Category: Being a man

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Men, if you want to visit a Male only resort…

Get your reservations in order NOW.

Pardon me for putting this bluntly but a fucking bitch filed a discrimination law suit against Island House and New Orleans House because both resorts specifically cater to male clients desiring a clothing optional vacation, and denied her entry to the clothing optional areas. Hey lady, if you want to see naked men you could look at any number of websites!

Here’s the link

Gentlemen this is how if fucking starts!

I’ve seen this bullshit play out over years and several businesses.

The first was a place whose owner recognized that Men, real Males, dudes who have cocks and balls, like having their grooming needs met in a place where they don’t have to smell the chemicals used to color or curl hair. They also don’t like the smell of fiberglass and acrylic nail bonding materials.

This particular owner owned two salons, about a block apart. One they designated as for men, the other they designated for women. Both salons were decorated in ways that appealed to their expected clientele.

The male space provided a beer after work, current games and replay channels of various sports. Men could, and did go in after work and get their hair cut on the way home. It was a welcoming space and we could even get a real straight razor shave. In effect this place was a safe space for men.

That ended when a nasty bitch decided that she didn’t want to go to the lady’s place, she wanted to have her hair cut in a mans place because the lady’s place wouldn’t do it right. Which was ironic because a lot of the stylists working in the male space had come from the female salon. The exception were the 3 barbers who were authorized by California to do straight razor shaves.

I once overheard a new stylist saying how glad she was to be working at the men’s salon. I asked her why it mattered she was working for the same owners. She smiled and replied, “Men are so much nicer to work with. If I make a mistake or misunderstand how a man wants his hair cut, I apologize and fix it with zero drama.”

When this nasty bitch was asked to go to the lady’s salon, she ran crying to an attorney like the little bitch she was.

One year later, what had been a booming business catering to men, was just another stinky hair burning palace. The barbers left within a month or two, and a lot of the stylists found other places to be. The place still exists and operates under the same name but where their website used to have men, and male cuts and services prominently displayed now it’s all female. I’m not trying to be misogynistic but I don’t think it’s unreasonable for a man to want a male space.

Similarly there was a gym that had VIP Male locker rooms that you paid a lot of money extra to have. The same gym didn’t have a female equivalent. The reason wasn’t about discrimination it was about profit.

There were substantially more men from local businesses who would pay for a nicer private locker room with more amenities. The women typically didn’t and even if they were willing to pay extra, women made up less than 25% of the membership of this particular gym. The math is simple, the owners of the gym invested where it was likely they’d get a substantial return on the investment.

That gym is now closed.

I heard of another gym that tried an experimental mix in the VIP locker room, but the women didn’t like that men would walk around without bothering to wrap a towel around themselves.

The men for their part thought nothing of being nude and if the women wanted to be there… Fine, ladies you’re going to see us in our natural habitat.

The women eventually won. I’m not sure what the mechanism was, but many younger men are so ashamed of their bodies they’ll leave a gym without showering or even changing clothes. They’re too afraid of someone else seeing their cocks and balls. Older guys like me… I don’t much care one way or the other.

I guess we all knew this assault on Men was coming. If not from some crazed bitch who just wants to make trouble, then it would be from some fucked up trans asshole. Can you tell that I’m sick to fucking death of this trans bullshit?

Now this trans shit is going to destroy clothing optional men’s resorts right along with every other fucking thing this moronic movement has destroyed or otherwise fucked up beyond all recognition.

I don’t want to share clothing optional spaces with “Halflings” (God I hate using that term because I actually like Hobbits,) unfortunately I’m given no choice.

I don’t want to look at some half transitioned naked whatever the fuck it is. This is especially true if I’m at a resort trying to relax. I don’t mind whatsoever being at a nudist resort with men and women. That’s a different situation, everyone is naked and the vibe is different from a male only space.

An awful lot of the half transitioned should get their money back, there’s no excuse for their mastectomy scars to be that prominent.

