Category: Male

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An impromptu Ode to cars…

I leased my vehicle 3 years ago. At the time I treated the car like a long term rental. I knew I loved the car, but was always worried that it would be taken from me.

I wasn’t really aware I was doing this, but I didn’t customize anything about it. The one thing I did was have the typical BMW chrome grill swapped out for a blackout version. It was cheap to do and I’d simply mentioned it during the leasing process. While we were wrangling with the finances, the service folks just did it.

Other than that, I didn’t really do much else. I barely customized the dashboard and didn’t program the seat position. The car remained exactly as it was delivered. (Necessary repairs even returned the car to delivered condition.) I didn’t even load any music onto the internal hard drive built into the car.

On HWY 2 near Llano, CA. It’s a nice drive if you’ve got the time.

I know all of these little things are fully programmable, and easily changeable but there was something about it.

In the back of my mind I was always thinking, “This isn’t really my car. I don’t want to get too attached or invested in customizing stuff because at the end of the lease I’ll just have to do let it all go anyway.“

I’ve never understood why, when I get into a loaner car or a rental car there’s always a long list of other people’s phones programmed into the cars electronics. Why would you do that? Why take the time and then leave traces of your phone and/or call log in a car that’s not yours?

In my case I’d programmed my phone into my leased vehicle but there was only my phone and I always figured I’d wipe it when the lease ended. I even made myself a checklist in the “Reminders” app on my phone.

That checklist was to pop up on the day before the lease ended so that I’d have the time to systematically walk through all the things I needed to do and check them off, one by one. The thought at the time was, “I’ll do it all before I’m at the dealership and then it’ll just be handing them the keys, heartbroken.“

The checklist listed things like;

Unpair the phone
Delete all call logs
Delete all Navigation records
Delete “Home” location. (As an aside the location was never set to my address, just the town. If you can’t find your way home in your own town, you should hand the keys to the nearest bartender!)
Remove anything of a personal nature, check glove compartment, under seats, map pockets, trunk, etc.
And on & on.

I deleted that checklist today.

I went to the store yesterday in my car. On the way home it occurred to me that now, it really was my car. After unloading the grocery items, I walked over to the CD shelf and grabbed a bunch of my favorites. (Yes, most of my music is digital and exists on my phone, but I’ve been loading CDs into the 20GB hard drive for music built into the car. )

Now that it’s mine, I’m not hesitant to start making it mine.

I removed the satellite radio option from the display (Sirius Satellite can kiss my ass!) $23 a month for what? They are out of their damn minds! Introductory offers be damned, If you can provide an intro offer for $5 a month, you can damn well offer the service for $5 a month. Frankly, that may be too high a price because you have to deal with Sirius Corporation and that is a freaking nightmare at any time.

If you assume from that statement that I don’t like Sirius corporate practices, You’d be right. It was a nice idea and worked well for a time. At the point that I terminated my subscription, I hadn’t spoken to anyone on this continent for years. Each time I had to speak to a representative, they inevitably screwed something up. Honestly, it got tiresome to have to spend hours on the phone over multiple calls to accomplish what should have been a straight forward task.

Besides, CarPlay works much better.

I’ve reconfigured almost all of the menus, and displays. I’ve programmed the seat settings. I’ve even started programming favorites into the radio buttons. (Although there isn’t much worth listening to on local radio stations. On a lot of the stations, I’m not even sure what language is being spoken. Maybe English?) I’ve set up the master key, and I’m considering other little things to add that fit me.

Generally speaking BMW fits me right out of the box, but there are always little things that make the vehicle feel more like home.

Now, I’m not worried about miles driven on the odometer. When looking at tires I’m thinking best value for the dollar, not just the cheapest Chinese brand that will fit. I am just as worried about rocks flying on the freeway, dents, and dings. That will probably never change!

I get in and really smile. I smiled before but it was always reserved because I didn’t know if I was going to have my heart broken when the lease ended.

I drove my 1 series for almost 10 years. It was in excellent condition right up to the day it was totaled, it made me smile every time I got into it. My heart was broken when it was killed by a stupid bitch running a red light. The only gratification was the stupid bitch didn’t get away with what she was trying to get away with.

There were a lot of witnesses that told the cops, She ran the light, not me. Once she heard what the witnesses were telling the cops, she stopped limping around and holding her neck.

Miraculously, she also started speaking and understanding English. Can you say insurance scam? She thought she’d blame me and get a big settlement, (after all I drove a nice car… Right?) That’s a laugh! She still tried to rake my insurance company over the coals and cause trouble for me. That fell apart pretty fast when the police report made it to my insurance company’s lawyers.

