Real Magic

The sky was ominous that day

A portent for the natural destruction

That would topple a power line in the mountains

And turn our friend's labored storytelling into

A type of ghost story

We used our modern appliances

To illuminate your garden

To play music that drowned out the violent nature beyond

Lattice protected in climbing ivys

Sheltered us from the winds that brewed

With us in the cauldron

We listened to a tail of woe so alien to my ears

That when at last he finished my hands found his

And my eyes met his

And I offered words of thanks

Gratitude that he felt safe enough to share

We sat around a tabletop littered affectionately with the spoils of pleasure

Rolling papers and lighters and a dusting of tobacco and weed

Bottles emptied of their spirits

And then the song played

The song that would lift us all from our seats

And we danced

We danced like no one was watching

But we did watch each other, did we not?

For a few songs this went on until our friend made a polite exit into

The still dark early morning

And it was only moments after that you led me to your room

Few words were exchanged

Perhaps because nothing needed to be said

We both already knew

So much good humor already shared

Trust and understanding accumulated in genuine conversations

Sunsets

Afternoons languishing in the sun

Shared spliffs and quaffs and meals

And then at last this perfectly magical night brought us alone together in the dark

There was an unspoken knowledge

We found each other's edges and they interlocked like puzzle pieces

Shapes 

Shifting together

Breathing labored but rhythmic

Love overflowing

Spilling out onto the sheets

And into my dreams which came so easily

Wrapped up in your space

Folded carefully together into a tiny bed

Until morning came

And the magic still present in the room

Was hidden when the light and power returned

A truly supernatural connection

That shone brightly on the eerie night to illuminate a darkly electric evening

I left your bedside knowing

We had performed sorcery that night

The Idea of You

I remember every detail of that first night
When you turned your full attention on me
My surroundings blurred into the background
Your caramel eyes shone
As your intention revealed itself