My brain can’t relax when I’m forced to observe a science experiment. Sorry, I am not going to be able to be anything but clinically analytical and that’s not relaxing to me.

Where the fuck can I go and have my rights or desires respected?

When I contemplate things like this, and ask the question above, this is what I hear in my head;

“NO FUCKING WHERE, Bucky!

You’re a male, you’re white, you’re not hip, you’re not young, you don’t understand our wonderful brave new utopian world, so why don’t you just die?”

That really appears to be the message men get from almost all fronts these days.

There was recently a news article that rebooted my brain. The article said that fitness was white supremacist because white nationalist groups promote a healthy lifestyle and healthy competition between males.

In other words, older values and traditions that celebrate strength, redirected normal aggression into healthy pursuits like wrestling, boxing, and various martial arts is racist and wrong. Celebrating masculinity, perhaps even trying to revive some of the rites of being accepted as a man by other men and the implied duties of manhood are now “BAD”. It’s racist for MALES TO BE WHAT THEY ARE and accept it guilt free.

But it’s okay when people deny reality and identify as a cross sexed elf Klingon hybrid clone of Kayliss? We’re all supposed to accept this as normal? I think not!

I’ve written in this very blog many times over the years that stifling natural male tendencies would lead to no good.

Boys aren’t all ADHD, they’re high fucking energy and need to move. That’s not a bad thing. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was actually some biological system forcing the restlessness and need to move. I’ve wondered if it was part of why males are generally stronger than females.

A lifetime of rough and tumble activities and testing ourselves against our world has to develop strength, agility, coordination and the world teaches us our limits.

We used to accommodate this need with recess and time after lunch to hit the playground so that boys could burn off their excess energy before returning to the classroom.

Elder adult males could also be trusted to act as guardians, and guides on the path of manhood. Many of them were probably handing down lessons and knowledge in an almost oral tradition. They’d been taught by their fathers and grandfathers, who’d been taught by their fathers and grandfathers in an unrecognized tradition that may have gone back hundreds of years or further.

Manhood, Masculinity, Duty to Family, God, and Country, Decency, and Honor were all in the not too distant past celebrated.

Often, the first celebration of passing from childhood to manhood was with the patriarchs of a young man’s family. The recognition of the passing may have been formal or it may have been something as simple as being invited to listen to, or participate in a discussion the men were having at Thanksgiving dinner.

The young man being called to the adult table from the kids table, and the elder men scooting aside to make room for the new addition to their ranks. These were powerful acknowledgements of a young man having earned respect and gaining acceptance of the elders.

In that acceptance was another message, “Welcome. Now young Man, you will have duties you didn’t have before. Continue proving yourself and that you’ve learned the lessons we tried to teach you.”

In large part I think this has been stripped away from our society and what we’ve gotten from this lack is 40% of Brown University identifying as LGBTQI @#$%^&( or whatever.

The really surprising thing about this to me personally is that Gay or Straight never changed the fundamental duties of manhood or masculinity. You were a man first, who you got your rocks off with, and how was supposed to be your business.

I wrote these thoughts down over the years using polite terms. The time for polite is passed.

It’s well past time for the Elder men to stand unafraid against a society gone mad. Now, I’m not going to bother with politeness or worry about hurting someone’s feelings. I’ll speak my mind and urge what men are left to do the same. Speak the truth, and if someone has to go to their safe space so be it.

I’m sick of my manhood and masculinity being under constant assault, (called toxic, dangerous, racist, misogynistic, hateful…) by people who would without question take from me all that I am. At the same time, these people would demand that I substitute their philosophy for my own . The reward they think I’ll value is acceptance into a society that I don’t want to participate in, or recognize.

I’ve digressed a bit.

Okay, I’ve meandered all over the fucking road! I’m sorry but there’s a lot of stuff running through my head all the time now. I’m trying to work through it. In a way it feels like All of these things are buffered in my brain, I’ve got to get them out so that normal operations can resume.