When I looked at turning the tables on her, I found out she was an illegal, had no drivers license, and had been involved in 5 other accidents in the last 2 years, all of which she got large settlements out of.

I remember asking the police several weeks later how it was possible that she was allowed to remain in the country when it was pretty obvious that she was committing crimes for her income. They just shrugged.

I’m glad I leased this car. I’m equally glad that the lesson I learned is that I don’t like leasing. I got lucky that this lease worked out to my advantage and I’m thankful that some higher power pulled a string or two for me. Otherwise, things could have gone very differently.

I had a 3 series for a while. It was a good car, it just wasn’t me. It’s odd, that car and I never bonded. According the the mapping and phone data that was still in the navigation system, it had been preowned by a Chinese person in Wisconsin. The voice actuation never worked right. I guess maybe the first language it learned was Chinese, and it didn’t do very well with English as a second language.

When I got the 4 series, I remember handing the 3 series keys to the dealership and felt nothing at all. I never looked back at the 3. That was weird for me. Once I bond with a car, it’s really hard for me to let it go. Usually, we’ve been through a lot together and the adventures are good memories tied to the car itself. It’s easy for me to forget about the 3 because we made no memories together. It almost felt like the car and I tolerated each other but I had no desire to cruise up the coast in it.

The 3 would often do something weird and fail with no warning at all. Invariably when it was most inconvenient (on the way to work at 4am, instead of on the way home from work at 2pm.) Maybe that’s why we never cruised the coast or anything other than drove to work and home. I never had confidence in the car.

My current car, on the other hand, we’ve been coast to coast. We’ve seen sights and cruised areas in this country that I’d never seen before.

We stopped in Amarillo, TX because it told me something wasn’t quite right 120 miles outside the city. We didn’t limp in to town, we drove in under full power. My car did me proud and I didn’t mind stopping to investigate the issue. As it turned out the repair was minor, the TX dealership didn’t have the part. Fortunately it was something that could be documented, and reset. The car was fine to continue the trip back to California, a permanent fix could be made once we got home.

I’d have happily hung out in Amarillo waiting for parts if it had been necessary and not grumbled about it at all.

I suppose the difference is that the 3 had been preowned. The 4 had been driven, but I was its first owner. We bonded at about 100 miles an hour on the 52 in San Diego. It was instant, and we were communicating with each other intuitively, and have ever since.

It’s strange but I remember looking out the big windows of the dealership in San Diego and of all the cars out there, the 4 felt like it was looking back at me. As if it was alive and wanted me to take it home.

The car looked like all the others but I could feel something else. I didn’t know it was a manual transmission until I sat down in the driver’s seat. It was sitting in a line of other 4’s they looked indifferent and cold, but my 4 looked warm, inviting, a bit cocky, and forlorn.

As I walked out the double doors I knew I should just wait for the loaner car so the 3 could be fixed again and shouldn’t be looking at another vehicle.

I went to my 4 and knew it was built for me, it had been waiting patiently for someone like me to find it. It was the only manual transmission in the row. When I got in and fired it up, the display showed it had been driven about 2500 miles. When I pulled out onto the road, I knew they’d been a rough 2500 miles. Probably some dealership salesman or various people who thought they’d like to try a manual transmission.

Either way, those miles had been rough, the good news was, they were few in number. When we hit the freeway I could feel the engine blowing out the bad shifts and the clutch opening up for me. When we hit 90, the salesman got nervous but kept his mouth shut. At 100 mph he started shifting around uncomfortably.

I wasn’t meaning to scare him. The car and I were talking to each other. I could feel the machine singing with joy at actually being driven the way it was supposed to be, by feel, not by someone watching a shift indicator on the dashboard.

We leveled the acceleration at somewhere over 100 mph, dropped speed, and turned around to head back to the deanship. I knew as I made the turnaround to get back on the freeway heading the direction we’d come, that neither I or the car could be separated. I hadn’t felt that good about driving since I’d lost the 1 series.

The lease was an option that worked for the moment and within a month I knew I’d found a worthy replacement for the 1 series. During the lease, I worried that something would happen that would make me have to give up the 4 but I promised it, and myself, that I’d do my best to keep it happily in my garage.

