oh hai blog that I forget about

I’m not even going to make excuses or explain the absence. Let’s just sally forth and carry on and jump back in, shan’t we?

Oh how I hate people who use my EXbf to get back at me. You know the type, right? They weren’t on our A-list to begin with but somehow managed to worm their way into my heart, post breakup, to ‘help us through.’ Now that I’m thinking for myself of late this individual jumped my friendship cruise and swam to the nearest phone to call on my EXbf to ‘check in.’ He doesn’t need your kind of friendship, sugar; besides I’ve given him the heads up that you’re using him to make some statement about the demise of our relationship. You might want to move to express checkout because we’re both aware that your smarts add up to 10 items or less, bitch.

It’s just about to flip to the month of MAY. I’ve lost 15lbs since January and reduced my overall body fat by 6.2+%. This is an awesome victory for one side of my wardrobe. I’ve been going to the gym and training with a personal trainer 3-nights a week since January. I’m nowhere near gay boi buff…nor do I want that, but my mood and figure have never looked better.

It’s expensive, for sure. But I don’t spend my money on booze, cigarettes, or rent boys so there’s that. It may take a full year to turn my fat ass ship of state all the way around. But at least I can see the horizon…and my dick, like never before.

Work is work. Crazy busy. Stressed. Doing the best I can.

I am still alone. Lonely. And my mother uses every holiday to remind me of that point. The most recent Easter exchange: “…so nobody is coming over? Well, you and I are both in the same boat — alone for Easter.” Seriously mother just jump up on the ol’ rugged cross and save me the trouble of looking for a goddamn ladder.

Okay. Peace & love, until later ~

’13 ~ totally transformative

At best my posting to this blog is intermittent. Or sporadic. Or whenever I fucking feel like it. Because some psych workplace online personality quiz scores me ‘empathetic’ I feel the need to apologize for my lackluster posting every time I return here to sweep the cobwebs. Like anyone cares, right?

This year is all about change. Some sort of cosmic lightbulb clicked around the holidays (for the record ‘cosmic lightbulbs’ flicker around a second bottle of medium-priced chardonnay) that I needed to change some louche habits. And beyond the louche habits I sought to change my physical appearance; in a year’s time I have packed on 16.5 pounds. To that end in mid-January I joined a pricey health club and bought a personal trainer package for 24 sessions as well as began the arduous process of dental veneers.  It’s time to start smiling again. And while the cost of this adventure has perhaps diminished my ability to pay for, say, a dozen months of additional assisted living care somewhere down the pike I can assure you I will be the senile old man wheelchair cruising the hallways with a red carpet smile. As God is my witness.

All of this change has upset my standard operating procedure of trashy porn, wank, work, drink, sleep, work — rinse and repeat. Too, the notion of a health club…shit, let’s just call it what it is, gym — sticks in my crawl from way back in the day of high school bullying before it became fashionable and political. Yes, I was bullied non-stop; had I thrown myself off the local bridge I assure you no one would have cared about my queer ass racing down river. But I digress.

To date I’ve achieved a modicum of success; my weight is down, though I have no clue as to how many pounds I’ve lost because I’m not playing with that ‘up a pound/down a pound’ merry-go-round. I feel much better overall; I have more energy on the weekends which typically were a dark self run amok with depression, cocktails and Bette Davis clips in the darkness of my living room. I have started cooking again. I’ve dropped processed frozen meals; I now steam vegetables, I slow-cook stews, and I bake fish.  I’ve cut out bread, candy, and carbonated beverages. Initially the process was like meth withdrawal but I’ve come ’round to enjoying a home-cooked meal versus zapping something in the microwave and standing over my sink with the plastic container and a fork. Depressed much? Change your view: I eat at my dining room table now.

The dental veneers are…hmmm, I think about 45% near completion. That is the upper temps are in place post-prepping my for reals teeth. And by ‘prepping my for reals teeth’ I mean every tooth I own was shaved, narrowed, and diminished beyond even what I had imagined in my cray cray head. Do not Google dental veneer procedures or you’ll never get in the chair. The dentist mowed five porcelain crowns; in my Xanax haze I figured $4K of existing dental work was trashed. Meh.

