Category Archives: General

Maybe it wasn’t ever easy being a man, but it was surely easier when what you were to wear, whether armor or the loincloth of a slave, was handed to you off the rack at birth, along with what you were expected to feel and do. ~ Mark Merlis, An Arrow’s Flight

He had allowed men to love him; he had never induced it.

Really, never at all? Not the way he had dressed, or the attitudes he had struck when he had sensed that an attitude was desired? All right, he was practiced in making himself lovable. Men didn’t just happen upon him in a state of nature and fall head over heels. Still, it was one thing to put forth your little generic flower of masculinity and wait for some bee to come suck it, and quite another to set your sights on one particular bee. ~ Mark Merlis, An Arrow’s Flight

I didn’t feel it until this week: the antsy anticipation for Spring to arrive. Up until now I’d been keeping my head down and shuffling along, bundled up and trudging through the endless unfurling of Winter, in the hopes that when I looked up again Spring would be on the horizon. I looked up too soon. We’re nowhere near it. The frigid temperatures, the wind, and the snow and sleet are instead indicative of a Winter not content to take flight anytime soon. This refusal to yield has proven problematic in the past. Usually it results in some last-ditch-effort at sanity-retrieval in the form of a trip South. I am looking into it as I write this, because there is nothing here that appeals to me.

Oh what a show!

It’s quite a Sunset…

But who is this Santa Evita?

Why all this howling, hysterical sorrow?

What kind of Goddess has lived among us?

You sure are pretty

When you’re putting the damage on
Yes
When you’re putting the damage on

You’re just so pretty
When you’re putting the damage on

A bit of the Artist has to die with everything we create.

A bit of the Artist is always sacrificed.

There is no way around this.

And what is left behind?

If we’re smart we have carved out a place of loved ones and family that provides a foundation for our flights of artistic fancy, a haven and a home in which we can find shelter and relief from the maelstroms we occasionally conjure.

The tenth anniversary celebration of this website continues, with a spotlight on the 2010 Project ‘A 21st Century Renaissance: The Resurrection Tour‘. The delusional flights of fancy that constitute this penultimate tour of mine (the next one, in 2015, will be my last) found fruition in this collection of photographs and writing. The plot, what there was of it, loosely used a renaissance and blending of the arts, religion, and science (I even did up a Periodic Table of Emotions). It was inspired by the elements, the earth, and the spirit, and I very much wanted the feel to be epic – in the expansive depths of the ocean, the limitless rise of the sky, the impenetrable plane of the bedrock. It was a re-connection to nature in many ways, both subtle and extreme, and I’ve always found my greatest inspiration in the sea, the flowers, and the light. Accents of religion dot the landscape as well ~ the stained-glass windows of churches, the collection of crucifixes, the parchment background and the floating cherubs of the title pages.

This was mostly a visual endeavor, with the power and potency of the proceedings coming directly from the photography. There really is no plot, no narrative drive of something like ‘The Circus Project‘, and no single-note theme like ‘StoneLight‘. Instead, it’s a rather eclectic mix of images, some jarring, some soft, some just right.

Go to the mirror, boy…

Go to the mirror boy!

Listening to you…

Gazing at you…

Following you…

As this big week of incongruous days begins (Fat Tuesday, Ash Wednesday, and Valentine’s Day), and we try one more time for the Boston bed delivery (re-scheduled thanks to Nemo), it’s time for a quick look back at what happened in the first full week of February. Quite frankly, it’s nice to see that our Winter is moving on – we’ve cut a wide swath through it already, and the groundhog did not see his shadow (not that that foolish beast knows a damn thing). Let’s get on with it:

•  My friend JoAnn came up from Boston to spend a winter weekend of Mexican meals and tequila-laced fun. That’s the sort of thing that gets me through the winter. Fajitas & ritas, baby.

• Gratuitous nudity and hunky shirtlessness continued with posts of Gregory Michael, The Rock, Mark Kanemura, and perennial favorite Tom Daley, while David Beckham and Mario Lopez battled it out for the best underwear bulge in motion.

• A few quotes from some of my favorite books filled this space with some “vintage” shots of those days when I had a much smaller waist-line here, here, and here.
• The weekend started out wildly enough, with a visit to my parents’s house and a snowy overnight with my brother and the twins.

• And my most favorite post of the week was the first Couple Profile I did on Cody & Wayne. We need more love stories like this, and they cannot be shared enough.

Some days it’s best not to increase the sharpness. Some days are better left in bed. Some days you take the hazy visage with you, and the world grows cloudy where you go. Some day you don’t want to roll over and play, so you don’t. (Is this starting to feel like a tampon commercial to anyone else? Or dog food? Depression?) There – I’ve taken the piss out of my own post before it even got going, I’ve screwed myself as far as extending it into something deeper, and I’ve saved you the trouble. It was only a matter of time before my snarkiness came back to bite me in the ass. Turns out getting bit in the butt isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.

