A Completely Inappropriate Observation

Gerry Studds, the first-ever openly gay US congressman, died this past Saturday. The timing was certainly ironic considering his name has been in the news lately in relationship to the scandal surrounding former Representative Mark Foley. Both congressmen were involved in controversy regarding their involvement with young men in the Congressional page program.

But, if I may be allowed a moment of inappropriate levity and revert to the adolescent sense of humor that lurks not far beneath the surface of my seemingly-mature deportment...

Does it seem somewhat humorous that the first-ever openly gay congressman has the last name "Studds"? And more, does it strike anyone else as morbidly hilarious that the first-ever openly gay congressman died at age 69?

I thought so.

On the other hand, when I was reading Studds' obituary on the New York Times website, it struck me that, in my experience, this is the first time I have ever read an obituary (particularly in a major newspaper) in the US in which a gay man's partner is referred to as his "husband." Studds and his partner Dean Hara were married in 2004 in Massachusetts, being among the first in that state to be wed after gay marriage was legalized there.







































Today's Holidays:

• International Day for the Irradication of Poverty
• Mulligan Day
  

Running with Scissors: The Movie (Sneak Preview Report)

Last year, a friend of mine recommended to me a book by Augusten Burroughs, an author I had not heard of before. The book was called Running with Scissors (pictured below).


Prior to that point, I had associated the title Running with Scissors only with the Weird Al Yankovic album of the same name (a classic....New Mexico will never be the same). However, it was not long into the book before I was totally hooked into this bizarre childhood story. It was somewhat like the fascination that keeps your gaze fixed on a traffic accident, only funnier. In case you are not familiar with the book, it is the personal memoir of Burroughs' thoroughly-twisted childhood, in which he is abandoned by his alcoholic father, given up for adoption by his insane mother to her manipulative and equally-insane psychiatrist, and seduced into a years-long relationship with a schizophrenic man more than twice his age. Beyond that, it is the literary equivalent of Blue Man Group--you just need to read it rather than listen to someone try to explain it. After completing Scissors, I read another of Burroughs' works, Dry, also an excellent book and which I wrote about previously on this blog.

So, I have been excited for quite some time about the upcoming adaptation of Running with Scissors on the big screen (opening day this Friday, October 20). And my excitement grew as I read the superb cast list, including Annette Bening, Alec Baldwin, Joseph Fiennes, and Kristen Chenoweth. Consequently, when I was online last Thursday checking the theater I usually go to and saw that they were having a single showing of the movie that very night, 8 days before its scheduled release, I was very excited. I bought two tickets and went with a friend to see what was the reason for the sneak preview. It seemed too close to the opening to be marketing research, but I wasn't going to complain regardless.

As it turned out, the movie was being shown for the benefit of students at the campus of nearby Northwestern University, as an attempt by the studio to generate early word-of-mouth buzz for next week's release. And, as an added bonus, the very handsome 20-year-old star of the movie, Joseph Cross, was in attendance for a question and answer time after the movie.



Throughout the movie, I knew I had seen Cross somewhere before, but I could not place it until I came home and looked him up online and remembered he had played a friend of Clark Kent on an episode of Smallville (pictures after the jump below). Apparently, he is being noticed more and more, because he also appears in the upcoming Clint Eastwood-directed World War II movie Flags of our Fathers.

Well, I was very pleased with the movie, though it was not what I expected. Burroughs' writing style is so engaging and funny that it is easy to forget (while reading the book) the very sad undercurrent that runs through the unbelievable family life he experienced growing up. But, when put on the screen, those sad things had to be dealt with. So it was much more dramatic than I anticipated, though the comedy is certainly still there. It was also surprisingly touching, particularly in the relationship between Augusten and the psychiatrist's beleaguered wife Agnes. The interchanges between those two, combined with a likely Oscar-nomination-bound performance by Annette Bening as Augusten's mother, make the movie well worth watching, and I recommend it to anyone considering seeing it.

