Why I Could Never Be A Good Stalker

I just became MySpace friends with Diesel Washington. Now I want to label him as pornstar Diesel Washington but after perusing his MySpace page I realize he’s more than that but, you know… the first time I saw this guy he had this white dude in a headlock and was fucking the crap out of him.

So I’m looking at his pictures and enjoying his profile and it suddenly occurred to me… when I grow up I want to be Diesel Washington. He’s everything I want to be. Well not
everything, but in the “Second Life” game in my mind, he is most definitely my avatar. He’s tall, he’s muscular, he’s really dark skin
(three things I have never been and always wanted to be), and you know… the porn thing can’t be a bad thing to put on your resume. Seriously, if I was a muscular 6’6” handsome dude with a ten inch penis, I don’t care if I was applying to be
a fry cook at McDonald’s, I would totally attach a .wmv clip of me fucking the crap out of some white dude while I had him in a headlock to the application. This barbarian society of ours is just too patriarchal to pass up an opportunity to cash in on the allure of a penis based orgasm. Hell… I’m thinking about shoving a bratwurst in my underwear at my next performance review to see if it would help with a pay increase.

But it got me thinking, if I could, I would follow this guy everywhere. I would be a Diesel Washington stalker. I think I have that obsessive compulsive/addictive characteristic that could in effect make me a classic “stalker”. I think the only thing that has prevented me from being an official stalker of many people that I admire is the fact that I’m really
really lazy. Like, Tori Amos came into town this year. Everybody who knows me knows that I worship the ground she walks on, she breathes out, I breathe in. When I finally got a chance to meet her in Amoeba Music it was one of the most defining moments of my life, and my natural intention was to stay there, hours upon hours if necessary, to catch a glimpse of
her getting in her car or maybe snip a lock of her hair so I could maybe clone some of the DNA in it to create a homemade Tori or maybe serenade her with one of her songs, singing at the top of my lungs, “I WAS NEVER A CORNFLAKE GIRL EITHER TORI! IT WAS THE BEST SOLUTION!!”


But alas, I was kind of tired and really hungry so I got a Jumbo Jack with cheese and came home.

And now there’s this Diesel guy who I could totally see myself following around like a little puppy if given the opportunity… you know… if I’m not hungry or tired or America’s Next Top Model isn’t on or… Tori doesn’t happen to be in town at the same time.

I could never be a good stalker. I don’t think I have the attention span. Lately for no particular reason I’ve been obsessed
with all things dealing with the Manson Family and the Sharon Tate murders. It was just so senseless, so brutal and so… just… beyond my realm of compassion to feel sympathy for the people who committed those crimes. It was just so horrible. I’ve been watching some interviews of Susan Atkins, one of the women who slaughtered the eight month pregnant Sharon Tate. She is now in her 60’s and is now riddled with terminal brain cancer. She’s been incarcerated since 1971 and her husband/attorney has been trying to get her a “compassionate release” since her physical state is in such disrepair. The California Board of Parole Hearings denied the request meaning that she will more than likely die in prison and I don’t feel altogether bad about that decision. On a more selfish note… I will say that I’m a little pissed that someone who murdered an eight month pregnant woman can get married in jail… twice… and I can’t. But I guess in the “Second Life” game in my mind I would like to talk to her, and the rest of the Manson Family and go, “You know, seriously guys… wouldn’t you have rather just gotten a Jumbo Jack with cheese and went home?”

Tales from the Troll – Summer Lovin’ (Feel Free to Cut and Paste)

At the end of each year, I like to reflect about all of the things that have happened during the
year. Unfortunately, I haven’t really done that for the past couple of years because they have totally sucked monkey balls. But for what it’s worth… 2008 kinda rocked. I have to say… I really enjoyed being 36 years old.

It’s kind of early to be raising the flag on this year considering we got over a month to go but I do feel as if enough has happened to review. I have often said that I feel like Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta and the beginning of Grease, dreamily pining on about their summer adventures now that summer is over and they have each gone back to their respective plebian lives. That’s definitely how I feel; for me…. summer’s OVER. It was a good run, but now we got to get back to normal life again.