I’d really hoped to visit The FL Keys again and stay in these famous gay resorts before I kicked off this planet.

Now, depending on how the appeals and counter appeals go there may not be any point.

Another thing, another pleasure, taken away or destroyed by the tyranny of the infinitesimally small minority.

Although in this case I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman in question is a religious zealot who cleverly realized she could fuck the evil sodomites using lawfare. Or perhaps she had her husband leave her for another man so she’s taking revenge.

Either is possible and i suspect that regardless of where the courts or hotel commission come down on this, she may have already won.

I honestly can’t see myself paying the rates that Island House or New Orleans House charge, to sit around pretending to enjoy being surrounded by refugees from Frankenstein’s workshop.

If that sentiment is shared by a large enough number of gay men, then the gay meccas of Fire Island, Key West, Palm Springs, and perhaps even the Russian River will be gone for good. Just like a lot of the famous gay bars. Been to LA or Laguna Beach lately??

The equation is simple.

Pay $150 a night at a clothing optional resort being forced to see something that brings you no enjoyment, you’re surrounded by freaks, and too uncomfortable to take your clothes off… OR pay $150 a night at The Hilton, enjoy the pool, and have room service.

For me, it’s a matter of value.

If I’m staying at The Hilton, then I don’t have to visit Palm Springs, Fire Island, Key West, or the Russian River. There won’t be any gay men there for me to interact with anyway, so any Hilton in any city on the planet will do just fine.

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The best laid plans…

The tail spin I’ve been in for the past few months is starting to be… less spinney. I’m not out of the spin yet, not by a long shot, but I’m getting better.

I had a plan for our retirement. A plan for what I wanted to do. I pictured us having a small home, with a lawn. I pictured actually having to own a lawn mower for the first time in my life. I’d even been shopping for mowers I might want. I pictured puttering around in a garden, and the two of us enjoying warm days with friends. Nice barbecues, dog walks and quiet times. Most of all I pictured having a mailbox. A “real” address and the joy of not having to worry about how something was being sent to me, because there was only one address to worry about. 

Yellow houseThese are small things. When you haven’t had them for most of your adult life they attain outsized importance.

I saw us enjoying hobbies and interests we’d not had the time to pursue because our jobs were always in the way. We always wanted to travel, we envied those of our friends who made traveling a priority and found the money to afford to do it. We always thought we’d have time. “Once we retire,” we’d say to each other.

I know this is an idealized view, and the reality of our retirement wouldn’t have been quite so… idyllic? Bucolic? But I thought that I’d be able to hammer some part of it out for us, even if it was only for a few years. 

Now, all that is changed. That’s what put me into the tailspin in the first place, aside from the shock, then learning that my other half had made no provisions for his demise.

You’d think I’d be mad, but I gotta say, “Good one babe, ya left me holding the bag!” 

I find myself wondering what now? What next?

I’m still here, the dog is still here, there’s still a small home with a patch of grass out there somewhere. There’s still barbecue, beer, warm days, mild winters, dog walks, and laughs. It’ll just be me and the dog doing all those things by ourselves. The dog is generally good company so that’s a plus. 

One distant acquaintance told me I’d meet someone else. She was attempting to tell me there was a future. She has no sense of boundaries, or decorum, and didn’t know that I’d long ago decided that I wasn’t going to “get hitched” again. I might not even date. I might simply decide that scratching a certain itch is best done in a way that ends with me saying, “Your money is on the counter, now please leave.” There is an interest on my part to “ordering from a catalog,” so to speak. I suspect that is cheaper than dinner & drinks, and I don’t have to be deafened by bar music.

I’ve decided that moving is best for me in the long run. Where I live now is a beautiful place, I have a view that I enjoy very much. But time is catching up with me, I don’t do as well in the winters as I used to. I’ve concluded it’s time for me to take the hint. I think I should go in search of the patch of grass and a mailbox that I’d fantasized about so often.

