Category: Gay / Straight

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For those of us old enough to remember…

There’s a chill wind blowing.

Way back in time there was this thing called AIDS. (Yes I know it’s called HIV now and it’s still around.)

In the early days it was called AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. In those early years it was most prevalent among gay men.

The Christian Right danced a happy jig because those “Filthy Fags were getting Gods righteous vengeance shoved up their asses” Those Christians were totally happy to see what they perceived as the Sodom and Gomorrah gays being wiped off the face of the earth.

The Christian Right was positively giddy about it. Anita Bryant became their poster child and the Televangelists across the country used their pulpits to suggest all gays should be left to die. (Hmm, that sounds similar to something a Washington politician said about those refusing the COVID vaccine.) Some went so far as saying all gays should be put into camps where they could fornicate themselves straight to Hell.

In the early years, the medical establishment wasn’t even sure what was causing it, or how it was spread. They had many suspicions, some of which were eventually borne out. There was a time when a lot of people (including Doctors) thought AIDS was transmitted by touch. Some thought it was airborne. Universally, though AIDS was a killer and an ugly way to go.

Eventually Researchers discovered it was apparently a virus. Then they concluded it was sexually transmitted. Oral sex to completion was off the table. Anal sex was the most likely route of infection, due to the potential for blood / semen contact.

It was a dangerous and dark time to be gay. Bathhouses, popular with some of the gay community, were closed by local government decree. Gay bars closed, and gay bashing, (always a popular pastime,) became more prevalent. “Bash a Fag for Jesus!”

By that time a whole generation of gay men were infected, and most of them died. Check out photos of the AIDS quilt.

The media spin was; Gay men were pariahs. Unclean, deadly, high risk to have in your home or in your office. Gay men were a health insurance plan nightmare and many companies cut their losses by summarily firing gay men. There was no protection against an employer terminating a gay person. In fact some employers terminated anyone diagnosed with AIDS regardless of their sexuality.

That only changed when straight people started getting AIDS.

Then a similar disease that had confounded Doctors in Africa was identified as AIDS. In the African nation, it was primarily a straight disease, and the narrative of gay men being the root cause began to wane.

COVID reminded me of those dark times. Not the disease itself but the media narrative and messaging. “Get vaccinated for others”, “Wear a mask to protect yourself and other people”, “The unvaxxed are pariahs who want you to die”

All of the narrative was just too eerily familiar.

Now we have Monkeypox!

OMG!

Some in the media are asking if this is the next pandemic and others seem to be trying to cause a new panic using the same tropes that were so successful with COVID.

A big difference is there is a conflation, intentional or not, of Monkeypox and Gay.

There’s this report from NBC News

Once again, the Gay community is ground zero and once again the media is making sure that everyone knows this outbreak seems to have started in the Gay community.

The most recent example is the two toddlers on opposite sides of the US who have monkeypox. The media has pointed out that both cases appear to have Gay parents.

Conservative Christians are already using this as fodder to promote that Gays are bad parents, apparently due to their “Unclean and sinful lifestyle”

One Washington politician, (I can’t remember who and I don’t want to give her any more press,) went so far as to ask, “How is it that children are getting a sexually transmitted disease?”

She with that one question demonstrated everything you need to know about her. Her implication is that the gay parents are having sex with toddlers.

One can also infer that she’s woefully uninformed about how monkeypox spreads, and probably is someone the gay community should keep a very close eye on.

The other thing I found interesting is there’s already a vaccine for Monkeypox. So the fear mongering is completely unwarranted.

This miraculous vaccine is called the Smallpox vaccine.

Read the box closely.

A lot of the recent pictures of vaccine vials have been edited to show only the word monkeypox. You can tell they’re edited image because a real vaccine vial typically has the manufacturer, the dosage, and information about the suspension the active component of the vaccine is delivered in.

Interestingly, the start of the smallpox vaccine was based on observations of milkmaids. There was a sharp physician dealing with a smallpox outbreak and he happened to notice that milkmaids were never among the smallpox victims.

When he investigated, he discovered that milkmaids would catch something they called cowpox. It was a one time annoyance and when it cleared from the milkmaids hands, they never got cowpox or smallpox.

Observation, led to innovation. Can you say anecdotal??? Thank God that sharp physician didn’t subscribe to the beliefs of St. Fauci of the Holy Mask. If he had, people would still be dying from smallpox.

Smallpox was eliminated from the developed world in the 1970s and upon the declaration that the scourge of smallpox was eliminated, routine smallpox vaccinations fell by the wayside.

For those of us born prior to the mid 1970s monkeypox is probably a minor concern. For my part, I’ll run it by my doctor to find out if I should get a booster.

Since the vaccine for monkeypox is the smallpox vaccine, and since smallpox was eradicated no-one should be surprised that there isn’t a huge supply of the vaccine. Most vaccines have a shelf life after which they’re disposed of. So big Pharma is going to have to ramp up production of the vaccine and that is going to take time.