It wasn’t until yesterday that the reality hit me. I’d kept my promise, (some might say it was a selfish promise…)

I’ve always had a “feel” for machines. While most machines and I get along great, there are some machines that feel special, they feel like they have a soul. I’ve repaired machines that I swore were messing with me just for kicks and a little kind attention. Those machines became my favorites to service and repair. They usually made me smile with their improbable antics or malfunctions. Often, they just needed some tender loving care and I’d see them again in 6 months or a year.

I know a few folks who believe some machines have souls, so it’s not as weird as it might seem. We’ve all been in offices where one person couldn’t get a specific machine to work properly no matter what. The machine works fine for everyone else, just not that one person.

That’s a machine soul trying to tell everyone something. I noted years ago that machines with souls seem to know who the jackasses in a business are, and they’re not shy about broadcasting it to the rest of the company.

My 1 had a good soul and we went through a lot of crap together. No matter how bad my 1 was feeling it never left me stranded. It would get me someplace safe limping all the way if it had to.

The 3 was indifferent and cold, it was a common car just like a thousand others on the road. The 3 had no problems at all just stopping wherever it was.

The 4 wanted to be loved and driven. It wanted to have someone who appreciated it in the drivers seat. It has a good soul. I’m confident that it will always do its best to get me where I’m going, or warn me ahead of time that something is wrong. Even with its nose smashed up and a puncture to the floor pan caused by a semi tire retread in the lanes, my 4 yelped but kept on going. It got me home safe that night, and the next day we were at the repair shop.

I’m lucky the 4 picked me, (or caught my eye,) that sunny day in San Diego.

Maybe, depending on the cost of the registration, for Christmas I’ll give the 4 a proper name printed on a classic black & yellow California plate.

For the time being, I’m letting it know that now it is truly mine and we’ll take care of each other and be just fine.

I wonder if this is how people felt about horses?

Later in the day…

While loading CDs, I plugged one in from Rush. I couldn’t help but laugh when Red Barchetta, started playing. It reminded me that in California by 2035 all new vehicle sales are mandated to be electric only.

Just 13 years from now, unless Gov. Newsom decides to speed up the timetable. It will take some time for California to make all gas vehicles illegal to own, or operate. The legislature will probably get around to it by 2045.

It’s funny to think that I might live long enough to watch a song play out in in real life. I could survive into my 80s and watch high speed chases where the perpetrator is only guilty of joyriding in a gas powered automobile.

I hope that I’m watching it from an old folks home located in another state. The only problem I might have, is pissing off the other old folks by rooting for the gas powered vehicle to outwit and outrun the electric police cars.

What are they gonna do about it? Deny me my pudding?

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Not to beat Roe v. Wade into the ground, but…

As the media, Hollywood, and politicians continue to bang on about just how awful overturning Roe v. Wade will be and their shrill demand My Body My Choice echos through the land. I got to thinking…

If they really mean “My Body My Choice” then shouldn’t they also condone prostitution?

Would all these Neo-Feminists be so keen to preserve Roe, if the ruling also said Prostitution is legal in all 50 states?

Is it fair that a woman can be arrested for renting her body? After all, a prostitute is still exercising autonomous control over her body isn’t she?

It’s hypocritical on its face that many of the same women demanding abortion be Federal, not in the hands of the states, typically take a very dim view of prostitution.

I’m not even going to point out the hypocrisy of those same women becoming screaming “Karens” demanding everyone get a COVID vaccine.

Then there was one shrew on a show saying that all boys should be subject to mandatory vasectomies when they reach reproductive age.

Her reasoning was “It can be reversed”. But that’s not entirely true in all cases. Norplant and IUDs can be reversed too, again not in all cases. However, she wasn’t calling for mandatory Norplant or IUD implantation.

Nope, for this particular shrew, it was only men that bore the responsibility for unwanted pregnancy. She completely ignored the fact that while some rapes result in pregnancy, the vast majority of abortions are performed on women who consented to sex.

Both men and women bear the responsibility for an unwanted pregnancy. Birth control is readily available to both genders.

Or are we to infer that women are too emotionally weak, inflamed by their passions, or irresponsible to tell their sex partner, “No, not without a condom,” when they know they’re not using birth control themselves? Where is the concept of My Body My Choice here?

I can’t remember if the shrew was Sunny Hostin or Joy Reid nor can I find the exact quote at the moment.

(I’m looking for it. I’ve been shocked at how many threads there are demanding forced sterilization of men. One could infer that women think forced sterilization is perfectly fine as long as it’s a man, and only women have the right to “My Body, My Choice“)

I wonder how they’d feel if Roe was modified and codified into the US Constitution as All Americans have the same right, “My Body My Choice,” allowing prostitution and the right to refuse any medical treatment, regardless of the situation.

