I can be found here, here and here.

Prompted by a message from a person I haven't heard from in a very long time and randomly found me here.

The crush of Memorial Day to Independence Day is almost over. The malaise is about to end and I can get into cruise control to ride out the heat. IML, done. Philly Pride, done. Leather Pride, done. Birthday, done. NYC Pride done. Looking over my chart I'm finding some really amusing things...so I give you:

( Pieces of M.E. )

So night before last on one of the cruising sites I have a profile on with pictures of Ryan and me, I started getting messages from an 18 year old boy. At first it started with him thinking he had seen me at the NYC tattoo convention, but I haven't been to that in a couple years so it flipped to he thinks he's seen me somewhere before which is pretty unlikely since I've been a hermit most of the past year except for a couple outings which means if he saw me at a bar, he's been going in underage. It turned a little toward him appearing to hit on me a little and that creeped me out somewhat. In general, the boy is not creepy, I think I was more creeped out by the difference in our ages and it got me to thinking.

When I was even younger than his age, at 16, I was often attracted to guys between 30 and 50 and it was rare I found anyone under 25 attractive. Aside from 2 guys I met online that were in the 40-50 age range, and turned out to have creepy things going on in their heads, I never got anywhere with anyone over 25 and ultimately by 20 ended up in a long term relationship for just shy of a decade with someone who was only 2 months older than me. I didn't really think about the disparity in age of my attractions again for a long time.

After the split, I landed single again at 29. I started going out again, talking to a lot of people and finding that the bulk of my new friendships ended up with people in the early 30s to early 40s range. Having started working full time at 17 put me more in this peer group rather than closer to my age. While I made acquaintances and a few friendships with people in their 20s, I found much less in common with these people since they were either earlier on in their self discovery or in same cases much further along than I was for the precocious ones. The decade out of circulation had made me very aware of where I was in terms of career, certain goals in life and rebuilding myself from the wreckage of a long term relationship ending. It put me much further behind in terms of understanding how dating works and just how casual a lot of gay men can be about things.

I dated a couple people in my age range, but it didn't work out because they were still far behind on self awareness of who they were and communication was problematic. I fell into a relationship with a man 18 years older and that didn't work because he didn't feel like he could treat me as a peer and instead dismissed what I had accomplished so far in my life...in a nutshell he made the age difference an issue and in the end turned out to be way less mature socially than I was. At that point I was 31, a bit wrecked out and seriously unprepared for anything long term. It was also at that point that younger guys in their early 20s started making their attractions to me known and I started getting creeped out by it. While I was too wrecked in my own world, I'm only just now with this latest young guy starting to figure out why I was so creeped out and why most older guys were creeped out by my attractions to them when I was quite young.

I'm also just now realizing how I treat my current relationship with the most delicate of care. A wise friend from years past put it quite eloquently when I posed a short question on Facebook:

Cuz you have a sense of the power imbalance & of what is unknowingly being risked?

That is, with shockingly good precision, exactly what is creeping me out. It's not the boys, not their attractions, and nothing to do with them per se, it's my own experience and knowledge of just how wrecked out people my age and older can be that these boys are willing to subject themselves to in their early part of their journey in life that freaks me out. I've been there, young, naive and wide eyed to the world before me. I've had the perceptions of these guys in their 30s and 40s with experience, a self assured demeanor, a swagger in their step and that attractive element of stability and on a comfortable road in life. Now that I'm older, further along my own road and have been through the rough patches I know what's really behind that curtain in decent amounts of frequency: alcoholism, drug addiction, horrid emotional scars, self dellusion and sometimes worse. There's also a lot of that stability, self assurance and experience but with lack of experience it can be difficult to recognize and separate the danger from the safety.

I'm more aware than ever where I am in life and I know and agree with Dan Savage's camp rule of always leaving a younger boy better off than when I found him. I know that not everyone abides by that and sometimes will just use a younger boy's naivete to their own advantage. So when a young guy hits on me, it's my knowledge of the cess pits the world is littered with that creeps me out...this kid has no idea whether I'm a safe person or a danger and their ability to take that risk in many ways freaks me out. I do tend to try and brush any attractions aside though and at least steer these kids toward the groups of people I have a decent level of trust with, so in a way, I guess that's one way I try and impart my own experience without forcing my views on them. Each person must find their own way in life, explore their own journey and go through the process of life. It's less intrusive to try and steer them with the right kind of prodding rather than try and hijack them with lectures and disapproval of their activities.

I am also old enough and aware enough to know that not every boy out there is all naive and innocent, there are the male equivalents of Amy Fisher out there for sure and those can usually be spotted quickly and avoided!