Click below to see pictures of Joseph Cross on Smallville and various other hot guys with no connection to this post whatsoever:



































Today's Holidays:

• World Food Day
• National Boss's Day
  

A Day of Special Memories

Today I am going to take a day off from posting pictures of hot guys, though this post contains the photo of one of the beautiful ones who has impacted my life. One year ago today, on October 13, 2005, my boyfriend Alfred, one of the most loving and gentle people I have ever known, took his own life in a moment of deep despair. I wrote about his passing a while back on this blog, and you can read that post by clicking on his picture above.

The year that has passed since last October 13 seems like a lifetime...or perhaps a few days. As one of my blogging friends expressed recently, sometimes loss can make you feel that something as frivolous as pictures of hot guys is silly or even inappropriate, and it's true I have days when I just don't feel like doing anything except feel bad (though thankfully those are becoming less and less frequent).

But I am learning to look at loss from a different angle. Of course I miss Alfred, and of course today is a melancholy day for me. But it is a day in which I remember his amazingly full adventuresome life. I focus on his wonderful 36 years in which he infused his enthusiasm and love into the lives of so many he touched, rather than focusing on the few days surrounding his untimely death.

When someone passes, it is traditional to give gifts to those closest to him. But when we lose someone in death, we receive gifts that last far longer than the flowers and cards of sympathy. I have received the gift of appreciating the amazing network of love and support of family and friends that was always surrounding me but which I had never noticed until tragedy struck. I have been given the gift of gaining a new perspective on the importance of grabbing life for all it is worth and never looking back with regret. And I have been blessed with an experience that, although the pain has been unimaginable at times, has changed me at my very core so that now, as I am emerging from the darkest depths and find that I am still able to breathe, I will be able to help others in a way I never could have before. When I say to someone who has experienced deep loss, "I understand," it will carry new weight. And I trust that I will be able to share hope when I find someone who is in that dark place where Alfred was and perhaps even help someone to see that suicide is always a permanent answer to a temporary problem.

Suicide affects millions of people every year. In America, every 18 minutes someone dies by suicide. And it affects the gay community at a higher rate than the rest of the population. This is something each of us should think about. For those in America, a great place to educate yourself concerning this problem is the website for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. For those friends in other parts of the world, many countries have similar organizations that I'm sure you can find by doing a Google search. It's a worthwhile investment of your time and thought, I promise.

So, thanks to everyone for bearing with me as I share a personal moment. I hope it will not be a downer to you but rather perhaps it will encourage you to hug your loved ones a little tighter, to write that letter to diffuse the anger in a tense friendship, or to call the person you know who needs a simple word of kindness. Don't live today in a way that will produce regret tomorrow!

National Coming-Out Day

We here in America have a bit of an obsession with creating special observance days for just about everything you can imagine. These observances can range from the significant (yesterday was World Mental Health Day) to the humorous (Monday was National Kick Butt Day) to the bizarre (this coming Saturday is Be Bald and Free Day). Today is a day of several notable observances. For example, today is Emergency Nurses Day, so be sure to thank a nurse you know. Today is also the International Day for Natural Disaster Reduction, but the parade was canceled due to unexpected meteor showers. Finally, as I am sure many of you know, today is also National Bring Your Teddy Bear to Work and School Day (seriously...I promise I'm not making this stuff up!).

But probably most significantly to me and many of the readers of this blog, today is National Coming Out Day. So, since I've already come out, and since I have never taken the time to write this out before, I figured I would begin to share my own coming-out story. I think it is probably unique enough to provide a bit of entertainment, for though I was smart enough not to come out to my parents while one of them was driving the car, the circumstances were yet far from ideal.

Now, I understand that blog posts ought not be too long, but I do want to take the time to write out the story thoroughly, so this will be the first of a few installments of my story that I will post in the next few weeks. Perhaps that will make the story more "bite-size" and thus possibly people will even read it! So, fasten your seatbelts, and prepare to be mildly amused.