I was caught in your enchanting spell

That night, there would be

Glittering plankton illuminating our waking reverie

Moonlight dancing on our skin

Eyes beaming as we relished in seeing each other

Nude

In both the physical and philosophical sense

We swam in that dark night in the Aegean Sea

Approaching one another's mystery

Pausing to catch our breath just outside the gate

More nights with you and

I remember how

You sang so sweetly to me

Spellbinding me with your stories

Lips painted with red and a trace of blue glitter

Changing dresses

Multilingual flirtation

Filling all the plates on a buffet of both intellectual and fetishist desires

You reawakened my instincts to hunt

I let you work your magic on me

I wanted it

I wanted your magic

To dose myself on your potent remedy

To feast upon your flesh with a Dionysian appetite

However

Your magic was sadly

Not what I imagined it would be

Quite early on I got the sense that our story

Would be a tragedy

Looking back, one can see plainly

The foreshadowing was more than obvious

But I was blinded by hormones

Blinded by your enchantments

Transfixed by your steady, heady gaze

I was so intoxicated that I

Prostrated myself and ignored my own needs

To accommodate the particularity of your situation

Accepted your inaccessibility

And remained hopelessly oblivious as the warning signs began to appear

Then one night early on in our exchange

I walked into a dangerous scene

We were drunk when you put a strap in my hand

Asked me to restrain you

And slipped on a blindfold

I'm sure you already warned me

About this pattern of behavior

And your aftermath

Before I myself became a player in your production

Still the blindness

I am so grateful for my instincts that night

You willed me to abuse your body

Enthusiastic consent tasted so sweet

With the utmost of self-control

I revealed only a brief glimpse of my inner sadist

You were warned previously that this was not a simple task for me

That the aftercare is special for repentant sadists

But I choked on the bitter fruit of its absence

And later on your shaming of me for needing it

This scene became the site of our undoing

The beginning of the end

You characterized my earnest and most heartfelt needs

As demanding praise

You punished my tender female masculinity

Worst of all

You insulted me in the way that hurt the most

By telling me it wasn't enough

Perhaps that should have been the end of the story

But I refused to see reality

I continued to abuse myself for your attention

While you continued to deny me access

Refusing 

To see me

To accept my compliments

To let me cook for you or buy you dinner

To leave gifts at your doorstep

Yet still wanting me close to you

To walk you home at night

To sleep in your bed

To hold you and never ask for more

Amazingly I gave you everything you asked

And you still didn't want me

You began to seem

Rather impossible to please

And the more you avoided me and withheld

The more I compromised my needs

At last we were able to reconcile that fateful night

And you told me then that it was done

In more ways than one

And yet somehow I found a shred of optimistic hope

In the closeness we shared for those final days

On that mountainous island

Walking hand in hand

Climbing and photography

Dining and sitting close

Dancing together and having fun

It all meant so much to me

You even bought me a very special gift

A charm that still pitifully makes me dizzy

For thinking of you now
Like a horcrux

(I need to get rid of it but I have not yet)

But that final night when I walked you home

I at last had to walk out the doorway of my illusions

I asked you for hope

And of course you withheld

So I left you there to begin my journey home

To return to myself alone

It was not quite over though

You had one final stone to cast

Just in case I had any lasting good impressions

You made sure to give my heart one last stab

Apparently I was too familiar in social media chat

Speaking too frankly

Too late

How dare I bother you with my feelings after all that has passed?!

You were so hurtful

You told me we are not that close

Your tone so condescending I gagged on it

And even after all of that

I have been unable to relieve myself of you

To rid myself of this burden of psychodramatic warfare

When I really let myself think of all these painful scenes

And even your passive aggressive instagram memes

For which you later accused and unfollowed me for doing

All the while it was you who was truly mean

Oh the crippling irony!

So I process and I process

I can see this pattern clearly playing out

Through my romantic history

This clinging to past dreams

When clearly they have disintegrated completely

And at last my moment of clarity

Came to me just this morning

I finally see exactly what I have been doing to myself

Somewhere in my mind remains the naïve hope

That the person I thought I met

Is still in there

That our friendship could survive

That all of these innumerable offenses can somehow be rationalized

And my idea of you

My idea of what we could have together would be realized

Alas I think that ship has sailed into the sunset

Past the fisherman who sold fish we would never eat together

Away from the bus stop we saw being vandalized

Beyond Sappho's Face and the mountain we climbed together

Across the Aegean

Smuggling away my idea of you

Leaving wakes that could cause a man to lose himself at sea

Goodbye.

Crush Blindness

Do you ever wonder what is going on in your brain when you have a crush? I have been wondering about that lately, because I was recently reminded that crushes are the brain's hallucinogen. You see things that aren't there, you act against your own nature, and you ignore information that might otherwise divert you from your current path.

I did some research, and what I found is that hormones are once again controlling everything. When we feel lust our brain is awash with what is essentially adrenaline and pleasure. Some research has also suggested that lowered levels of seratonin are a part of the cocktail, which incidentally are similar to the levels seen in patients battling with OCD. So next time you ask yourself why you cannot stop thinking about someone you barely know, remember that it is likely your brain has taken you hostage! It is actually a normal physiological reaction to get nervous around them, and think about them more than you would any other new relation, because your brain is basically drowning in thrilling happiness juice.

So, in short, you are crazy for a time. The symptoms were literally referred to by one article I read as a "temporary mental illness" that can last up to two years.

What does this tell me? Hold the commitments back for at least two years when you are dating, because you are just plain not in your right mind when you have a crush.

Open Letter To My Fellow Butches: Stop Dating Straight Women

Growing up knowing you are gay has a way of forcing you to learn some interesting coping skills. One of the first things I remember having to cope with in relation to my queer sexuality is crushing on straight women. At my large high school with a student body of roughly 3,500 students, even back in 1998, I was one of few people who could be visually identified as queer, even before I ever contemplated the word "lesbian" or "bisexual" as a label for myself. What that really means is there were no other women around like me to help me learn about myself. Instead I was able to see and be seen by a couple of flamboyant young men, and a couple of male friends who were still in their adolescent closet but would come out soon enough.