The year started with me making an effort to take control of my weight. I was never really going to talk about it until I got down to some ridiculously
Olsen Twin-eque weight but… I joined
Weight Watchers back in January. Unbeknownst to me I found out at the first weigh-in that I had ballooned up to 384 pounds… and I’m 5’7 [yeah, go ahead, insert audible gasp here]. As of last Thursday I am down to 288… that’s a loss of 96 pounds. Another 4 pounds and I will have lost 100 pounds this year. I’m still as big as an elephant but it’s more of a… baby elephant… a cute baby elephant with a pierced nipple.

Because of this, I have become a lot more comfortable in my own skin this year and have been hanging out in the “Bear Community”... which is a whole other conversation but I’ll just say… it was interesting. No, I take that back, it’s been fun. It’s been amazingly, earth shattering, unbelievably fun actually and I have enjoyed every single moment of it. I have, however, been associating with a group of folks who I have so affectionately termed, “The Mean Girls” (you know who you are… feel free to cut and paste this shit). There is an encyclopedia worth of conjecture, assumptions and accusations surrounding The Mean Girls that could be written but I’ll just sum it up like this… everything was fine, until it wasn’t, and now it’s not. And it is a little sad but I do imagine myself to be Olivia Newton-John, moved to song thinking about those “Hot summer niiiiiiiiights!”

Obama won which was great but Proposition 8 passed and that completely sucked. It sort of propelled me into the fight for gay rights in the country and gay visibility in the black community. This past weekend I attended two panels that gave an opportunity for African American homosexuals and heterosexuals to dialogue and I also marched in a pro-gay rally that marched down Crenshaw Boulevard from Vernon to King and back. Yeah…
Crenshaw… gays and lesbians [yeah, go ahead, insert audible gasp here too]

I got to meet Tori Amos! She hugged me! Twice! I don’t remember what I said to her. I do remember security saying, “Sir… you have to breath…”

I also met Poet Laureate Al Young at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Workshops during the summer. This is also a whole other conversation but it would not be an understatement to say that that experience as a whole completely changed my life and the way I see
everything. If Malcolm X had Mecca, I had Squaw Valley.

The Ex-boyfriend and I (or Notaboyfriend if you’ve been paying attention) have settled into a comfortable albeit guarded friendship. He has moved in with his current boyfriend and they are cohabiting quite well… supposedly. It feels really good to not hate him... it took up so much energy and so much time. I’ve always said that not all of that weight I lost was fat… some of it was notaboyfriend baggage. I honestly wish him and the new dude well. I’m not particularly optimistic… but I really do hope everything works out for the best.

I shaved my head. I was bored.

I haven’t been up to San Francisco all year… I don’t know how that happened but… I can’t repeat that next year… I MISS JEN!!!

I’m an absolutely horrible uncle. I have five nephews and one niece and I’ve pretty much neglected all of ‘em. That’s going to have to change next year too.

As I get older I am really digging my parents… I don’t know how/why that happened.

I had a pretty amazing kiss with a pretty amazing dude the other day that has had me smiling ever since.

But like I said… the year ain’t over yet, we’ve got a lot more game to play. So we’ll just have to see what happens. But still, damn, DAMN… “those hot summer niiiiiiiiights!”

The Most Stressful Vacation (God is in the Morning)

So I took a vacation last week. I have been looking forward to it for about a month with the abstract goal of finding God. Yup… I had every intention of finding God within a five day period. And the truth of the matter is… I think I did find her. I think she’s in the morning though… and I have a tendency to wake up after 2:00 p.m.

Monday, November 10, 2008
I finally get paid. I was supposed to get paid the Friday before but because of some snafu at work, I didn’t get it until midday Monday. I woke up pretty late and decided to go to the gym. There was this husky football player looking dude on one of the stationary bikes in the corner wearing a long t-shirt and the shortest, tightest shorts I have ever seen on a guy. I so happened to be on the treadmill a couple of feet away, testing the theory that you can’t have an erection while running at the same time. I came home and just lounged the rest of the day. I wanted to do so many things this day but I figured… fuck it, it’s day one… I’ve got the rest of the week.