Not to defend government or big Pharma…

But what do you expect? What’s the point of having huge stockpiles of a vaccine that is only going to sit in a freezer or on a shelf and go bad? That’s not good business or a practical allocation of resources.

So to all of you out there complaining about the vaccine shortages, sit down, shut up, and give it some thought before you light your hair on fire with one foot nailed to the floor and run in tight little circles.

Monkeypox is generally not fatal. If you get it, follow your doctor’s instructions, and move on with life.

You know… sort of like what you should do with COVID.

From the CDC

How does Smallpox Spread?

Before smallpox was eradicated, it was mainly spread by direct and fairly prolonged face-to-face contact between people. Smallpox patients became contagious once the first sores appeared in their mouth and throat (early rash stage). They spread the virus when they coughed or sneezed and droplets from their nose or mouth spread to other people. They remained contagious until their last smallpox scab fell off.

These scabs and the fluid found in the patient’s sores also contained the variola virus. The virus can spread through these materials or through the objects contaminated by them, such as bedding or clothing. People who cared for smallpox patients and washed their bedding or clothing had to wear gloves and take care to not get infected.

Rarely, smallpox has spread through the air in enclosed settings, such as a building (airborne route).

Smallpox can be spread by humans only. Scientists have no evidence that smallpox can be spread by insects or animals.

Also from the CDC

Monkeypox spreads in different ways. The virus can spread from person-to-person through:

direct contact with the infectious rash, scabs, or body fluids

respiratory secretions during prolonged, face-to-face contact, or during intimate physical contact, such as kissing, cuddling, or sex

touching items (such as clothing or linens) that previously touched the infectious rash or body fluids

pregnant people can spread the virus to their fetus through the placenta

It’s also possible for people to get monkeypox from infected animals, either by being scratched or bitten by the animal or by preparing or eating meat or using products from an infected animal.

Monkeypox can spread from the time symptoms start until the rash has fully healed and a fresh layer of skin has formed. The illness typically lasts 2-4 weeks. People who do not have monkeypox symptoms cannot spread the virus to others. At this time, it is not known if monkeypox can spread through semen or vaginal fluids.

According to the CDC

Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox.

That being said, I’ve not been able to find an exact name for the monkeypox virus itself. It appears the smallpox vaccine is effective because monkeypox is part of the same viral family.

So in my unprofessional opinion. I think monkeypox is going to be a big nothing burger. We have a tried and true Effective vaccine. We know the vaccine is effective because it wiped smallpox from most of the planet.

We also know anecdotally that if cowpox provided immunity to smallpox, and smallpox provides immunity to cowpox, then it’s probable a pox is a pox.

The politician who implied something nefarious going on in gay households with children obviously doesn’t know how to read, or apparently how to enter a search on the CDC.GOV website.

With monkeypox we need to shut down the narrative being spun by the media, religious zealots, and the just plain uninformed.

Of course monkeypox is going to show up first in the gay community. Pride Festivals were held for the first time in two years. They are nation wide throughout the month of June, and some people travel to multiple celebrations.

These people needn’t be having sex, (contrary to the salacious news,) all they had to do is hug and kiss one another. Is it so difficult to believe that people would be ecstatic to be able to travel and see friends in person that they hadn’t seen for two years?

I do find the timing interesting.

It could simply be a coincidence, but if I wanted to test the dissemination of a pathogen I can’t think of a better way than to introduce it during pride month. Precisely because it’s a month of celebrations and gatherings where lots of people travel to various cities attending multiple gatherings.

Talk about a great infectious testing platform.

Just sayin…

I’m prone to wonder about those kinds of things.

I mean, how the hell can a pathogen that’s typically confined to a small region in Africa suddenly appear all over the world at almost the same time?

With AIDS, which also came out of a relatively small region in Africa, patient zero was alleged to be a flight attendant.

The coincidence and similarity just makes me wonder.

Call it my suspicious nature.

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At the risk of being labeled Transphobic…

I think it’s time for the trans community to separate from the LGB community.

LGB has become pretty accepted. There are still issues to address and probably will be for the next 20 years or so.

The problem I see rising is that the Trans community has become so conflated with the LGB community at large, that Trans issues are damaging the LGB community and their hard won gains.

Comments in various online publications which were once about 50/50, pro/against LGB issues. Have become increasingly hateful and vicious about just “normal” LGB folks with the addition of the Trans communities never ending strident yelling.

While I agree that everyone should be teated kindly and equally. I don’t think that Trans issues as presented belong in the LGB spectrum. I also think that the way the Trans community is behaving has drawn the LGB part of the community needlessly into an agenda that is not representative of the average LGB person.

Comments in recent articles about Lia Thomas, and Rachel Levine demonstrate in my opinion that America is growing very tired of the Trans community and by extension the LGB community.