During this developmental age when most kids are busy mooning over angsty teen romance, I was alone. My increasingly less frequent interactions with boys my age were fraught with disappointment, and my interest in women swelled like a prize winning fruit in summer...and yet, there was no one for me to even crush on, so I allowed myself to lust after the only women around me, who were, at least back then, 100% hetero.

Next year marks my 20 year anniversary of completing high school, and it has taken me a long time, but I've finally added heterosexuality to my list of romantic dealbreakers.

How can a lesbian date a straight woman? Honestly I'm probably not the one to answer that, but I assure you that it happens. I could wax poetic about the allure of her curiosity and the ego glory of giving someone truly proper sexual satisfaction for the first time, but that is not what I'm writing about today. The allure of curiosity is a trap, and at my age I no longer relate to women who spend their whole lives without getting to know their own bodies.

Furthermore, if you are butch like me, you must know by now that you are a rare breed. As I explained earlier, a lot of butches from my generation started out alone, not knowing if there was anyone else in the world like us. For the younger generations, I think it is a different kind of pain; they grow up knowing there exists a fierce subculture of bull dykes and drag queens and queer femmes and bears, terrifying and brilliantly bold as brass, but they must wait in isolation to access the majority of it.

You are that rare breed, that beacon to mankind which exposes the error of binary thinking where it relates to humanity. Just by existing you challenge the status quo, and you owe it to yourself and your community to withhold all that makes you a unicorn from the unappreciative.

Why's that?

Because you are magnificent. Somehow you managed to escape all of the "girlifying" and "pretty making." You play with the boys and win. You get dirty, and clean up handsomely. You walk with a sexy strut. You are not afraid to wear a tie and suspenders, even if they hang differently around your breasts. Still, underneath all that toughness, you are purely female; all softness and curves, and only the right woman can unlock the gates and penetrate your walls. (shameless entendre, I know)

Of course all or none of these may apply to you in particular, because butch is not defined by clothing, but by attitude and an unyielding lack of cooperation with being treated subhuman because one was born without a penis. Regardless of what butch is to you, merely being yourself is precisely what makes you so interesting, and although you may not have found any butch loving queers yet, trust me when I tell you there are loads of them out there who can't wait to meet you.

You know what is better than curiosity and beginner's sex? Meeting a woman who takes one look at you and knows that you are a certain type - HER type. She swoons at your big hands and muscular arms. She wears that outfit that makes you check her out all night. She works for YOUR attention, and not any male gaze. She is thrilled to let you open her door, not because you're a butch and you act like a man, but because it is both polite and sexy to do things for someone.

So! Stop chasing straight women. Let the discovery of her fundamental heterosexuality turn your blood cold. Let the hairs on the back of your neck stand on end. Let your stomach churn, and your spidey senses send you running from that situation like it was a house afire. Let it repulse you in any manner necessary, as long as it saves you for those lovers who TRULY SEE YOU at first encounter. Do not let a person's fear of being outed dull your fabulous gay shine. We are the special ones. We glitter like gold wherever we go. Let them suffer. Let them wish. Let them fantasize. And when they can't take it anymore, let them come out and join our rainbow family. If they cannot do that much, they do not deserve you!

Communication Expert?

The truest test of your communication skills is being able to speak effectively with someone who has none.

Don't stand still

Becoming Arrogant

If I had a dollar for every baby king I observed going from a butch lesbian with low self esteem to a total egotist, I could probably take my girl out for a steak dinner. I have learned it is a part of the process of becoming to learn to love yourself and often it is not graceful...it just shouldn't be the last change you undergo. I guess for some it is like coming home to themselves. They always wanted to be an asshole and now they finally love themselves enough for that to be possible...sigh...

To all of you baby kings out there, my wish for you is that you learn quickly that arrogant is not who you are.

Pakistani Queer

I met a queer couple the other night. One woman was from Pakistan. Luckily she was from a loving supportive family, but listening to her describe being a queer woman in Pakistan...her fear of death was palpable.

Count your blessings.