Tuesday, November 11, 2008
I wake up around 3:00 p.m. Go to the gym. I see the cute football dude with the Daisy Dukes and am so shocked that he notices me that I can’t think of anything to say to him when he looks at me and says hello… outside of turning away so he doesn’t notice that damn erection again. Later on I get into an intense screaming match/argument with the umpteenth person about the whole
Proposition 8 brouhaha, this one including two of my very best friends. After the argument is over I get on the internet and get into even more discussions with several other people about the issue. At this point I am so frazzled and on edge that I decided to journal about it for a little while then go to sleep. But before I go to sleep I decide to post a couple of paragraphs from my journal on my MySpace Blog.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008
I get phone calls, texts and emails all day from several of my friends telling me about how my blog has somehow ripped the very fabric of existence... who knew? I also have been lecturing to a friend of mine about how he needs to be more cognizant of the things that he says to his friends because he might be hurting them. I've been trying to take my own advice in this instance. I can honestly say, I never meant to attack or demean anyone specifically. But what I can say is what my great grandmother used to tell me... "I threw a stick at a pack of dogs, and the one that barked, is the one I hit." I was just making statements in a general direction...
anyway.. I wanted to go to the beach today, write a little, maybe get in the drum circle. I go to the gym instead. I can’t find the guy.

Thursday, November 13, 2008
The company that gave me a loan so I could have several dental procedures decided to make an electronic transfer from my checking account without my authorization leaving me in a negative balance… and the fees associated with it. I go to the gym again. I realize I have lost my opportunity to talk to the Football Daisy Dukes guy. I go to my Weight Watchers meeting and realize that I have lost damn near a hundred pounds over the past year. I also realize that I doubt if I will
ever stop loving my ex. It’s like when you’re bleeding, you don’t want all of your blood to stop all together, you just want the wound to heal and the blood to be redirected someplace else. That’s what I’ve been doing, redirecting those feelings someplace else.

Friday, November 14, 2008
I wake up at 4:00 p.m. I go to the gym. That dude is gone. I imagine what
would I look like in really short shorts. No one understands why I’m laughing uncontrollably in front of the mirror. I talk to a friend of mine who tells me that this whole Proposition 8 thing has “traumatized” me. He is the third person to use that EXACT same phrase. I pledge to try and avoid talking about it just for a little while. I walk to Santa Monica and LaBrea to get some cologne and on the way back, Proposition 8 protesters have taken up shop on Sunset Boulevard. I join them. I get on CNN for a couple of seconds.


Saturday, November 15, 2008
Screw the gym. I masturbate instead. My friend Dale is throwing a party at his house, I hop on the bus and boogey my way over there. I have an absolute blast. It was the first time that I can remember where I went to a party and just did not come off as this blubbering, drunken fool. Well… at least that’s what I remember… I got really fucked up! A friend of mine brought his digital camera and was taking pictures all night. I looked really cute. I kept saying,
“You know, if I saw this guy on Adam4Adam… I would totally fuck him!” Near the end, somebody brought up Proposition 8. I don’t remember everything, but I imagine one of those pictures to be of me with my head making a full 360* rotation on my neck… spewing split pea soup.

Today
I wake up at noon. I go see a friend of mine about doing some collaborative work with him. I get back home at around 3:00 p.m. and pass out again until about thirty minutes ago. It’s 11:25 p.m.

This is when I realize, I had so many plans for this week, so many things I wanted to do. And I realize that I needed to wake up earlier to get out of my house and out of my own head to do all of those things. That... God is in the morning, and I keep waking up after 2:00 p.m. And by that time, I’m busy dealing with my own crap and not paying attention to her.

So with that said, I’m little excited about getting back to work tomorrow. I’ll wake up early, think about the ancestors on the way to work, and exactly what the fuck am I doing in the big scheme of things, maybe write a poem or two in between updating the company’s website or making another database. I think I might have had too much time on my hands this past week… I’m kind of looking forward to some distractions.

Proposition (H)8

This whole Proposition 8/ Gay Marriage thing has greatly affected Los Angeles and has completely shaken my personal life to the core. And keep in mind, I never expected it to. I put up my Militant Queer cap over a decade ago. But this issue has definitely drawn a line in the sand between me and some of my most dearest friends.