Many of the comments paint Trans people as gay or lesbian. Moreover, comments paint the entirety of the LGBT community as deranged, mentally unfit, sick, disgusting, evil, or perpetrating some kind of con on various institutions (Lia Thomas, I’m looking at you).

The Trans people that I have personally known may start out being homosexuals, but that appears to be a transitional phase. The person is homosexual because they believe with all their heart and soul, they were born in the wrong body. They’re intimate with the gender they find attractive but they still feel that their body isn’t right. Several of the Trans folks I’ve known, have entered into loving straight relationships after they’ve transitioned.

A former man, completes the required surgeries, and then marries as a woman to another man. They aren’t homosexual at that point.

The full transitions I’ve known, left the LGB community and went off to live in suburbia with their husbands and most have adopted children.

The LGB folks don’t believe they were born wrong. Typically they believe they were born a bit different but they’re content being whatever gender they were born. They don’t feel alien in their own bodies, they’re comfortable in preferring intimacy with members of the same gender.

I know for some, this is a difficult distinction, but it’s an important one.

My personal experience is very different from the strident demands of today.

What passes for the Trans community these days doesn’t seem to have the same appreciation for the gravity of the decision Transgender people had in years past.

It’s not just about pumping hormones into your body. Yes, that is part of it, but it’s about where your head is at. A transgendered friend told me that before the surgery when she looked in the mirror she perceived her male body as a suit she was trapped in. She said that she’d felt this way for her entire male life. When she woke up from surgery, during the months of healing she anticipated seeing her true self.

She said that the first time she saw herself in a mirror after healing, she cried with joy because she felt like she’d awakened from a terrible dream. For the first time in her life, she saw herself as the person she had always been.

As a male, she’d been somewhat androgynous. As a female, she was beautiful. You had to really look closely to see minimal telltales left by her time as a male.

As a male, he’d had a slight physique very little body hair and an average sized penis and testicles. His personality was sparkling, witty, and intelligent. He was a lot of fun to be around, a great entertainer, classy, with a sense of understated style. He was a great date, and knew how to please a man.

Post Surgery, as a woman, she had beautiful breasts. they were not ostentatious or out sized. The hormones added a little padding to her hips accentuating a femininity that I’d never noticed. She was still all the other things. Sparkling, witty, intelligent, classy, stylish, a great date, and she still knew how to please a man. She was different from any other woman I’d been with, in that she was always 100% engaged in sex. Her vagina was beautiful, and visually indistinguishable from any woman I’d been with.

She joked about it a little one night as we were cuddling in her bed in the dark. She said she’d paid for the full top of the line package and one of the best surgeons. She felt she was worth it since she was reclaiming her real body. Then she asked if she’d gotten her moneys worth.

I kissed her and told her, “Yes,” as far as I could see.

She later told me I’d been her last sexual partner as a man, and her first sexual partner as a woman. She liked the symmetry. Later she made a comment that stuck with me through the years. She said, “The unhappy old me died on the operating table, the new me is going to live savoring each day.”

About a year later, after all the documentation was settled, she took a job on the East Coast.

Several years later, there was a Christmas card with a picture of her, her husband, and his child from a previous marriage. The note inside said simply, “Can you believe I’m the ‘evil’ stepmother! I love my husband and while my life may be shorter than it would have been otherwise, it’s been marvelous so far. This is the life I always wanted. P.S. You were right I think. When we got serious I told him everything and let him decide from there. He thought about it for a week or two, then decided he didn’t care. We were married six months later. Thank you my friend.”

We’ve lost touch over the years, the last I heard she was still married, living in upstate New York and very happy.

Perhaps the fact that I’ve known intimately and personally someone who was transgender is coloring my view. When she began her transition, she dressed as a woman, and was never concerned about using the ladies room. She’d sometimes comment ruefully that she’d miss urinals because they were just so much easier to deal with. She had a group of close supportive friends and we all just accepted.

Perhaps it was easier for her and us, because pre surgery she could easily pass as a woman. Perhaps, it was that at the time that the LGBT community was far less divided, more forgiving, and more accepting than today. Perhaps, it was that he/she was really a she trapped in the wrong body.

One thing I learned from her is that people see exactly what they want to see. Pre surgery, Miranda took me to The Magic Castle in LA for my birthday. She wasn’t fooled too often in the close up sleight of hand room. Later in the evening, we bumped into the magician she’d inadvertently made sweat. He asked how she knew his tricks and if she was a magician herself. She smiled sweetly and said, “Yes, in a way. You think I’m a woman don’t you?” She hugged the stunned magician and thanked him for an impressive show.

I wondered at the time if the knowledge that people see what they want to see, was why she was so good in business negotiations.

The difference I see now, versus then is that the Trans community today is very much in everybody’s face. They’re apparently angry and hostile and I don’t get why.