How would they behave if, in the spirit of equity, the law applied equally to Women and Men.

Then there’s another hypocrisy surrounding the issue. I’ll grant you it’s an outlier but think about this. If an unmarried couple find that they’ve created a life. The woman in the couple under current law, can have the baby aborted without the male partner’s consent.

However, if the woman carries the baby to term, the father of record, is legally obligated to provide child support and pay all the fees the court may decide to saddle him with. Regardless of his desire that the woman abort his child. He might also be denied the right to visitation. This, even if the couple has broken up and the woman has found another wealthier partner and married him.

I’m not meaning to open the can of worms about child support per se, but I do ask the question; why in this scenario does the man have absolutely no choice?

Well, he does have a choice… There’s the phenomenon of solo sexuality.

This is where normal healthy young men chose to tend to their own needs exclusively so that they don’t risk being trapped into fatherhood or anything else by a vagina owner.

This logical response by men who wish to avoid complications, or entrapment, is technically under attack with anti-pornography laws. Laws which oddly are billed as protecting women from exploitation. Is it exploitation when the woman is exercising “My Body My Choice” and she chooses to perform in a pornographic film?

The anti child pornography laws, I’m totally on board with.

Young men who have made this particular choice are often viewed as abnormal by society.

Which is it ladies? You say you’re afraid of rape, unwanted pregnancy, toxic males, and all the other bullshit. But at the same time you seek to deny other women the right to sell their services either directly, or on film, and seek to deny men a non-toxic sexual outlet.

The last I read about the solo-sexual phenomena, it seemed that it was mostly confined to large urban environments and the young men in question were educated and had decent jobs. They’re simply making a choice that does not involve risking the rest of their future for a few minutes of pleasure.

After dealing with the Neo-Feminists at work over the last 10 years or so, I understand their point.

I’m very glad that I’m partnered and that I’m more gay than bi. Don’t get me wrong, a mentally mature woman that knows herself and takes responsibility is sexy as hell. Unfortunately, they’re becoming exceedingly rare.

Generally, the women I’ve encountered in the workplace have convinced me that:

1) I will not seek a hetro relationship if my current one ends. (For that matter, I’ll probably not seek a homo relationship. Gay men are often just as nuts as Neo-Feminists.)

2) If I find that I’m jonesing for the company of a woman, I’ll fly to Vegas and rent some professional time.

3) A lot of the women I’ve encountered in urban settings, are not people I want to combine my DNA with. There are tons of drop dead gorgeous women, but intellectually they’re not up to snuff. I’d be better off importing an uneducated farm girl from some 3rd world cesspool to make babies with. At least they’d be strong, healthy, have practical comprehension of the real world, and common sense. We all have an inherent duty to make better offspring, not doom the planet to idiot children who can’t command fire.

4) Avoid at all costs any woman with a goofy dye job, weird shitty tattoos, and so many piercings they can’t get through a metal detector. Think of them like brightly colored animals or insects. Typically if a creature has some kind of wild coloration they’re toxic. Think Arrow Frogs, Lionfish, Blue Ring Octopus, Gila monsters, or Coral Snakes.

5) Spanking the monkey is a much more efficient and pleasurable use of my time. To this day, nobody does me, like I do.

The problem with solo sexuality is that it’s likely to lead us to life imitating art.

If only the dumb, or irresponsible, are reproducing then we’re going to end up like the movie Idiocracy.

If you’ve not seen the movie, give it a whirl. Call it a dark comedy. Sadly, I think the fictitious president and cabinet from the movie displays more intelligence than our current administration. That’s another story…

A Neo-Feminist reading this post will probably have her head explode and fire off some diatribe about me being misogynistic.

Before she gets completely spun up, I’d ask her to consider this… I am exactly what you have made me. You have no right to complain. Take responsibility and change. It’s not just your body your choice, it’s also your mind your choice.

I’ve been amused that a lot of the main stream press photos of young protestors demanding Roe v. Wade are people, (Male or Female,) that I personally wouldn’t ever sleep with. No matter how much alcohol was involved.

Many of the females are so visually unappealing to me, I doubt they’re likely to see the inside of an abortion clinic.

As a man who respects himself, I can’t imagine being so desperate that I would risk putting my penis in any of them. I suppose there are men who don’t have my standards for potential reproductive partners. That’s totally on them, and god help us!