As I watch one of my best friends quickly becoming surrounded by younger guys and taking the chance of helping guide them on the right path without preaching to them, I realize this is also part of what's been happening to me for a few years that I just wasn't fully aware of. Ryan and I met since I went to just get meeting him over with and only had designs on steering him to the right peer group who would put him on the right path to his own journey in a safe way. I never in a million years would have expected the attraction that developed and the attachment that has formed. I still take things slow and as safe as possible because I need to know that he is doing well and will always be better off than when I found him regardless of how long and where this relationship is going to be with him as time continues on. That said, perhaps after just shy of 2 years I should also recognize that there has been a lot of time for a good amount of trust to develop, he does live with me now after all. I can probably push a few of his buttons a little more roughly to keep him on his toes. >:}

Jail and Bail
Death of friend
Snowstorm
Annual review and bonus
Snowstorm
Death of coworker from a previous division
Snowstorm
Snowstorm
News yet another friend has tested positive

Also on the annoying list of things noticed:
* Dunkin' donuts on 11th and 2nd is gone
* Telephone Bar is gone
* Boyfriend's grandmother in and out of hospital a couple times

And I wonder why I've had Combichrist's Joy to the World on a loop frequently this month?

...caved to peer pressure and booked a room in DC for next weekend and heading down Friday. Though I'm not buying packages this year and won't be at Leather Cocktails and any drama that decides to rear it's head will be met with a swift beat down and disposed of in the nearest garbage can. I'm only going though since I don't have to fly to get there...and any trips I had planned that involved flying that aren't work related are on hold until the TSA gives up its stupidity along with the terror panic that has gripped the airlines. I never thought I'd long for the days when a first class moron could get drunk enough to jump on top of a food cart and take a dump only to be met with a sentence of community service and probation but the latest crap (pun intended) of planes being escorted by fighter jets simply because someone stays in the lavatory longer than a flight crew member deems is appropriate is just plain ridiculous.

...and have been reading up on stuff to do there since I'm not a gambler. I've been highly entertained by the night club reviews since most clubs there have a "stiff" entry price for tourists and cut a price break to locals that has reviewers all up in arms on how badly they were "treated" at the door and how "unfair" this practice is. My favorite comment was "Twenty Bucks for NOTHING" since they paid the entry to a club and then the crowd inside had an "attitude" and the bartender was "rude" and that the crowd was really just awful.

I really wish these people had posted in their review where they were from. From my standpoint, having worked the door for a party before where the entry price was set by how one dressed and dealing with the steady trail of sad night trolls coming in the door and hearing every bullshit argument in the book on what they were wearing meaning they should get in for free or the reduced admission, these reviews are making me laugh. Firstly because it may seem unfair that they're trying to suck money out of tourists, but really the reduced admission is to try and bring in locals in the tourist trap by giving them an incentive to go out and have fun. These are of course for the gay night clubs but this practice isn't any different than clubs who charge a steep price for men and lower admission to women in straight clubs with the goal of creating an environment of 4 women to every guy in the club increasing the guy's odds of having a good time and ultimately getting laid later.

The bigger thing I found amusing about it is the sense of entitlement that people take with them to going out. They spend $20 at the door and expect what? To be greeted by an adoring crowd that will fawn all over them and bartenders that will suck them off? Seriously, a night out is only as good as what one brings to it and if you start out with a bad attitude because you're being charged higher at the door for not fitting into some classification that gets a reduction in entry price, you might as well not go in and take your choice to have a bad time somewhere else. If there's one thing I've learned over the years, the only party that revolves around you is the one that you bring. Go in with the only expectation that you're going to entertain yourself with the people you're going with and don't expect anything from the location other than providing a space for you to have fun of your own making and it will all play out however you choose, bad or good. Beyond that, get over yourself because everyone pays their toll to get in the door in one way or another and is there to make what can be made of the night, again, bad or good.

Finally, $20...seriously one is going to quibble over being charged that much at a door for what is supposed to be a really "hot" night club? Maybe it's just having lived in NYC for as long as I have but that doesn't seem that steep a price to get in a door. If it was a tiny venue with one sad DJ and a fog machine cranking out 80s tunes on autopilot and filled with 15 kids in black pretending to cut themselves then yeah, that would be steep, but for a large venue with a "happening" party that's not that far off base. There's usually a lot of staff that need to get paid at the end of the night including DJs, performers (dancers and otherwise), and whatever other costs go into making the space available for someone to have a good time if they choose.

I will probably drop in on some of these places that the out of towners complained about to scope them out for myself...but I won't be by myself and I will be out to have fun, not expecting someone else to make the fun for me.

*end minor rant*

It's almost 1am and I'm standing in the train station trying to figure out how in the fuck I'm supposed to identify Grzegorz who I've never met and probably hasn't been informed about how I stick out like a sore thumb given my long black hair and facial piercings. It's been one hell of a trip so far since I started working with a new startup created by the purchase of a French software company that has a development office in Poland. In order to kill multiple birds with one stone, I volunteered to be the first American engineer to visit the development office and start getting to know the team better so we can establish a real working relationship.

( The longer version of how I got myself into this... )