The Trans people I’ve known in years past weren’t angry, they were kind and gentle spirits. They were in intense counseling, not to make them be something they were not. But to make sure that they fully understood all the ramifications and risks. They were the people most in-touch with their feelings. They’d put in the time to understand themselves. They’d done all this work prior to beginning the hormones and transition because at the time, it was one of those things that you only got one shot at. They also had very realistic expectations about what they’d look like afterwards.

Some Trans people just aren’t that pretty or believable when they’re done. Back in the day, if the outcome wasn’t going to be a good one, a surgeon might simply refuse.

It makes no sense to take a decent looking man or woman and turn them into someone that will never be happy with the results of the transition surgery. Why modify someone that’s already lonely but has a shot at dating, perhaps love, into someone that is unattractive and has no shot at dating or happiness? Doctors used to take an oath to do no harm. Lately I’ve begun to wonder if the oath they take today is set to Pink Floyd’s Money.

I mean really, would you date Rachel Levine? It’s not necessarily about age, even Lia Thomas looks much better as a male than as a female. In Thomas’s case artful surgery might make him somewhat appealing as a woman but he’ll always have the proportions of a man.

In this time of gender fluidity or non-binary sexuality it seems that folks aren’t thinking that way. What future will an ugly, angry, old, Transgender have? What ever happened to honestly estimating/evaluating the outcome of a surgical procedure?

Why don’t surgeons say, “You’re too masculine / feminine for me to make you look like the opposite gender. Your hips are too narrow or wide, your shoulders are too broad or narrow, your face is too characteristically male or female. We can do this surgery if you insist, but my professional opinion is I don’t think you’ll be happy with the results.”

The same could be said of tattoo artists. If a tattoo is the first part of a large piece, say a tattoo sleeve, then isn’t it incumbent on the artist to tell the client a particular tattoo isn’t going to work in the sleeve?

I’d really appreciate a tattoo artist telling me something like, “This isn’t going to work, let me see if I can redesign it so that it fits better with the whole piece. Come back in a week and I’ll show you some options,” I’d appreciate the thoughtfulness and concern.

Instead, what we seem to have is, “let me prescribe some puberty blockers or hormones for a while and let’s see how you feel.”

Having lived for a long time as a Bi man, I found that while my sexuality is non-binary, my gender very much is.

I searched for love and found it. I don’t and didn’t care what gender package that love was wrapped up in. Arguably, I’m far more comfortable with another man but I’ve never excluded the possibility that I might find an equally loving relationship with a woman.

Looking back, I loved Mark/Miranda. (She claimed she didn’t want to change the monograms on the towels. I think it was that Miranda or ‘Miri’ was an uncommon name and it’s as pretty as she was.) I wasn’t in a place where I was ready for commitment or marriage, She was. That doesn’t discount the fact that it was the person, not necessarily the gender that I cared for.

I throughly enjoyed our time together and yes, loved him/her in both genders.

The point is, you don’t just wake up one day and declare you’re a woman or man arbitrarily. Just saying you’re Trans doesn’t give you the right to play dress up just because you want to mess with people. Drs handing out hormone therapy or puberty blockers as though it’s not a big deal, to people who’ve not done the really hard work involved in counseling and therapy is, in my opinion, a very bad idea.

I’m not Trans. I can’t speak from inside a Trans person’s skin. But I’ve walked alongside a person who was. I’ll never know all the introspection and questioning that Mark did.

I do know it was years in the making and that I came on the scene only in the last few years. When I met Mark, he was content with his choice & still dressing as a man. During the time I knew him he began dressing as Miranda moving toward full transition. He was the most stable, put together, person I’ve known.

When Miranda came home from the sabbatical, during which she had the surgeries and recuperation, she was still the most stable person I knew. She was also the most serene person I’ve ever known.

The same is generally true of the other Trans people that have passed through my life. None of them were hostile, angry, or pushy. They were respected, and conformed to the social norms of the society at large. They were dressed as a specific gender, and acted accordingly. They weren’t about doing bad drag (which has its place,) they were making a very serious life decision that was theirs and theirs alone.

I’d bet Miranda would be at the forefront of demanding parents have a choice in what their children are taught, and when, regarding sexuality. I’m also pretty sure that she’d put a verbal smackdown on anyone who remotely pushed a child toward transitioning or puberty blockers before a child could understand what that really meant.

I suspect Miranda would ironically be called Transphobic by today’s standards.

I can almost hear her laughing about that label, in some activists face.

I don’t know if she’d agree with me about LGB folks distancing themselves from the current Trans community. She might not, and she’d have excellent reasons that she could defend. In the few arguments we had, it was 60% likely that she was right. 40% likely that I was. Her position was always well thought out and backed up with facts.

Even in winning, she was gracious and beautiful. She didn’t rub it in, and she’d hug me when I was crestfallen.