Saturday 5/14/2022

So now these people are protesting in front of Supreme Court Justices homes. Oh for fucks sake! First of all that’s illegal since there is part of the legal code that says attempting to intimidate a Judge, Witness, Juror, or officer of the court is punishable by 1 year in jail.

Peacefully Protesting in front of the Supreme Court building is. one thing. Disrupting the lives of an entire neighborhood and the life of the Justice by protesting at his or her home is another thing entirely.

These people in some of the videos are calling for mandatory vasectomies for BOYS! while at the same time carrying “My Body My Choice” signs…

Can you say hypocrisy?

Oh, wait, “My body My Choice” only applies if you’re a woman. But what is a woman these days? We seem to be unable to define that!

You men marching in solidarity for Roe v Wade… The minute you hear mandatory vasectomy for boys, it’s your fucking duty to switch sides or shut that shit down.

That vasectomy bullshit isn’t about abortion rights. It’s only about beating all men into submission and if you’re supporting that, you deserve to be castrated.

On it’s face that statement says women want to be in control not only of their reproduction rights but they want to control yours as well. If you’re that stupid, you probably shouldn’t reproduce anyway.

These harridans scream about bodily autonomy and in the next fucking breath say let’s subject all boys to un-necessary surgery. It sure feels like they’re trying to treat males like dogs.

“Oh look Marilyn-Moonrock, little Johnny is coming of age, pretty soon he’ll be marking the furniture… Better get him fixed as soon at possible!”

What’s next? Wait until a boy is 12 or so, take him in to surgery snip him, and circumcise him at the same time? That would cut down on the pubescent masturbation wouldn’t it? What will they call for after that? Mandatory, yet unnecessary surgery on boys genitals WITHOUT Anesthesia, a sort of pre-punishment for any ills the male might commit?

Then these… There is no other term for them, Vile Bitches could completely control all aspects of what coming of age as a male is.

From constantly telling boys they’re testosterone poisoned and violent, drugging them into submission in schools, complaining about their poor grades because they’re drugged into submission, then denigrating them for being stronger or wanting to test themselves, to making them ashamed of their natural development.

Good plan you vicious cunts! You know, a little female genital mutilation might also go a long way toward negating the need for abortions. Just sayin…

Figure 30 years of mandatory vasectomies, and we’d have women bitching and complaining that they can’t find a man committed enough to go through the surgical procedure to reverse the sterilization process. After all a man isn’t likely to want to relive the childhood trauma a bunch of nasty women imposed on him. I could just see that, a man telling a woman who wants children, “No, My Body My Choice.”

If this is what the majority of the liberals are like… I want absolutely nothing to do with any of them!

Joy Behar suggested recently that women go on a sex strike.

Guys… here’s a thought. Stop dating, or if you date, make sure the women pays the fucking tab.

If you end up in the bedroom, Make sure you wear a condom and demand that the woman has a diaphragm and spermicide in place. You can’t trust her if she says she’s on the pill.

Oh and to top things off… When you’re done, don’t worry about her orgasm. Pull your pants up and leave, dispose of the condom after you’re out the door.

Trust me a few months of that, and all the nice women, the good women, the kind women, the women you’d want to make a family with… They’ll hunt down and rip these liberal bitches limb from limb.

The liberals are very quick to call a man a misogynist…

I suggest to them, if you wonder why men seem more misogynistic…

LOOK IN THE FUCKING MIRROR!

I’d sooner get my jollies with rancid road kill than be intimate with most liberals

I know I sound pretty pissed off, and I am. The blatant hypocrisy these Neo-nazi, Neo feminists are displaying really fires up serious anger.

How about teaching fucking responsibility? Hey, there’s a concept. Oh right, no-one is ever. responsible for their own actions.

Yeah, I call bullshit!

I’m thinking it might be time for me to shift some of my retirement account into lifelike sex dolls… I think I see a ready to boom, business opportunity.

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These emails always make me laugh…

I got one of those emails saying that the sender had infiltrated my devices and had complete access to all my data.

They further said that they’d looked at my browser history and seen that I’d been going to porn sites. Then they go for the blackmail pitch.

The sender said, “I’ve recorded your masturbatory habits and unless you send me 2K in bitcoin I’m going to send videos to everyone in your contact list.”

WHATEVER!

Go ahead! Do It! I put on a fine show, just ask my friends…

If there was actually a way to track this moron down, and they actually had video of me, I’d bill THEM. Obviously they’ve gotten their jollies from watching my sex shows!