As I’ve looked at other places to live and the houses available, I’ve discovered that I like either brand new houses or I like really old houses. 1944 and before generally. I suppose it’s because those houses seem to have a lot of character. I know that is sometimes another way of saying they’re a money pit but some of the pictures of these older homes are very nice. The newer houses seem to have a lot of conveniences. 

I’ll have to adjust my visualization down to one chair on the porch but I’m working on that.

The mornings here are getting warmer, I’ve been taking my coffee and iPad out on the back deck to enjoy the quiet of the morning and scan the daily follies of the “Adults” in Washington. The dog likes it because he can watch the world and keep an eye on me at the same time.

I guess the lesson learned is plans and dreams change. 

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Something that made me smile…

In preparation for possibly selling the house, I’ve been cleaning closets.

The other half, God rest his soul was a heck of a packrat and had a habit of saving all kinds of paperwork in boxes, backpacks, shopping bags, and disused briefcases. Each one of which I must now open and determine from which epoc the paperwork within belongs.

That’s enough fun and I have found a lot of very strange things. I’ve also happened upon a treasure trove of CDs all of them classical music and none of them digitized. I’m at a complete loss as to why this would be. The resources to digitize and store all of his music on his computer, ipad, iphone or whatever were available. For some reason it just never got done and to the best of my knowledge I was never asked to do it or help. 

It’s one of those questions I’ll have to ask him when I see him next. I do hope that I can call him to the gates of heaven to chat for a moment or two before I’m put on the express elevator to hell. I doubt they’ll allow phonecalls between the two places and the long distance charges would be outrageous even if such calls were allowed.

Another part of cleaning out the closets has been dealing with the porn collection. There are quite a few videos we accumulated over the years. After the fire, we replaced a lot of what we originally owned on VHS tapes with DVDs or BluRays. As technology advanced and porn houses started offering their movies digitally I allocated a chunk of space on our server to store movies. I’ve also transferred many movies to the server, so that they are available on demand on virtually any device with a screen in the house.

As I was sorting movies from the shelf in the closet, I noticed a number of titles were not on the server and were not available for download from the production houses. So while going through the heartwrenching task of sorting or trashing things from boxes, bags, etc. I also began moving videos to the server. Once the DVD is on the server, I’ve been boxing them for storage and transport. 

This process has gone quite well. After moving the videos to the server, I decided to do a little quality check and so I told a player application to play the videos. I wasn’t watching them actively, I was spot checking as I walked something to the trash or checked on the dog.

The Dog will only allow me about an hour before he brings a ball in and drops it loudly next to my foot.

Anyhow, between laundry, sorting paperwork and the dog demanding that I play, I completely forgot about the videos playing on the TV in the bedroom. The volume was low and I was distracted. I’d returned to the front bedroom closet concentrating on the mountain of paperwork and odd bits & pieces of stuff collected over the past 13  years or so. 

I would ocassionally hear a voice, but couldn’t make it out, and thought that it was coming from outside the house. (The weather is nice so it’s routine for the crazy woman and her crazy man to be screaming at each other, one in the house and the other in the yard. Everytime they start up I first imagine an episode of COPS and then tune them out.)

Several hours pass as I’m digging through paperwork, playing with the dog, and tossing stuff into the recycle bin. During all this time I’ve been hearing voices and simply assumed it was the neighbors then cursed their classless nature under my breath…

Until one of the performers in a movie had a particularly loud orgasmic release.

Then I remembered the videos were playing in the other bedroom and found myself taking back all the unkind things I’d been thinking and muttering about the crazy neighbor and her mate.

So, Note to self, turn the volume up so I can hear the video playing the the other room, or turn the volume down and be happily surprised when I walk into the bedroom and see the porn is still running.