Lala/Juanito

For 17 days this winter my cat, Lala, was sentenced to the cat collar of infinite shame while recovering from a dubious laceration on his tail. For more than two weeks I fed him his wet food every day, because the poor guy couldn't eat in the collar without making a mess. We napped together. We bonded. We synergized.

About halfway through this ordeal, I noticed he seemed to be more obedient in the collar. Of course his limited mobility would be the more obvious reason that he was getting into less trouble than usual, but there seemed to be more to the story.

Then toward the end of his recovery, I removed the collar to let him bathe himself. When I went to put it back on him, he sat so calmly with his chin pointed straight up in the air, and patiently let me adjust the tension of the cord, tying a bow he could not undo. My girlfriend and I watched him together in quiet wonder; this normally quite rebellious and difficult cat was behaving like a trained show dog.

The wheels in my brain started cranking. We joked about the possible similarities between BDSM collars and cat collars. We wondered together how much of the obedience training might remain once he was fully healed.

Then I remembered a guy I worked with about 150 million years ago. For the purpose of this story, the only thing you really need to know about Juan was that he was a successful gay male bartender whose arrogance can only be described as an objet d'art. By that I mean, he thought so highly of himself that he scarcely ever had any reason to speak to me, in spite of the fact that I was his barback at least a few nights a week. To be fair, he was well tipped and he tipped me well, so I didn't really care much. I had no illusions about our status. Nevertheless, it has to be said that Juan was a catty bitch.

Then one day Juan showed up to work exhibiting symptoms from a condition called Bell's Palsy. For anyone who hasn't heard of it, it results in paralysis in a main facial nerve on one side, leaving that side of your face slack while the other side functions normally. It is rather unfortunate, especially since doctors don't seem to know much about what causes it. So Juan showed up to work for a week or two like that. No matter how I felt about the guy, I felt compassion for him. No one deserves that nonsense. I'm not joking about his condition in any way. What I did find funny at the time however, was that Juan was suddenly nice to me. Just like that. I'd worked with him for years and he barely ever spoke to me, but when he was dealing with this condition he actually said hello to me and interacted with me quite a lot more than usual.

What do you think happened when the palsy symptoms went away? Juan went right back to being a big old bitch.

So when my girlfriend and I were wondering about Lala, and whether he would return to his status of unholy terror once untethered from his shameful salad bowl shaped necklace, I told her the story about Juan the bitchy bartender and his bout with Bell's Palsy. Together we debated the rhetoric of whether Lala's inner Juan is gone? Or is that catty bitch coming out when we untie the collar? Is Lala only being nice to me because he is feeling weak and sorry for himself?

Yesterday we freed him from his restraint. He spent the first few hours in that twitchy sort of trance only cats can achieve, darting around like a frenzied maniac. That was when he earned the nickname Juanito. As it turns out, Lala's inner Juan is not gone. Then later on he crashed and slept most of the day, and we saw his snuggly, lovable side. He really seems to have two personalities.

Now that we are on day 2, I really think he is a changed little man, Juanito moments aside. I cannot officially attest to the efficacy of collar training your cat, but it seems to have made a difference with mine. Who knew?

International Women's Day 2017

Recently a friend and former colleague who works for a very posh company shared with me that his company has set the goal of hiring X Number of female developers. It is a big company and I seem to recall the number was small, like maybe ten. My reaction was positive. He said, "Okay good, tell me more about why you feel that way because I have a female co-worker who was very upset by it. She said she didn't want to find out she was only hired for her gender." To which I replied, "Why not? It happens to men every day. Men have privilege and they don't know it. It comes so natural to them they wear it like skin. Perhaps they get more credit than is due, just like when men are hired because they are men. And one company has dedicated a single objective for themselves to extend that extra favor to probably ten lucky women.

You may not like it, but if you really want equality between the sexes, women have to acknowledge that while we are underpaid and under praised, men are also OVER paid and OVER praised. They are promoted without reason, taken into the fold, and groomed for success starting at a young age.