[Insert obligatory pic of my ass crack here. And here. And here. And here… and here…]

It was over 25 years ago this week that ‘Open Your Heart‘ hit Number One on the charts – and I remember it like it was yesterday. (Featured photo culled from ‘A Night at the Hotel Chelsea.’) It remains one of my favorite Madonna songs. That’s all – I already wrote about it in the afore-highlighted links – what more do you want from me?

Their first kiss was on the anniversary of Stonewall.

Their first date was at a showing of the movie version of ‘The Lion King’.

Their first buggy ride together was in New Orleans.

Tomorrow I present the first ‘Couple Profile’ – on Wayne and Cody – and it’s a story that goes back almost two decades.

I have no idea if it played any part in the lives of Cody or Wayne, or even if they like it (hopefully it’s not one of those songs they can’t stand), but for whatever reason it provided the soundtrack to the creation of tomorrow morning’s post. And somehow, the lyrics fit into the timeless notion of true love that I think these gentlemen exemplify. Come back tomorrow for a little slice of their story.

Moon river, wider than a mile
I’m crossing you in style some day
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker
Wherever you’re goin’, I’m goin’ your way

Two drifters, off to see the world
There’s such a lot of world to see
We’re after the same rainbow’s end, waitin’ ’round the bend
My huckleberry friend, moon river, and me…

Another week, nay another month, has gone by, and we are at the point of a recap. This was a fun one – with lots of old friends taking the sting out of the last week of January. Slowly the days are getting longer now, the sun gradually staying out a little later. We’ve got a long road ahead, but the first third of Winter is well and truly over. It’s the slightest sliver of hope that gets us through the day. But enough on that, let’s get this rehash over:

• A surprise visit to my friends Chris and Darcey in Washington, DC went off without a hitch. From the first dinner at the Mayflower Hotel, to a gorgeous afternoon at the US Botanical Gardens, and finishing up with a glorious performance of the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center, it was a magical few days in the nation’s capitol, with two of my favorite people in the world.
• The parade of Hunks of the Day continued with appearances by Christian Sancho, Kevin O’Donnell, and Jack Mackenroth.

• The Madonna Timeline shuffled to two of my non-favorite songs by her madgesty, ‘Candy Shop‘ and ‘Gang Bang‘, but I did my best with what I was given.
• A new musical ‘Upstairs‘ is in the launching phase, but needs help to come to full fruition. It tells the story of a 1973 arson fire at a gay bar in New Orleans – one of the deadliest attacks against gays and lesbians in the history of this country, and one that went largely known.
• The last, and by far the most impressive. moment of this week was the premiere of the Straight Ally Profile feature. I wrote it on my friend Skip Montross, and he somehow managed to get it onto the front page of Reddit (a major accomplishment, I’m told – and one that resulted in our biggest traffic day ever). It was one of my favorite pieces that I’ve written on this website, and it’s a testament to how great a guy Skip is – and the proof is encapsulated here: “It is assured that the generations that follow us will view the voices of today, those who say that traditional marriage is a right reserved for only straight couples, with the same bitter disdain that we reserve for those who believed that separate could ever be equal… That is why it means so much to me… not because I benefit but because it is right.” ~ Skip Montross

Before I begin the Washington, DC recap, let’s get through a quick review of the week that came before. It was a damn cold one – cold even for the most robust of upstaters, which is saying something because we’re a pretty hardy crew. But when wind-chills dip below zero degrees Fahrenheit, there’s a big damn problem. I’ve taken to wearing two scarves (and you all thought my accessorizing addiction was purely aesthetic) and, gasp, a hat – if I know I’ll be walking to a place where the state of my hair won’t matter. Anyway, our weekly look back:

• The week began on a manic Monday, only it was actually a look at the Hazy Shade of Winter.
• The Madonna Timeline moved to ‘Falling Free’, one of the best tracks from her MDNA album.
•  I resurrected some of my naughty bits from my last trip to Washington (in honor of this weekend’s trip), here and here and here – but that hotel had a heated bathroom floor (I didn’t get nearly as naked for the camera on this recent trip, as you will see.)
•  I’ll leave that to the proper Hunks of the Day, who took their shirts off despite the chill, and hopefully worked to heat things up. For that, a word of thanks to the strong and silent Ed Burns, Shakira’s Baby Daddy Edward Pique, and the diver who is giving Tom Daley a run for his Speedo-clad money, a very naked Chris Mears.

A couple of visits ago, one of my favorite Washington moments was sitting at Quill – the bar at The Jefferson – and sipping a sidecar. I asked the bartender to make it with cognac instead of brandy, and to forego any notion of a sugared rim. He happily obliged, and the result was exquisite. Chris and I hung out beside the warm glow of the bar, chatting with the bartender, and ordering a second round.

A good bartender, a life-long friend, and a decent cocktail make a certain recipe for a happy memory. As the winter swirled wickedly outside the windows, we reminisced and looked ahead, talking about everything and nothing as old friends are wont to do. The perfect antidote for the winter blues.