Jackass!

I did love the comment near the end where the sender claims they’re honorable. Uh Huh, RIGHT!

I don’t go to porn sites, and haven’t for over 4 years. They’re too spammy and with very few exceptions boring. My own porn library is way better, and the image quality is excellent, especially on the big screen!

The only thing that is of interest, is that this email appears to have originated from my Outlook address. I thought Microsoft was supposed to prevent email spoofing.

Well, I’ve been thinking about deleting the Outlook email address anyway. Maybe today is the day. It shouldn’t take too long to change the email address of the businesses that I still use, to something else.

That would allow me to abandon the purveyors of some of the ridiculous SPAM I get, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about LinkedIn exposing all my contacts to data breaches either.

LinkedIn (A Microsoft Company) absolutely will not let me delete the connection to my Outlook contact list from their service. The Microsoft Outlook email account, (not the application,) continues to remind me of birthdays for contacts that have been deleted for literally years, and repeating calendar events that have been deleted for longer.

Several years ago, I very briefly experimented with switching to all Microsoft applications instead of Mac native apps. It was not a happy experience and within a month, I’d gone back to Mac native applications.

Yet, after manually deleting the contacts list, and the calendar data, somehow stuff keeps popping up even though according to the Microsoft web based portal there’s nothing stored. Hmm. Maybe my data isn’t actually mine???

Perhaps the only way to deal with it is to delete the account(s) entirely.

I’ve even been considering not renewing my yearly subscription to Microsoft Office.

More often than not, I use other word processing or spreadsheet software. I’ve saved 2 GB of disk storage by deleting the Outlook and PowerPoint applications from my system. I could save another 2 GB by dumping Word and Excel. Why on Earth does Microsoft Office need to suck up 4 GB of disk space?

I’ve already deleted Office completely from my iPad and guess what? I don’t miss it at all. I never missed a beat after it was gone.

Don’t fall for these kinds of scams. The only thing real in the email is the bitcoin wallet address.

Besides, even if someone recorded you rubbing one out in front of your computer. After Jeffery Toobin… It doesn’t matter in the least.

Who knows? Your antics might get you some interactive action not just the one handed kind.

The prevalence of these threatening emails might just breathe life back into the dirty magazine industry. After all if you’re getting your freak on with a magazine, you’ll never have to worry about being recorded.

Just a Thought.

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Oh why can’t my life just be simple?

This week started out pretty good.

The neighbor whose house and cat I’ve been looking after is apparently getting better and may be coming home. His Niece and her Husband came down to clean up his house and make it suitable for someone using a walker.

It meant for me that I didn’t have to look after the cat and for at least a few days had the opportunity to look after my own affairs. That was a relief and my mood was pretty good.

For my assistance, and their using my dump access card, they agreed to save some space in one of their dump runs for various yard trimmings that I’d piled up around the yard. They’d rented a large pickup truck and my yard stuff would fit nicely on top of the other stuff they were tossing from the house.

I was out in my yard bagging the stuff to make it easier to load.

It was a lovely spring day and I was in a good mood. The sun felt great and for the first time in months I was warm and cheerful. Progress, warmth, and getting things done always makes me a happy camper.

Apparently the crazy lady in the neighborhood was enjoying herself wandering up and down the main street that all the residential streets intersect with. Aside from her occasional outbursts I was in my own little serene world.

This all went to shit.

I was almost finished with my chore when the crazy lady starts screaming the name of a dead woman who lived across the street from me. While she’s screaming the dead woman’s name she’s walking toward the gate of the house.

The house in question has been sold, purchased, and renovated entirely by the new owner. Seeing crazy heading toward the house, knowing that the former occupant was dead, and that crazy had previously kicked the door in, terrorizing the former occupant I was left with a choice.

I could watch the fun as she pounded on the door, or kicked it in, setting off the alarm system and summoning the police… Or I could say something.

In future, I’ll keep my mouth shut and enjoy the live police show.

On this occasion I simply said loud enough that she could hear me, “She’s dead. She’s been dead for over a year.”

This simple statement of fact resulted in crazy targeting me. As I’ve mentioned occasionally elsewhere in this blog, Crazy has a mouth on her that could make the entirety of several military forces blush at once. The fury of her insanity spewed forth in a rabid staccato of nonsense and obscenities and she started walking back down the street toward me. She was practically frothing at the mouth.

This sort of thing has happened before and she usually sputtered out then wanders off.

Wednesday, she didn’t sputter out.