In the past I have had issues with friends who have proven themselves to be politically and socially antithetical to my most treasured core beliefs and I truly struggled with trying to be friends with these… “Nazis” as it were. But I just couldn’t. I could not find a palatable level of camaraderie with someone who was pro-life or against women in the workplace or against homosexuality or felt that there should be stricter immigration laws because there were “too many” Mexicans in California or that the welfare system should be completely eliminated as well as affirmative action. I found it increasingly hard to be civil or share a cup of yogurt with someone who was actively working against everything that I am actively working for. I eventually dropped these people and... I have never really looked back or regretted that choice.


But here I am again and I just have to investigate my own belief systems, exactly how sturdy are the friendships that I have and am I at the end of the day being short sighted and throwing away a half way decent friendship over
policy… again.

For the past week or so, more than one of my African American homosexual friends has declared that they are passionately
against gay marriage. I want to believe that this is an anomaly but there is a quantifiable percentage of the African American LGBT community that voted to ban gay marriage. I’m beginning to get the impression that this is because a vast majority of them are highly religious and saw this not as a legal issue but a religious issue. One of my friends told me that anything that degrades the sanctity of the traditional marriage unit of one man and woman is a direct threat to Christianity and above all, he is a Christian first. Keeping in mind that he is a flaming Black homosexual, I tried to explain that the definition of “traditional” did not include Black people for centuries and we had to fight tooth and nail to be included in the idea of “traditional” in this country; that the same people who drafted Proposition 8 are the same people who denied interracial marriage, who forbid Armenians and Mexicans from owning land; that this isn’t a religious issue, we’re not trying to redefine marriage in the church, just the law, we’re not trying to reinterpret the Bible, just check off married on our IRS tax forms. After a lengthy discussion… it all funneled down to what I have heard several times from deeply religious homosexuals including my own ex boyfriend, that at the end of the day, he truly feels that homosexuality, including his own, is wrong, is a sin and all homosexuals, including himself, are not going to get into heaven.

After having this conversation with a couple of other friends I discovered that they are also carrying that same level of self hate and they truly just want all the protesting to stop because “the people have spoken.” Well, we’re a minority, at one point the people have “spoken” against women’s right to vote, against Blacks right to vote… if we were to solely listen to the mouths of the majority we would still be in slavery. Just because the votes are in and the people have spoken doesn’t make it right and there is something in me that burns hotter and hotter each day trying to get that across to people, particularly my own brethren who
feel as if this doesn’t directly affect them as gay black men. I’m finding it hard again to break bread with people who feel as if homosexuality is an abomination. Its bad enough you feel that way… but then why would you turn around and ask me over for dinner or… to go to the bathhouse with you? It’s just been drawing this line in the sand for me and I have just been in heavy meditation thinking about it.

The truth of the matter is I have always found it hard to be one of those people who accepts everything about a person. I can’t go, “Billy is a convicted child molester, but he’s good at heart and makes a mean pot of spaghetti” or “Carol nails live cats up on her wall for decoration, but she’s really funny and listens to Tori Amos.” I can’t just glide over those monumental aspects in order to get to the juice of a persons character.

I’m about to lose friendships here and it’s just really bugging me. I don’t want to be reactionary… but I also don’t want to be blind either and have people think that I accept or condone that type of unfathomable soul/self deprecating behavior or try to have that shit flake off into my world view. I just got some heavy thinking to do.

My Dear Country

It’s the day after America’s most monumental Election Day. I have been a fool to not document this journey. Though I don’t particularly feel like investigating every crook and cranny of this race right now either. Needless to say, Barack Hussein Obama II is now the 44th president of the United States of America. America now has its first president of African descent. It’s such a monumental event that I can’t fully envelope the idea around my head nevertheless express it with the most succinct words of honor, humility and pride. My people were stolen from our homeland and were forced to cultivate this land for the benefit of European immigrants, a benefit so great that they have been able to survive and thrive for generations from that toil. We on the other hand, not only have been denied the same benefit, but our spiritual selves seemed to have been raped, mutilated and left for dead with each passing decade. Obama being the President Elect of the United States of America is such an enormous sign that, after all these decades, after all these centuries… I just feel like… Obama being elected President of the United States, not appointed or deemed to be so by some status quo but elected… I honestly do feel like Africans and African Americans have achieved some sort of… spiritual reprieve. That whatever shackles we have been wearing all this time, physical, spiritual, emotional, either forced on us by other entities or self imposed… it just feels like… they’re gone. I don’t know if those words accurately describe the totality of what I feel right now but needless to say… fuck yeah! We got a Black President!