My Coming-Out Story, Part One: Not Yet Old Enough to be a Congressional Page

Imagine a family whose roots are all from the South as far back as we can trace. Then add the fact that 3 of my 4 grandparents and my step-grandfather all served in the military during World War II. Finally, note that while I was growing up, my family attended (at least 3 times a week) a self-proclaimed "fundamental independent Baptist" church (1611 King James Bible-Only, naturally). By now, you have probably drawn the conclusion that my family was pretty much the Cleavers of the red states (is it mere coincidence that my mother's name is Donna Reed? I think not!). About the only time I ever saw my dad more upset than when I came out to him was when I said I thought Bill Clinton was a good president.

Yet somehow, this family that bled Republican red ended up in a very blue state, and that is why I was born in Los Angeles, California. From nine months before my birth, I was in church constantly. The church we attended, while not quite to the point of referring to their property as a "compound," did have a locked fence surrounding the entire grounds. It was in this nurturing environment that I began to learn how things were "supposed to be" in the world.

Now, it may be difficult for some of you to relate to my experience growing up. While being slightly facetious about the "compound" reference earlier, the church I attended did indeed share some characteristics of such a place. Though it would be a stretch to call it a cult, some things that happened there were borderline cult-ish. For example, nearly every aspect of my life (be it education, religion, social, or political) was centered around our church. I attended the church school (where my mother was a high school teacher), so my schoolmates were primarily from the church, and all our classes were infused with the church's view of the world. Even my friends in my neighborhood were mostly kids from my church who lived nearby. We watched very little television, NEVER attended movies in a theater (gasp! for shame!), and generally had very little to confront us with anything other than what we heard from our pastor at church (helpful things, like denim was evil, music with drums in it was from the devil, and everyone who did not use the King James Bible like we did was going to hell).

To give you an idea of how sheltered I was, I had absolutely zero awareness of the existence of sex until my dad sat me down and had the classic "birds and bees" talk with me when I was 12 years old. I did not even know at that point that girls and boys had different equipment (my only sibling was my younger brother). The only reason I found out then was because my penis had started to get hard on occasion, but I was so completely un-self-conscious that I didn't notice, and it was causing some embarrassment for my parents. So my dad figured it was time for "the talk."

So, especially as a younger child and into my teen years, because I was so isolated from the reality of the world, I had no reason whatsoever to question what I was being taught (because nobody and nothing in my life contradicted it). Thus, I accepted as truth what my church said concerning homosexuality. As my pastor explained, homosexuality is caused by one of two things (again, I promise I'm not making this stuff up!)....

• The first way a man becomes a homosexual is by being sexually molested as a child. This may cause him to become gay when he was not before.
• The second way a man becomes a homosexual is through prolonged exposure to pornography. You see, the first time a guy looks at straight porn, it is very exciting for him. However, over time, he needs more and more variety and extremes to arouse him. Eventually, women just don't do it for him anymore, and his only option is to look at pictures of men. And thus he becomes gay.

Confusing to me at the time, this teaching revealed to me the first-ever crack in my pseudo-idyllic existence. I was never molested and I had never seen pornography of any kind, but as early as the third grade at age 9, I felt an attraction to other boys that I did not feel toward girls. It was nothing sexual at that point, for I was still three years away from even knowing what sex was and several years away from comprehending that gay guys put it where????? But I knew that my best friend Marc was someone I felt good being around, in a different way than others. Looking back, in spite of the warped circumstances, I can kinda smile at the innocence of those incipient attractions I was experiencing.

Well, my parents, ever vigilant against things that might corrupt their sons, soon became concerned that the warm weather of southern California would force us to gaze upon the muscular torsos of young, blond surfers guys, with their perfectly-shaped biceps and their ripped, six-pack abs cascading down to the little trail of hair that vanished beneath their swimming trunks, drawing our attention to the beautifully-shaped bulge beneath their.....oh, sorry, got distracted for a moment....

Anyway, the best way to avoid naked people is to move somewhere cold, and thus the decision was made by my father (and submitted to by my mother, as was her place according to our church) that we would move to the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois.

And that part of the story, my friends, will be told in Part Two. Click here to read.

And finally, for those who just came here for the pictures....