She demanded to know who I thought I was telling her that the neighbor was dead. She further said I was a liar because she’d just spoken to the neighbor.

I replied, “As you wish,” and went back to my work. This enraged her further, she picks up her pace assuming what I suspect she felt was an appropriately intimidating and aggressive walk. Were she a 4 year old and not spewing foul obscenities every step of the way, it would have been funny.

I still didn’t take her as a threat, in part due to her size and in part due to the comical walk. That being said, I was monitoring her approach. She demanded I produce ID as she stomped onto my property. I asked her what good that would so since our ID has our post office address, not our actual physical address printed on it. ID tells her nothing.

This seemed to cause a momentary pause in her diatribe. Perhaps some logic process attempted to engage, and was promptly choked to death by the crazy raging in her brain. She then told me that she owned my house and that I needed to get off her property.

This annoyed me a lot. Her rage and aggression directed at me in close quarters was starting to really piss me off. Not to mention her yappy ill behaved Chihuahua that has on more than one occasion tried to bite me while I was doing yard work, by sneaking up on me from behind.

One of these days that little piece of shit is going to tangle with my weed whacker!

I said, “If this is your goddamned house show me the cancelled checks!” I know this was the wrong thing to say, I knew it the minute it left my lips.

Some part of me recognized that I was being drawn into her crazy and that wasn’t the way to go. That part of my brain gave me a disdainful “Tut tut tut” and called me a dumbass.

This internal dialog stopped me from peppering Crazy with a bunch of followup questions like, “What’s the mortgage payment? Who holds the mortgage? What was the sale amount of the house? Is there a second?” I think in my growing anger I was still considering the possibility that I could somehow win.

When she said, “The checks aren’t canceled,” I realized that you can’t win with reason against this kind of crazy.

At around this point she punched me…

I registered impact and minor damage on my right upper chest. Now I was facing a crisis.

Let me explain, and please remember all of the following happens in two or three heartbeats.

When someone hits me, I tend to instantly lose control. The world narrows to the person who hit me and I’m looking for openings and weaknesses. I start looking for ways to break bones, dislocate joints, and I’m not thinking about things like fair fight or Queensberry rules. I’m thinking about how to efficiently terminate the threat while looking around for potential weapons at hand.

In the past, this has resulted in epic rage and coming dangerously close to killing. In those instances it was only friends being present, dragging me bodily away that stopped me. Even so, whoever hit me from then on would literally crawl out a second floor bathroom window to avoid me.

That rage scares me more than anything else in my life. During the rage, I’m not there, when it’s over I have little to no memory of what I’ve done. At most, I’ll retain images or almost sexual gratification, but no clear timeline of events. It’s a monster that I keep chained in my head and never let out because I fear that the monster would overwhelm me then I’d lose myself in it.

This time I was completely alone, and that part of me that I fear most, was breaking free.

It also didn’t help that every bit of psychological, emotional, and most physical abuse perpetrated on me throughout my entire life has been inflicted by women.

Women who were bullies and knew they’d get away with it because when no one was looking they could. They knew they had the upper hand, if I responded, they’d immediately revert to the victim and poor defenseless girl roles.

Then as I was taking whatever punishment for raising my voice, or responding to their aggression they’d smile slyly through their fake tears, knowing that they’d won, because they’d baited me, or goaded me into exactly the situation they wanted. Far too often they’d do it just for fun, or a promotion, or just because they didn’t like that their obvious crocodile tears didn’t elicit sympathy from me.

Hey bitches, you say you’re equal. If a man cried you’d humiliate him about it, why should your tears get people falling all over themselves to make you stop? Fair is fair.

Here was yet another woman striking me, assuming that she’d get away with it.

Some of the chains holding the beast, snapped.

“After all it’s only the two of us standing in my driveway… Who would know?”

Crazy is a threat to my peace and quiet, a disturbance to the neighborhood, an ever present worry. She’s defective. A waste of DNA. She at one time may have been simply mentally ill but over the 20 years she’s lived in this neighborhood she’s gotten much worse and may now be using drugs other than those prescribed.

I do my level best to ignore her and shut her out of my consciousness. Going so far as to close my house up and run the A/C with the windows and doors locked even on beautiful breezy spring and summer days while she screams horrific obscenities at the top of her lungs .

Questions I rarely consider are, “Why are her rights more important that all the rest of the people in this neighborhood? Why does she have the ability to imprison us in our homes with her insanity?”

More of the Beasts chains snapped.

“Her neck is thin as a chicken’s… Who would know?”