“You can’t be right all the time, settle for half… Do you want something to eat, or would you like to just cuddle,” she’d ask. Id always reply, “I’d feel better about it with both.” She’d just laugh.

I think that Miranda would appreciate my opinion. She might not agree, but she’d see where I was coming from. It’s about being silenced, told what I may and may not say.

It’s about being forced to accept things that I find fundamentally wrong. (Hormones, Puberty blockers, and a rush to transition without doing the work.) Today I can’t even speak that conviction without being labeled or cancelled.

Nowadays, being a part of the LGBT community implies that you agree wholeheartedly with anything and everything Trans. Which makes being a part of that community a complete non-starter for me and many others.

I’d prefer to see an LGB community and a separate Trans community. I’d prefer to see the LGB community support the real Trans community as we used to. With love, acceptance, and the knowledge that our Transitioned brothers and sisters may leave us, not in anger, but to move on with the life they’ve always dreamed of, and deserved.

Miranda… Miri, if by some weird chance you should ever read this, all my love to you and your family. You deserve all the happiness in the world, I’m very glad you’re living the dream you wanted.

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What the hell is 2SLGBTQQIA+ ????

Oh, now I know…

Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual

Oh for fucks sake! Can we stop with all this bullshit? I seriously long for the day when we were all either GAY, Bi or Straight, and big surprise gender didn’t fucking matter. Boys could do with boys. Girls could do with girls. Bi’s could do with everybody. Straights went with the opposite sex, and everybody got their jollies.

Now days, just to discuss having sex with anybody, much less figure out if they’re your cup of tea seems to require a Ouija Board, a Cray super computer, access to the internet, a magic decoder ring, and perhaps a lawyer and witnesses.

And some of my friends wonder why I prefer older horny straight men who just want to get off. A lot of older guys have gotten past the societal bullshit and more focused on enjoying “right now.”

A hard cock has no conscience. A truism I’m more than willing to exploit and I’ve got a six pack of beer in the fridge for just such occasions!

At least then it’s a simple deal. A few drinks, the acknowledgment that we’re both horny and the simple joy of taking care of business. Yipee! We both feel great… Shower, and out the door, on to other things.

One of my all time favorite drawings! Thanks to
M S 12/22/09 and deviantart.com

I’m to the point that I’m going to start asking for people’s genetic coding on a memory stick. I’ll plug it in and have my computer do a quick scan to determine that the person is;

a) human,

b) the actual gender they’re representing.

With the right software, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to verify.

I don’t want to be drawn into whatever this insanity is. I truly no longer give a shit. I’m so adamant on that position that I’ll be perfectly content to pleasure myself from here on out. Fuck the complexity, it’s not worth the effort.

This shit is why the gay community is fracturing apart. I could probably make an argument that it’s somehow associated with declining birth rates too.

It’s notable that cultures that do not acknowledge all this bullshit don’t seem to have any difficulties inserting tab A into slot B and nine months later having another mouth to feed.

I know I’d be super pissed off to find that a woman I’d been trying to conceive a child with was actually a transgendered male who’d not bothered to tell me the whole truth. I mean it might be a lot of great sex… But not what I had in mind starting out. It’s tough to put a bun in an oven that isn’t actually an oven. After all, not every transgendered person is as unfortunate in their choice of surgeons as Admiral Levine.

YIKES! There’s a refund due.

Yeah I said it, so what? It’s an obvious and observable truth isn’t it?

It’s well past time for all this to stop. The only people left who care about it, are the people who regardless of their real or perceived genders would be self centered, narcissistic, whiny, harpies or harridans, anyway.

Let’s just stop playing to their issues and instead let them return to their psychiatrist’s couches to hash out their problems. I don’t want to be on a psychiatric couch because I’ve been driven insane by them hashing out their problems in full public view.

To the transgendered. I truly hope you find peace, joy, and comfort in your own skin…

But I’m not interested in being dragged along on your journey to nirvana. I’m also super pissed that you’ve effectively destroyed everything I once enjoyed with your constant whinging. I’ve got a new acronym for all of you. I’ve got no more patience to keep up with your ever expanding nom de plums.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ+åß≈ç√®´∑†¥¨ˆø¬˚∆˙√∫˜µ≤≥¬øˆ¨†¡£¢∞§¶•ªº

There I fixed it for ya.

Now get the fuck out of my life and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way…

(I just painted that door!)

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Wait… What? Let me get this straight…

So the cause of the latest reboot of my poor addled brain, was this little gem.

Palm Springs to require proof of COVID vaccination to eat indoors at restaurants, bars

The Article is linked above

What you’re telling me, is that I can still go into a gay bar in Palm Springs, I can still get my cock sucked, and I can do that while I’m having a drink. (Technically that’s not supposed to happen, but in a crowded bar on a Saturday Night who’s gonna notice that hot young man servicing me as I’m sitting on a bar stool? Yeah… I’ve experienced that.)