Normally women have to be better than all of their peers just to avoid appearing inferior. Here is one small example of a very smart company shifting the balance for a brief moment in time. So don't fight the progress, friends. We have earned it, collectively, and I applaud everyone involved for giving women an edge, albeit a tiny one.

So take whatever they are offering and do not think twice about it. Do it for all the women who are blocked from management. Do it for the women who can't rise up. Do it because we all deserve a little favoritism once in a while.

Rebuilding routines has me like

I think I can. I think I can. I think I can.

Every Day You Are New Again

The best existential gift is renewal. Every dawn that rises above you wakes you with the promise to try again and create a new path.

My superpower is being American (obnoxious)

Sometimes when I need to get things done in this country, I bust out my inner American without even thinking about it. It is effective if you don't mind being patronized a little. It happened yesterday and I almost felt guilty about it afterward. Almost.

Even feminists are guilty

Female value is measured by their use to men.

One night in Antwerpen, circa Feb 2016

Last night I was lost and found myself drawn toward a purple light, which gave an allure of nightclub. I approached the massive doors to read the sign above that said, "Club Silk, an American club." I went to open the door and realized I had to ring a bell. A beautiful woman cracked the door open to talk to me. I asked if she would speak English with me. She said of course. I told her I was American, and lost, and what not. Apparently I passed inspection, which presumably included identifying me as male, because the next thing she did was open the large door under the purple lights to reveal the plush interior of Club Silk. She turned to her colleague and said, "He is American," and walked away to let them deal with me. I knew the moment I realised I had to ring a doorbell that it was not a nightclub, but I was damn curious by then. The mystique lingered a moment longer as I peered in through the open door to the harem of barely dresed femmes slowly coming into view. When I asked where I was, they replied, "This is a strip club."

I was definitely not in the mood for a strip club last night (though under the circumstances it certainly felt like a warm port on a cold stretch of road), but it made for a vivid memory. I especially liked being recognized as a friendly face and welcomed in, even if they were a bit off the mark.

Private Prisons are the real beneficiary of the Trump Travel Ban

I received some literature in the mail today that impressed upon me that the real reason for the travel ban is to feed the insatiable hunger of the private prison industry in the U.S.

Think about it. Who is the criminal with this ban in place? Muslim immigrants, who are suddenly considered illegal. What do we do with illegal immigrants in the U.S.? We put them in prison camps!

The fact that they are Muslim and Trump once did business in those countries is just a distraction! If anything, his business ties in the affected countries give him greater access to legal knowledge on those governing bodies. Will they fight for their citizens lost in the cracks of our big red white and blue machine? I would put money on the answer to my rhetoric being no.

More on this later.

Immortality Through Glitter?

Why? Because glitter never goes away.

Cutting out the Trump Cancer

The #deleteUber campaign gave me an idea.

While many of us around the world sit in shock wondering what we can possibly do about the abhorrent first actions of the regrettably no longer mere "president elect," I found some inspiration. As it turns out Uber CEO has been advising Trump around the time Trump was writing his now legendary ban on travel to the U.S. from a set of 7 majority Islamic countries. When a group of NY cab drivers went on strike after news of the ban spread, Uber stopped their surge pricing in order to profit from the strike. News of this repugnant strategy went viral and in turn spurned a noteworthy hashtagivist backlash known as #deleteUber.

As much as I hate Uber's surge pricing, I did not really hate Uber itself until I heard the CEO was sitting at Trump's table. Now I am feeling like I would rather walk home in a Russian winter than use their service. (Sorry Logan!)

Then I realized an obvious way the outraged American majority (remember Clinton actually won the election) can start chipping away at his support: with good old fashioned consumer protest.

So, I Googled "Trump corporate support," and lo and behold, here is a helpful first step: 
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_presidential_campaign_endorsements,_2016

This is my pledge to you, dear readers, I want to rake the muck and uncover the scum who put him in office, and I hope that you will react in kind, by directing your money to their competitors. These selfish and arrogant corporate moguls want to cash in on the Trump presidency. They literally want to profit from the horrific transformation of our beautiful constitution to a tool that will bludgeon minorities into feeble submission. We cannot allow them to profit from this. Do not let them. Spread the word. Let them feel the consequences of their pathology where it will hurt them most - in their profit margins.