My narrowing vision was increasingly tinted red. The Beast was awake, the rage was growing uncontrollable. Blood pumping warm adrenaline felt like life and youth returning to my old bones. Life around me slowed, I could see the fly hoping for a meal suspended in front of her face. Dust motes froze mid air reflecting the sunlight.

More chains snapped.

“That fly looks hungry, why not feed it and 1000 generations of it’s line… Free me, let me serve you, some of those branches would make excellent clubs… Who would know?”

The rational part of me had been busy processing that I’d just been hit with no provocation came back. That part of me just couldn’t understand why she’d hit me at all, it made no sense and was therefore an unresolvable question. The answer that came back was, “this bitch is crazy,” then the rational part screamed in my head, “you don’t have to be crazy too!”

The Beast snapped its jaws at the rational part of my brain but began retreating to sulk in his dark dungeon.

Tenuous control of my anger and rage began to reassert itself. Rationality rebooted fully.

If I responded to her attack she’d win. I’d go to jail, and she’d smile. I’d lose my freedom and complicate my life in endless ways. I live in California. Women always win here, they’re always right, even when they’re not. Women who commit brutal murders get much lighter sentences than men, those who commit assault are lightly punished if at all.

The police would have no choice but to take me away. At the time, I thought California had some stupid law in place that said I, the victim, had to retreat and let the criminal take whatever they wanted.

My internal dialog said, “Choose a better option.” The part of me that is the Beast, accepted this proposition but added if she hits me again all bets are off.

I looked Crazy in the eyes and quietly said, “I don’t want to do this today.”

I knew the rage still burned in my eyes. The very few people who’ve seen my like that, described it as seeing Death looking at them, out of my eyes.

By some miracle, Crazy decided to leave. Her expression was one of confusion. She walked away without looking back, swearing and calling me names. Two that stick out were “misogynistic bastard” and “fucking fag”.

It cracks me up that when a woman is jonesing for a fight with a man, if he refuses to fight her, the woman always calls him a fag. Jesus! The deck is stacked against men!

Her one last parting shot was this, “You’ve always looked down on me since I moved here.”

As I stood there feeling the sun on my skin. I though, “Yep, you’re right about that because you’re trash, and always have been.”

The rational part of my mind acknowledged the defusing of the situation without additional violence as a win.

But the masculine, male, proud part of me, and the Beast were both wounded. By not responding as she so richly deserved, the bitch still caused me injury. She emasculated me. Not in front of the neighborhood but in front of the one person that I can’t ignore.

Myself.

It’s not about wounded pride, that heals.

This is about my fundamental right to defend myself. Am I now too old to fight? Am I weak and feeble? Am I not a man anymore? Have I caved into the bullshit and now too afraid of legal shit or consequences to even defend myself?

I was a proud apex predator, what am I now? Old? Used up? Useless? Should I just wander into the forest and die?

Will I forever hide behind the police and the law, will I forever be a victim?

The police were called. They dutifully took statements. They advised me that I could have her arrested for assault but that she’d be out in 8 hours or less. They suggested a better legal approach was to file a restraining order against her.

Either way, I know she’ll retaliate. She’s a vindictive bitch. I know of at least two other assaults she’s committed against neighbors which were unreported because the victims feared her retaliation.

I know that I must file a restraining order. Not just for me, but because it puts Crazy on the radar of the legal system. Long term, that benefits all the neighborhood. Unfortunately it also puts me on the same radar. Worse though, this feels like I’m hiding under my mother’s skirt.

The rational part of me is trying to convince the Beast that using the legal system against Crazy is satisfying because it’s using her own tools against her.

The Beast isn’t buying it. The legal system is long and drawn out and requires lots of energy to be expended. The Beast is about instant gratification and the almost erotic joy of vanquishing an enemy definitively in the moment.

The Beast is pissed off, that yet again a woman fucked him over with self inflicted wounds.

One good thing came out of my conversation with the police. They told me that I absolutely had the right to defend myself on my own property. They suggested that I get a security camera with recording ability so that in the future, once the restraining order is issued I’ll have a record of whatever transpires.

The Beast is happy about that. “If she comes at me again… Who cares who will know?”

Another bright spot is that the visitors cleaning up the neighbors house were video taping the exchange from his property.

That will make the legal process a bit easier. But it will still take time and effort and trips to the court house on my part. All of which costs me money while Crazy incurs no expense, no punishment, no inconvenience, basically… she gets to win again.

Posted on

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.