Or I can go to a gay bar, pick up someone, go back to their hotel room, and have penetrative unprotected sex…

Apparently I, and the other adults, in a bar are adult enough to make adult choices regarding these health matters…

But to get into that bar I have to show that I’ve been vaccinated, because we’re not adult enough to make an informed choice about COVID????

Hold the damn phone!

There are so many things wrong here I can’t begin to count ’em.

STD’s are no problem according to the city council. HIV is no concern of theirs. Crystal Meth, or whatever the drug de jour is not a problem…

But COVID, with a 98-99% survival rate (dependent on age) and OMG you have to show you’re vaccinated.

To be honest, I’m not surprised. Gay bars in New York City have been doing this bullshit for a while. I guess the more recent mandates in New York have extended to all bars and restaurants.

Palm Springs, You’re dead to me. Like L.A., NY, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland.

I will not show you my vaccination card. I will not allow that invasion of my privacy it’s no more your business than if I’ve had a Hepatitis vaccination, or a flu shot.

You’re not important enough in my life to violate my principals about privacy. I don’t need to spend $10 a drink. I can make my own for a buck. I don’t need to spend $25 for a hamburger. I can make my own. I can remain naked in my own home with a few select friends and have a damn fine time.

I don’t need to spend my gas, time, money, or any effort at all, in your town.

When enough people feel like me, and I pray to God they wake the hell up soon, your local economy will tank and you’ll be begging people to come to visit Just like the mayor of NYC was recently begging business to come back.

Palm Springs you’ve overplayed your hand. How many tourists do you think are going to come to your oasis in the desert? Especially when they have to mask up, surrender their privacy, and comply with your edicts.

Golf courses are just as fine in Florida. Key West is booming for the gay traveler, Florida has pools, hotels, interesting bars, and warm inviting beaches. Miami has a brilliant night life with a distinctly Cuban flair and Texas has some mighty fine golf courses and miles of beaches too.

Compared to them… What have you got? Desert heat, an older leathery population, obscenely high hotel taxes, hotel rates, and what else? Hwy 111 that is bumper to bumper most hours of the day & night.

For me, you were convenient, an adult playground where I could escape for a day or two. Clearly, that time has passed.

I will pass, and I think most people will soon say, “Pass” too.

Good Night and Good Luck.

On second thought… I’l bet there’s going to be some off the hook private parties happening out there. Hmm, Buy gas here and make sure that I don’t have to spend any money there…

Maybe I’ll dig out the black book and see what’s shakin. At least it’s likely, I’ll be hanging with other folks that are thinking WTF? Just like me.

Could be fun!

At least until the housing market crashes because folks decide to head to other places. Then Palm Springs will look like Irvine, CA after the Dot Com bust. Tumbleweeds & sand blowing across the main drag.

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A Boomer’s Reflections

Sometime between 2017 and late 2019 the term “Boomer” went from being a descriptive about the generation in which you were born to being an epithet.

Simultaneously, “Millennial” and “Gen Xer“ also became hurled as insults.

This illustrates the divides in the generation war very clearly. The generation war isn’t new. It has been going on for a very long time.

As a Boomer, I recall thinking my parents, grandparents, and all elders were too old to understand much of anything. Due to cultural constraints I didn’t vocally call out my elders as is done today.

As a Boomer I mostly muttered under my breath, generally kept my opinion to myself and then after weighing the risk of being caught… Did my own thing anyway.

I’m old enough to remember watching the Fall of Saigon, and Richard Nixon famously resigning the Presidency. That forever tainted the Office of the President and “Proved” that the children of the 1960s and 1970s had been absolutely correct in their mistrust of anyone over 30.

16 Years later we entered Desert Storm and have been involved in some military action or other in the Middle East ever since.

But in the time between, there were many other events.

The fall of the Berlin wall, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, the fall of the Shah of Iran and an absolutely astonishing level of technological innovation.

As a gay man, there were other things in this period. I came of age, dated, and slept with a variety of women and ultimately discovered love and happiness in the arms of another man.

I was a “Deviant” at the time. “Going to Hell” as the religious folks loved to tell us, Often, Loudly, and with great hostility.

Politicians liked to marginalize Gay people (We were all One people at the time) LGBT folks were ALL painted as deviants and it wasn’t uncommon for Queers to be institutionalized.

We could be arrested and jailed under sodomy laws that were common in almost every state. We could lose our jobs, homes, and families easily after being convicted. The worst thing someone could call you was Fag, or Dyke. The merest suspicion could literally cost you everything. Slight proof could even cost you your freedom and damn you to a drug induced existence punctuated by electro-shock therapy signed off on by your family.

After all you weren’t right in the head. You might be a danger to yourself. You practiced the love that dare not speak its name. Putting you in an asylum was best for everyone. Especially your family, since you were an embarrassment and they were doing the right thing trying to get you “Help”.