And now I’m off to throw the ball for the dog once again. I can’t deny him, but do think he’s mastered distracting me from the tasks that I need to accomplish.

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Life Events

We’re all getting older.

Deny it all you will, it’s a fact.  Currently, on my mantle is an urn. It’s a nice simple shape.

It contains the cremains of my Significant Other. We had 34 years together; some good, some bad, but the important thing is we endured the hard times and celebrated the good times.

There’s a finality to that urn. It’s like a stake in the ground that says, “From here you go on alone.”

Now, there’s all the paperwork and complications. There’s the digging through documents and trying to find accounts and pay for this, that, and the other thing. There are originals and copies of proof of death to be sent to various organizations. It’s complicated, litigious, and annoying.

There’s cleaning, and organizing of all the little bits of stuff that my S.O. considered important enough to keep and deciding the validity of each thing. Should the silly coffee mug from some professional conference be kept? It means nothing to me. But it was a cup that frequently was on the breakfast table. I suppose, in that, some objects have attained sentimental value, but are they important enough to keep?

How do you decide? What merits an object’s inclusion in a cabinet when everything in the house is something you remember picking out together? When your home is full of memories, how do you weight one item over the rest?

There are items that should be returned to my S.O.s family. I’ve been collecting those because these items have historical significance to the family and should be passed on. Like other objects they have little significance to me personally, but to the family they are bits and pieces of their history. The family should have the opportunity to accept or reject these items.

Our home is full of memories. These memories come unbidden at random times and they can be paralyzing.

Then there are all the good people who don’t know what to say or do. There’s really nothing they can say or do, this pain is mine. I appreciate their well wishes and concern. But really there’s little they can do to help, short of standing with me.

There are those among the friends of my S.O. for whom drama seems to be necessary. For them, sharing their trauma of losing a parent or sibling is supposed to be helpful. In reality their repetitive oversharing is just ripping the bandage off the wound.

It’s not that they mean to be cruel. They just don’t understand that grieving a spouse seems to be a private affair. Losing a spouse is very different from losing a parent or sibling. I’ve experienced all three now. The spouse, is a completely different experience.

When you’re growing up, you come to understand that death is part of life. You understand there’s an order to things. You eventually realize that your parents will one day, not be there, and you usually have a long time to come to grips with that concept. Often, your parents, realizing their own mortality, provide you with guidelines and instruction. It’s not overt, but you see your grandparents pass on and by observation you learn how to come to grips with that inevitably.

When your parents pass on, you grieve following your parent’s example of grieving their parents.

When your spouse passes on, you have some rudimentary coping mechanisms but those don’t really fit. You’re in uncharted waters and each day brings new and different pain.

You see something that your spouse left behind. For example, a mess, and your first thought is to be irritated by it, then you remember your spouse is gone. That’s when you feel guilt about being irritated with them, and grief washes over you. Then you wonder if you were good enough to them, were you petty when you expressed your irritation about them leaving messes in their wake.

Should you have been more patient and loving? Then you’re back to guilt.

You don’t really have time to process your feelings because there are plans and decisions to be made.

The love of your life may be at peace, but you’re anything but…

I’ve found myself losing hours of a day over something trivial. I’ve been awakened by the dog in the night because unbeknownst to me I was crying in my sleep. It’s a strange feeling to be awakened by your dog kissing tears away. In the dim moonlight I can see the dog’s concerned eyes. Once I’m awake, he lays down next to me with one paw on my arm, as if to say, “I’m here Dad, it’s going to be alright.”

I’m anthropomorphizing the dog. He doesn’t really understand, but he’s aware something fundamental has changed in our home.

Grief appears to be a journey. It’s not one that I’m prepared for, and not one that any of us have a choice in undertaking.

I’m getting the feeling that this is also a long journey.

All of which is to say, I’m likely to be writing intermittently at best.

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Just a random thought about Twitter.

I’ve noticed that more and more politicians are claiming that Twitter is becoming more bigoted.