So. I have no idea where this is all headed but my goal is to be reasonably fit and more attractive of a catch by my Gemini birthday. That’s really not a lot more time but saving my own life is worth the pain of exhausted muscles and the throbbing of sore gums. This new year is all about me. And I think it is time for a few folks to warm up to that idea.

meanwhile back at the sanitarium

Oh hello. There must be at least two or three of you out there who still pop in here to check on me. I appreciate that. I sorta’ hate that I killed off my former blog persona just to avoid some nosy frenemies. Whatever, right? I’ll just have to pick up the shattered pieces of my broken life and move on. My apologies for being absent here. Actually, no. I am not apologizing. In all frankness I just haven’t had the time or inclination to stroke the muse of late. I should give y’all the back story.

Christmas sucked midget cock in ways I’d never imagined.  I won’t bore you with the finite details but I was alone Christmas day and didn’t like that experience one bit. I mean, shitballs, here I am — known by many, loved by a handful, alone at Christmas. It felt very much like the ghost of Christmas future minus the urine-soaked bedding at a cheap(er) assisted living. The one with the duct taped bed rails. But I digress. To further add salt into the hemorrhaging wound my own mother tossed a dagger so sharp I sat down on the sofa to catch my rising stomach acid.

“…so you’re not going out today? And no one is coming over? Well, I guess you and I are both in the same boat: alone at Christmas…”

Yes. True. But one doesn’t need to be so blatantly reminded by one’s cray cray mother who has adamantly chosen an Eleanor Rigby existence despite a sibling that lives 8-minutes away. Alone at Christmas? I think not, mother: I’ll just sit here and elegantly flip through my VALENTINO fashion book and drink another bottle of chardonnay as the paper white narcissus waft so gorgeously smothering.

I thought about suicide Christmas night. As one does as a lonely homo.

I mean how poetically prophetic. I considered how little I had left in the areas that seemingly matter most: in the space of five years I left a cheating, drunken spouse, lost a beloved condo and a 20-year career in advertising that burst into recession flames; two of my closest, dearest friends abandoned me when I needed their friendships the most.

So, yeah…let’s take a closer look at that new kitchen knife.

I spent New Year’s eve in bed. Actually I went to bed at 10pm; never even heard the New Year crash in. I was asleep on a half bottle of chardonnay and a half xanax cursing the world’s fresh slate of a new year as the soft kitten feet of xanax worked its magic.

I drink too much. I self medicate too much. And I have packed on pounds like nobody’s business because food is my new BFF. I came to those conclusions this January. And one bleary-eyed morning in front of my mirror I burst into tears. I didn’t even sense the floodgates were pending. I just started bawling over loss. For the last five years of my life I’ve been managing loss. And I’m tired. Tired of dragging luggage from the past into an uncertain future. Hell, WHAT future? I can’t see it over the stack of baggage.

The wonderful thing about our species is simple: as humans we have the ability to change. Nobody likes change per se; I mean, if change was easy we would have met all those new year resolutions long ago. Life is growth. Change. If we’re not growing we must be dying. And this January I chose to walk again. Among the living.

christmas tart

So I went for it. Which is so unlike me it’s notable enough to share here. You’ll need the back story minus costuming and lighting effects.

For several weeks/months I’ve been graciously smiling and nodding to a particular lobby security guard at my office building. It’s all reciprocal as he’s been actively returning the nods and smiles and silent mouthed ‘have a good night’ when I exit for the evening. I dunno; go figure: all I want to do is kiss him on the mouth and I have no very good reason or explanation for that thought process other than that ephemeral, hard to put in a bottle, chemistry thang one always reads about. “We just had good chemistry…” sounds so match.com bullshit, I know.

Which is absurd as I know nothing about him other than the obvious; he looks good in his navy jacket with skinny tie uniform, he wears a bit of goatee scruff really well, and his silver and white, close-cropped faux hawk hairdo suggests maintenance and perhaps a fun, spirited outlook. And by ‘fun, spirited outlook’ I mean someone who would rip my shirt off, buttons pinging off my hall closet doors, and f*ck me to the consistency of summer picnic butter. ahem.

Yesterday when I was leaving for lunch he said “…Headed out in this?” while pointing to the gentle snowfall. I don’t know what my reply was because I went on auto-pilot. Over a bread bowl of chili I decided to take the balls by the horn: I bought him a sugar cookie for my return entrance. And the rest, as the expression goes — is history.

Well, no. We’re not looking at Vera Wang china. But he was so gracious when I offered him dessert for his afternoon break; we chatted a bit. He seemed sorta’ shy but carried his end of our brief conversation about where I work/what I do and where he lives in this city. We parted all smiles and twinkling eyes. I gave him by business card. If he’s a really A+ web stalker he’s already got my work history on Linkedin, my address, and seen a few society page photos captured at events around town this past summer.