It must be noted: Young LGBT people today face some of the same issues. It’s not uncommon for young people to be kicked out of their homes by their parents for simply being gay. In some states, jobs and housing can still be lost or denied if it becomes common knowledge that a person is LGBT

There has been progress.

The flash point that sparked that progress, catapulting the LGBT community into the public eye, may have been Stonewall. But gay people marched in Selma with Dr Martin Luther King, as did Jews and Christians of all stripes.

Gay people, as we came to find out, had always been around and it wasn’t as abnormal as puritanical America would like to have believed.

In the late ‘70s and early ‘80s I thought I wasn’t “right” even though I knew I wanted to have sex with men. Then I thought I had only a binary choice. I had to be either this or that I couldn’t exist being both.

I was wrong, and it took a long time to realize that I could be both and be comfortable doing so. In that way too, the younger generations have a better world. I suspect there are a lot of mostly “straight” men and women who are breathing a bit easier too.

All this came to mind today after witnessing an exchange on Twitter where a younger person (37 by their own admission) was fighting with an older person and said that us older folks didn’t know what it was to shed blood for the “Gay” fight. Later this person said something to the effect that Us older folks were responsible for the HIV epidemic, I’m paraphrasing but couldn’t help but respond.

To set the record straight: It was our generation(s) that wore out suits going to funerals of our friends. It was our generation(s) that was responsible for the adoption of safer sex practices within the LGBT community. It was organizations like ACT-UP and our participation in them, that forced changes which accelerated research and quicker release of drug therapies that significantly extended the lives of infected people. Not to mention how many people depend on those advances today.

It was our generation(s) that started the major push for equality for LGBT people.

We suffered the disappointment of Bill Clinton caving in to the religious right and back burnering his promises of equal rights and the institution of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

We did these things at a time when it was still acceptable for Gay men to be “Fag-Bashed” or Egged around the only safe spaces we had (Gay Bars).

Everywhere else we were targets and often ignored victims. The police had little or no desire to prosecute someone who beat up a little faggot cocksucker. In rare cases they’d offer the faggot cocksucker a ride home, for a blowjob. Yeah, that happened too.

Still we rose up and pressed for change and fought for every inch of the rights the younger generation now enjoys.

We were not necessarily heroic. We were mostly selfish, narcissistic, and stupid. But more than those things, we were pissed off.

We were pissed because so much of the society was willing to “write us off”. We were “Defective”, an un-necessary and undesirable element in the society. We were getting God’s just wrath, and so what if faggots and drug addicts were dying in alleyways, or our homes, or in quarantine wards in hospitals. It was common to conflate LGBT people with IV drug addicts. After all, “They want to die anyway right?”

There were even people on the left and right who were saying LGBT people should be rounded up and sent to camps where they could butt fuck each other to death.

Many of us learned a deep unyielding fear. Fear of being found out, fear of being punished, fear of sex, fear of life.

Fear like that leaves a mark, and while I and others of my generation smile and support the young, we also long to have had the freedoms that the young now enjoy.

We can’t truly embrace those freedoms, because we incorporated that deep fear into the core of our being. We have no choice, but we’ll gladly look on from the sidelines and take some comfort in the knowledge that we, for our part helped make society accept the LGBT community. We take pleasure and pride in helping to make a place where the youngsters can fearlessly dance and play.

That’s the job of the elder generations. The job of parents is to make the world better for their children. For the Gay elders it was our job too, even if only by proxy.

None of this is to imply that there aren’t still battles to be fought and won. None of this is meant to imply that the battles the young are fighting are any less important or to minimize their achievements. We, and those before us, laid the foundations, it’s up to each subsequent generation to build beauty on those foundations.

And yes, we made mistakes. So will the younger generations.

To say that our generation was responsible for the HIV/AIDS epidemic is beyond wrong and patently unfair.

When HIV/AIDS got to major population centers, it was all but unknown. In the ‘60s & ‘70s there was no STD that couldn’t be cured with penicillin. How were we to know?

Yes, the epidemic occurred on our watch. For at least 2 to 4 years we didn’t know what was killing us. We called it the Gay Cancer. I sit here today HIV- and alive because a friend who was in the medical profession told me;

“We don’t know what it is. We don’t know what we’re looking for. We’re pretty sure it’s not bacterial. We know it’s attacking the immune system. We don’t know what the transmission method is. In my opinion this is sexually transmitted because some recent data indicates the spread is following the same models as syphilis and gonorrhea. So, my sexy little lamb, use a barrier. Don’t let a guy cum in your ass or mouth, no wet kissing. It won’t be as much fun or as free and easy as sex has been; but maybe, just maybe, you’ll not be infected.”

Mike, God rest your soul. I wish you’d taken your own advice, you handsome loveable furball.