However…

Proposition 8 passed by a vote of 52% to 48%. This has been the anchor that tethers my otherwise relinquished joy to cold hard reality. I may not be a
nigger to this country anymore but I’m still very much a faggot... and it just fucking sucks. Actually, I’m just extremely pissed about it. This morning I almost wished that McCain would have won, the world would have made a little more sense to me. I can see a conservative Republican regime rejecting homosexuality but a liberal Democratic one? Wasn’t a major tenet of the Obama campaign about the acceptance of all Americans, to do away with those tiresome archaic prejudicial paradigms and archetypes that exist? Wasn’t a vote for Obama a vote for equality for all hard working citizens? I can accept McCain winning and Proposition 8 passing but for Obama to win and for Proposition 8 to pass... it's like...homosexuals are still waiting for our reprieve. I am extremely happy that Obama won, but I just can't go screaming into the streets in a fit of riotous joy that I see my heterosexual counterparts doing… this is not
totally a happy day for me. Maybe a little better… but I’m not really
happy.

Squaw Valley - Day Seven

Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Writer's Workshops
Day Seven

Today is pretty much the last day of the workshops. There is some ending ceremony tomorrow but all consorted purposes, today was the end of Camelot… and it actually pretty sad.

I have done a complete 180˚ turn about this place. Well… maybe not a complete 180˚ turn, but I do think that in certain instances I have underestimated this place. There is something magical here, and I do feel very privileged and lucky that, for a brief period of time, I was actually a part of it… that I was a drop of blood that ran through this place's veins. Right now I am in the huge hall where the majority of workshops and talks took place. We finished our absolute last panel discussion about an hour ago and there is only a handful of people here just mulling about… reading a book or chatting. I, like every one here at this point, am a little exhausted… it just been an overwhelming week.

All week I have been completely freaking out over my work being critiqued. Sometime Wednesday my roommates and me decided to take a little a break and head to Lake Tahoe which turned out to be the best idea ever. We were trying to find the movie theatre and thanks to the wonderful people at Mapquest… we wound up smack dab in the middle of an unincorporated forest.

On our way back trying to find the nearest paved road we accidentally found this little spot where we could park the car and observe the most idyllic view of Lake Tahoe I think humanly possible.

Afterwards we got something to eat and finally got to the movie theatre and saw the new Batman movie (which was extremely disturbing to me by the way.)

So by the time my material was up for critique I was pretty cool and laid back about. In general a lot of people liked but it needs a lot of work… and I got some amazingly good feedback on how to make it so much better. I am really eager to get into it start to reconstruct it.

By the way… the Poet Laureate of California Al Young actually critiqued my work. Let me repeat that… AL YOUNG… THE FUCKING POET LAUREATE OF CALIFORNIA CRITIQUED MY FUCKING WORK! I mean… come on… do I really even need a Christmas this year?

Today I had a one on one conference with author Cai Emmonswho I absolutely love and who, just coincidentally… gets my work. The more I talked with her the more I… I just wanted to cry, I really did. It's such an orgasmic feeling when someone established in your field… gets you. She gets me. Man… yeah… I can totally skip Christmas this year!

Squaw Valley - Day Five

Squaw Valley Community of Writers, Writer's Workshops
Day Five

Really busy. Really, really busy. But it's actually very fun and very rewarding. I don't know if it's the life changing, awe inspiring thing that I guess I have been hearing... not that that's a bad thing. I think it's just presumptuous to expect God to show up where you want her to. I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that the people I've met up here will be lifelong friends but… I am definitely open to that experience… and that HAS to count for something.

Tonight, twelve of my colleagues will read my manuscript and tomorrow each and every single one of them will tell me… in detail… what they thought about it. Yeah… I have bought just about bottle of Pepto Bismal in the Squaw Valley area. I know it's just me being self conscious again but I think I just off as Omarosa to these guys. I'm a little antagonistic and I make everyone blatantly aware that I'm African American. If Omarosa is the bad witch of the east, I am definitely the good witch of the west. I use my powers of racial intimidation for good…