I plan to drill down in this list and feature different offenders to the American tradition of diversity, haters of women, Islam, the impoverished, and basically anyone who is not a white Anglo-saxon one-percent-er, but don't take my word for it. I urge you to take this inspiration and follow suit by spreading the word that these companies and/or their stakeholders intend to profit from a Trump presidency. As an individual you DO have power. Raise your voice! Here are some suggestions about how you can join the fight:

Step 1: Delete uber.
Step 2: Peruse the list at the link above. (FYI: it is a long list, but below the politicians and military officials you will find a section that covers celebrities, CEOs, and the like)
Step 3: Share, publish, spread the word in your daily lives.
Step 4: Stay tuned. I will be back with more about the names on the list.

P.S. This is my screenshot from actually deleting Uber. I am not kidding about this!

Handel

I suppose I have been feeling existential for a few reasons lately, but none so much as the fact that I had to euthanize and then bury my 17 year old cat who I adopted when he and I were both kittens.

Handel AKA Bubby AKA My Fancy Footed Furry Feline Friend (among many other aliases over the years) was the most constant and wonderful source of love in my life outside of blood relations. He was perfect, fearless, loving, and the most beautiful white and black polydactyl with a little pink nose who ever lived. He lived 17 long and glorious years, and he still left this earth too soon.

The second most compelling reason for my current existential crisis is a corresponding bout of personal health challenges. Long story short, I have eczema plus a perfect storm of environmental triggers, leaving me with, in a phrase, monster hands.

Believe me when I tell you I do not take these words lightly, nor do I enjoy creating my own euphemistic nickname in mockery of myself. Allow me this poetic license for the sake of drama. What I have gone through in these last months felt like a personally tailored nightmare. My once capable hands juggled plates and glasses and demolished walls and moved friends and typed billions of bytes and managed replacing batteries and alternators and belts in my old jeep and helped hands and held friends and I could go on, but...important sidebar...Let it not be forgotten that one of my dominating literary and performance characters is butch mystique. She is born of nothing less than 100% me and my beliefs. Ever since I got over my youthful desire to have long delicate fingers, I have found pride in having strong capable hands. And in case it has not dawned on you yet, dear reader, for a queer woman, her hands are her sex, swinging in plain view for all to see. Capable of great strength and tenderness all in one. ...getting back around to what it means to this butch to have capable hands...I will let you infer the rest of your way through the ultimate challenge this period had on my very core identity. Case = rested.

So I withdrew into a cocoon. Skin conditions have the terrible side effect of rendering you paranoid of absolutely every possible trigger. You start with the obvious and work until the symptoms abate. Some people spend years suffering. I count myself lucky to have lost only a season. Regardless, I cut my bathing time in half. I worked from home, A LOT. I was bandaging sometimes as many as four or five fingers a couple of times per day. I could not cook or clean as much so I ate a lot of prepared foods. Ugh. It has been hell.

What is the silver lining to every wave of suffering in life? The period where you get sick of your own stink. That is the true test of character. What do you do when you are at the deepest place in the pit of your own despair? What life lessons will you extrapolate from your loss? In this case, I decided that I was going to have to take it on the chin. I must go to work. I must bandage my fingers meticulously. Type without activating the open cuts on my fingertips. Learn how to exercise without making it worse. Whew. I could go on for days, but alas, I have finally reached that silver lining which includes being sick of myself. I am sick of thinking, talking, contorting my life around these particular challenges. I just want to become highly skilled in living with it until it is naught but a memory...at least until the next round of hell if I should be so lucky. At least I will know better if it happens again.

The day these photos were taken, I bandaged up my monster hands and buried my cat. What better way to caption the ending of this experience, than to split open a finger tip wielding the shovel? Luckily, it is healed, and I went to work today bandage free. This is progress.

RIP Bubby. The day you returned to the earth was just as magical as you were, however tragic. I will miss you forever.