I’m looking at you Adam Schiff!

Adam schiff

What I wondered is this;

What would happen if people just randomly sent a tweet to people like Adam Schiff, Maxine Waters, John Fetterman, Katie Hobbs, Nancy Pelosi, and whoever else popped to mind saying, “I Don’t like you.”

Nothing more than that. I realize that my list is all Democrats but hey why not give every politician the same treatment equally?

What would happen on Twitter? It’s not hate speech, it’s not a threat, it’s not a call for violence, or any of the other “banned” interactions. It’s simply telling the person in question unequivocally that you, as a person don’t like them. 

This could be for any reason, you don’t like their politics, you don’t like their stance on gun control, you don’t think they’re doing a good job, whatever the reason, a simple generic, “I don’t like you,” shouldn’t be banned, it’s not bigoted, and it leaves the interpretation of your message open to the recipient.

Given that so many of these people seem to live for the adulation of the press, and attention from the public. I’ve wondered what receiving thousands or millions of generic messages like this would do to their collective psyches.

These people claim to want to protect democracy, how would they react to a completely egalitarian registration of people simply not liking them? What would they do if a preponderance of “I Don’t Like You” messages was all they received via their Twitter feed? I wonder if they’d get the message.

In the case of Adam Schiff who is claiming that he’s getting more bigoted remarks in the wake of Elon Musk taking the helm of Twitter, I think that perhaps Mr. Schiff is missing the point. Perhaps it’s not bigoted, perhaps the negative comments have nothing to do with his religion or appearance, but instead have to do with him personally. 

I find Mr. Schiff to be a thoroughly unlikable person. Every time I’ve seen him giving speeches or appearing on chat shows he simply comes across as a nasty piece of work. So I don’t like him. Politically, he’s milquetoast except in his rabid hatred of all things Trump. To see him whining on CNN about bigotry on Twitter does nothing more than than confirm to me he’s a weak individual struggling to hold onto power.

Most of the rest of the Twitterati, (of which I was one,) have lived under draconian, arbitrary, capriciously enforced “rules”. Twitter users could say, “I wish Trump was dead,” or “All infidels in Synagog X should be killed.” But other Twitter users couldn’t say The Transgender agenda is more far reaching than has been said and I think they’re after our kids. A Twitter user who said something negative about transgenders would be banned instantly.

Now that censorship is not protecting Adam Schiff from real people that don’t like him, his feelings are hurt and he views people speaking their mind as an affront.

I think Adam Schiff should grow a pair, and perhaps should grow some thicker skin too. If he actually believes in what he’s doing and is committed to his position, then it doesn’t matter what people say about him.

That’s what I mean by saying he’s proving to me, with every single appearance where he’s bitching and whining about bad things being said about him or to him on Twitter, that he’s a terribly weak individual with weak commitment to his values. He’s changeable as the wind, last month he liked Twitter, because he was protected from the slings and arrows of the American Public. This month Twitter is bad, for no other reason than he gets to see what people really think.

Politicians getting direct engagement from their constituents could be a good thing. If for no other reason than politicians would have a less filtered and isolated view of what is important to the people they govern.

I suppose this was why I was thinking about a simple concise message, “I don’t like you,” might be useful. It’s up to the politician to reach out and ask why. If they choose not to engage, then the American People would have another valuable data point for the next election.

On the other hand, if a politician chose to ask why 900,000 people sent him or her, “I don’t like you,” on a particular day and found that their position of a particular issue had been misreported. They would have the opportunity to explain themselves and perhaps get a message back from the American People that said, “Okay I get it. Thank you for the clarification.” They may not win everyone over, but at least they’d be in contact with the people and not acting as if they lived in a bubble.

If we’re really all about democracy then let’s be democratic.

It is things like this thought that make me almost ready to engage in Twitter again. I just can’t quite decide if it’s worth my time or effort yet.