s new;
If I could only work this life out my way;
I’d rather spend it bein’ close to you;

… I sure hope the road don’t come to own me;
Yet so many dreams I’ve yet to find…

When you want it the most there’s no easy way out
When you’re ready to go and your heart’s left in doubt
Don’t give up on your faith
Love comes to those who believe it
And that’s the way it is

No it isn’t Celine.  Not at all.

There must be something better then going home at the end of the day and trying to kill my mind to keep this constant heartache at bay. 

The other day I ventured out to a bar on Hampden’s "The Avenue" and sat down at the bar, just not to be home alone for once.  I had several drinks, chatted amicably with some of the others there, and then walked, a tad tipsy, home, feeling comfortably numb.  The next day a friend actually congratulated me on going to a bar by myself.  Don’t be too thrilled, I replied, I’m drinking more.  Which is just why I didn’t want to become a barfly in my middle age.  The next morning I woke up with a middle of the week hangover, something I won’t say I’ve never experienced before, but then it was in the comfort of my own little bar in the basement, which came with the house.  I’d never have put one in of my own accord.  I was raised in a Baptist household, see…

So I don’t want to do that again.  At least not until my regular Happy Hour gang meets again this Friday.  So I’m hitting on my humidor more.  Which of course, taxes my body in its own slowly lethal way.  But at least it numbs the heartache somewhat and the next morning I don’t feel it, other then perhaps a little more tiredness in the veins.  I wonder what it’s doing to my heart.  The physical one that is.

There must be something better.  Tonight I saw something I have in common, at least remotely, with the ex-gay survivors, something I see over and over again in their words:  you always get told that if you’re still gay, then you aren’t trying hard enough not to be.  And as it turns out, the lonely get the same painful, hurtful message, often from well meaning friends and family.  It’s always your own damn fault.  Stop whining and work harder at it.  And when change never comes, you just feel more guilty, more worthless.  There is something wrong with you.  It’s your own fault.

So here I am tapping my keyboard, as a way of therapy.  Somewhere out there, the guy who left me those messages last December may read this and feel justified once more.  Maybe he’ll want to twist the knife in again.  Wonder if they basically feel the way I do, frankly my dear, we just don’t give a damn.  If it’s who I think it is who wrote that, then he knows exactly how to make it hurt in a way I’ll never get over.  Maybe he was being nicer to me then I realized at first.

My productivity is going down into the toilet at work.  My little Baltimore rowhouse is a mess.  I need to sit down and do my monthly bills and budget.  I need to work on some of the exercises in that Advanced Java Web Services textbook.  I have repairs to make on the front porch.  My drafting table has been sitting idle for so long.  It takes so much energy to push back constantly at the heartache and some days I just don’t have anything left.  And it’s been that way with me for decades now.  Decades.  Lonernomore1, you should be impressed with how long I’ve managed to hold it all in and not spill my guts out to everyone.

Again its a pathetic method for sympathy. Have a great life, and yet once again you will be alone because that is what you choose… 

No…it isn’t what I choose idiot, any more then I choose to be a gay man, although I’m perfectly content with that.  If I choose this solitude then it stands to reason I would be content with it now wouldn’t I?  I have a nice little house, a job I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams I’d ever have, that earns me a very comfortable living, I’m in reasonably good health, although if I keep on smoking and drinking that might well change.  I have a nice car.  I have good friends.  Just no arms to come home to.  I would give it all up if I could have that.  I’d wash dishes forever to have that.  But you can’t make bargains with fate.  Fate doesn’t care.

There must be something better.  I just can’t seem to find it.  If it won’t find me then I’m done for.  The reason you accept being gay is that it’s the only way to finally make a whole person out of yourself because it’s what you are, and true love, if you’re ever going to find it, is with another of your own sex.  You accept being gay, in order to find that love.  The catch of course is, that doesn’t mean you will.

The people who know me all tell me that I’d make a very worthy lover.  Fate doesn’t seem to much care about that either though. 

Via Atrios… A catchy tune, lyrics about heartbreak, loneliness and suicide, and some very, Very weird CAD imagery…what’s not to like?

Me and Mean Gene’s got a beautiful voice
he carries me home on his beautiful horse.
Where she waits, I will ride ride ride
c’mon stranger just sing me a song
And if it’s sad, I’ll sing along long long
I told you I knew every word

Yeah I’m waiting for something to give
Well I’m waiting, I hope it’s not me
Yeah I’m waiting…

What Valentine’s Day would be complete without a heartwarming story of true love succeeding against impossible odds?

Married prison psychologist fell pregnant after affair with mentally-ill inmate

A married psychologist is about to have a baby by a mentallyill prisoner after one-to-one therapy sessions, a court heard yesterday.

Stephanie Reeves, 30, had sex with the convicted criminal in the lavatories of a secure hospital unit while escorting him to the gym.

He is currently being treated for paranoid schizophrenia at Ashworth secure hospital, where patients include Moors murderer Ian Brady.

Reeves – whose husband also worked at the unit – said she loves the prisoner and plans to raise the child with him if he is ever considered safe enough to be released.

In other news, Fark.Com is having their annual design a Valentine card you’d send to an ex Valentine’s Day photoshop theme…

And you thought I was bitter.  So…to any knuckle-dragging homophobes who might be thinking that my little Valentine’s Day poster contest is only proof that The Gay Lifestyle^tm is inherently desperate and lonely: just peruse the cannonballs being lobbed across the gender fence over at Fark.Com.  Or just google "anti-valentine".  There’s a lot of discontent out there on the heterosexual side of the street too.  And I’ll bet you pinched faced, uptight blue noses are responsible for a lot of That too.

And in other Valentine’s Day headlines…

Razer blade found in Valentine’s Day lollipop

Radio station giving away free divorce

Happy Valentine’s Day From The Storm Worm

Don’t let stale chocolates leave a bad taste in your valentine’s mouth

Apparently some of those Valentine’s Day treats have been sitting on the shelves past their use-by date.  Kinda ironic, when you think about it…

And finally, some random entires from this Fark.Com finish the sentence contest:  I knew this was going to be the worst first date ever when…

she brought out those beancans and started cutting up that squirrel.

He brought a can of corn along on the date.

he asked to meet me in the Winn Dixie parking lot.  

…he squealed the tires pulling out of my mother’s driveway, then told me he had problems telling left from right because he’d smashed one too many

When I realized that every time he smiled he looked like George W. Bush.

when he told me how much he still loved his ex-girlfriend.

He showed up at the restaurant with plastic cutlery and said one can never be too careful when it comes to germs.

he told me "masturbation was getting kinda old"

When I kissed him and couldn’t get the taste of butter out of my mouth for a week.

My date brought me a hot cocoa sampler pack instead of flowers.

The second sentence she says to me, and I quote: "The way [blank] described you, I thought you would be hotter."

I got my ass handed to me in Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.

she wanted to cuddle afterwards.

Goodbye Valentine’s Day 2008.  It was…swell.  Let’s do it again sometime…okay? 

Here’s the last batch of finalists for our Valentine’s Day Poster Contest!   What a great group of entries we had this year!   Let’s give them all a big hand and a Valentine’s Day Consolation Prize…

The winner will be on display starting at midnight, Valentine’s Day!   You should probably have something else to do that day…

Here’s another batch of worthy finalists.   They didn’t quite make the grade…but all deserve honorable mention….

I think I have time for just one more batch of finalists.   The winner will be declared at the stroke of midnight, Valentine’s Day!   You may want to be busy with something else just then…