There’s a very steep flight of escalators to the upper lobby. It didn’t occur to me until later that he watched me giggle like a school girl and excitedly text a coworker. I have no idea where any of this will lead. And maybe it’s just nothing more than a lobby conversation over a simple sugar cookie treat. But I did it. And that’s not like me at all. There’s a new year just up ahead and maybe I simply need to be more ‘not like me at all’ with a clean slate ringing in at midnight.

alone in a manger no crib for a bed

Well here we are: a few days before the big event. Meh. I’m done with the shopping and the shipping. It seemed manageable this year as I didn’t have to stress over all that many gift ideas. All I’m doing today is shopping around for a little something for myself; a coffee table art book on, say, fashion or interior design. I’d like a new bottle of fragrance but I’ll wait to see what my EXbf comes up with. Even though I already know what he’ll ‘come up with’ since I gave him my two suggestions for his shopping day earlier this week. feh.

This Christmas feels a bit off. I knew it would and I’m okay just sorta’ sailing through the day. It’s not about Christmas day with me anyway; I’m much more sensitive to the traditions and expectations tied to Christmas Eve. It’s a magical, spiritual night; by a certain hour the highways empty, the restaurants close, and in general folks begin to arrive where they need to be. I’ve always tuned into the anticipation and the silence of Christmas Eve around midnight.

Yesterday on the way into the office my bus had a few 20-somethings and 30-somethings with their ginormous luggage on wheels. Let me be honest: I hated them. In my brain I kept chewing on ‘must be nice to have family’ which is just plain simpleton talk as I have a family. But not one that functions as such, I guess.

Mother will spend Christmas day in her living room window behind dusty, drooping layers of Austrian ‘poof’ style sheer curtains. By 5:00pm she will know how many cars and who arrived in them at each of the neighbor’s homes up and down the street. I will get a full report with my Christmas check in call: “…and John is visiting with that skinny-assed Japanese girl he  married. Why he would take on a second wife wife with those slanty-eyed brats I’ll never know…”

And on it will go until her report is completed. Mother is completely capable of turning on an oven and presenting a turkey on her 40-year old good china. She just doesn’t want to. Or have to. A sibling is less that 15-minutes away and yet mother will sit alone and accept her aloneness as normal operating procedure. I don’t understand this.

And yet I do. For the most part, minus the Austrian poof window treatments — I will sit alone this Christmas too. By choice, I suppose. I don’t have the desire to squeeze into an “orphans” holiday meal. They can save that seat for someone a bit more into the spirit of the day. And I won’t feel sorry for myself one bit. No sir. I’ve been skating very near the ‘woe is me’ pond but snap out of it when I remember the school children cut down last week in Connecticut. What an evil world we live in. I’ll focus on that come Christmas day as I peer between the narrow slits of my dusty mini-blinds to watch what my half-breed neighbors are up to across the alley way.

blanket statement

So this time of year I phone the hometown ye olde flower shoppe and order poinsettia for sibling and mother. I also, for the past many, many years order something called a ‘grave blanket.’ This seasonal holiday gesture appears to be a mostly southern custom as I’ve mentioned the ordering of aforementioned blanket to my ne’er-do-well Yankee friends and they look at me with a blank stare and a level of judgement that equates to a pat on the head and a ‘there, there…poor thing didn’t attend Yale.’ But they can go fuck their family lineage. I wanted to attend Radcliffe, too, but father wouldn’t hear of it…and, well, you know the rest.

Essentially the grave blanket thing is just a woven mass of pine branches wide enough and long enough to cover a cemetery grave site. The one that hits father’s grave every December is nothing more than that plus a red velvet bow and some sort of white glittery dove that presumably parallels a significant peaceful rest with Jesus and his homies.

I recently shared this topic with mother and learned that she’s been pilfering the ‘white glittery dove’ from father’s grave blanket after the holidays for the past several years. As she puts it “…they’re just tossing the damn things in the garbage…” This irritates me to no end. Why she feels a need to basically steal off her husband’s grave puzzles me. Too, she has yet to express any level of ‘thank you’ for my gesture these past many, many years.

It’s just some small something I do to get into heaven remember a man who sidestepped and/or ignored most of my childhood and teen years. Maybe ‘ignore’ is too strong; I hate to subscribe to that psycho-babble bullshit ‘absent father/overbearing mother’ shizz but sometimes it’s all I’ve got to fall back on. What would Jesus do, indeed.

today’s early numbers are in