A year later, condoms were on the counters in bars. Guys were reminding each other to play safe. The doormen of some bars were checking to make sure guys had condoms when they left the bar together and reminding those guys to use them.

Home grown advertising was in every gay bar coast to coast. And yet, there were straight couples having unprotected sex and many of those men had secret male lovers or dependencies on shared needles and the drugs they contained. To some extent the “Straight” community ignored the problem until they started to die too.

It wasn’t that the LGBT community wasn’t warning them. They chose to ignore those warnings because they apparently believed that they were “blessed by God,” and invincible.

The LGBT community of the time knew all too well that there were “Straight” men who, like today, want to have a bit more variety than simple missionary sex.

At the time, it was common for a straight man to preserve his professional and community standing by spending a few hours in a bath house with his legs in the air rather than to admit he went both ways. Straight men wouldn’t even confide in their doctors this fact, and insisted they got AIDS from a toilet seat.

Once straight people started dying, the government got interested. The religious right pumped up their power using LGBT and prostitute deaths to lump both groups together implying that sinners die, the righteous live, and mobilized an honestly damaging conservative movement that ACT-UP fought valiantly against.

An interesting side effect was that many straight men now sought out gay men for blow jobs because their “Righteous” wives wouldn’t perform that function in the bedroom. There’s probably no data to indicate if this had any effect on transmission rates.

What I can say from personal experience is that a straight man would often “Sell” having a gay man blow him by assuring the gay man that he was clean by virtue of his being straight. “Oh, I only have vaginal sex, it’s only that my wife won’t blow me, so you can swallow. Really, it’ll be fine.”

Then there were the friends who were so very sick. They became pariahs. Folks afraid to touch them. As the disease progressed, they began to look like photos I’d seen of prisoners in Auschwitz. Grey, emaciated, skeletal. In the right light, sometimes you could still catch a glimpse of the person they were. Their eyes told the tale of the battle they were losing.

I lost count of how many times I was asked, “If you were going to kill yourself, how would you do it?” That’s when I knew they were at the end, and I probably wouldn’t see that person again. I’d always answer them, having chosen my path out of life were I to get sick.

My friends knew that I would answer. I wouldn’t give them platitudes or false hope. They knew I’d have analyzed the problem and come to several possible solutions, each solution weighted by factors such as opportunity, availability, probability of success, and practicality. After the discussion, I’d kiss them, & hug them, often for the last time.

To the young man who said to us elders, we boomers, that we hadn’t bled for the cause…

Here are my wounds. Here is my blood. Here are the shreds of my soul.

In all this though, I am not a victim. I am a survivor! All those who are not with me here today physically, are remembered and loved. I live on, and live well because that is what they would wish for, and expect of me. I’ll see them again. They’ve got a bar tab running and a glass with my name on it.

I say this sincerely young man. May you never have to endure losses such as I have endured.

In my time, there was Interferon, then the first of the cocktails, then second and third generation drugs to keep HIV at bay. Each one extending the lifespan of those infected and leading to a greater understanding of HIV and other viruses. But all of these drugs came at a price to the user’s overall health. Some became toxic over time. Others simply stopped working.

Now we have PREP.

But not a cure.

Still, it’s progress.

This same young man implied that Boomers were also responsible for increasing HIV rates.

In point of fact HIV infection rates were dropping. But they’ve now seen an uptick because the disease has become fashionably manageable.

I’ve been present in several public situations where beautiful twenty something young men were asking to be fucked unprotected by HIV+ men.

Their reasoning in making this absurd and insane request was that they wanted to be able to have unprotected sex without fear of HIV since they’d already be positive. Then they could get on a cocktail and have as much unsafe sex as they wanted to. They said literally, “We just don’t want to have to worry about it.” At which point, why bother to purposely get infected? It’ll happen in due course if you play unsafely.

The most recent occasion went like this: Upon hearing their request, this was at a cocktail party not an orgy… I wondered if they were going to be able to leave without being skinned alive (metaphorically) by the elder men in the room. These youngsters didn’t even grasp their error. They had no clue why suddenly the elders in the room were visibly angry. The elders were comprised of about half who were HIV+ and half who were HIV-.

One of the elder men who is HIV+ took these two youngsters aside and began explaining to them why this was such a bad idea. He explained side effects, drug interactions, and just how careful he had to be with diet and exercise. He explained that it was expensive. In his case insurance didn’t fully cover the drugs he used and that he’d give anything to live a “normal” life. The younger men would not be dissuaded and were finally asked to leave.

I have no idea if they found someone to grant their wishes. I hope they didn’t.

So again, to the young man stating that increasing HIV rates are the responsibility of “Boomers” I call bullshit.

The increase is to be laid squarely at your generation’s feet, all wrapped up with a pretty sparkly bow.

In other words son, own your shit! After all you’ve demanded nothing less of my generation.