Tag: Adult

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I’m not looking forward to dating…

Yes, I’m still a ways off from that. Nonetheless I’m not looking forward to it.

The reason is straight forward.

Statistically all gay men are Democrats. Sure, there are actually some republican gay men, and there are some conservative gay men. However their numbers are so vanishingly small as to be numerically insignificant. Therefore they don’t exist.

Given the premise that all gay men are Democrats and all Democrats are liars, it follows that all gay men are liars.

I’m sure there are gay men who are not liars, but statistically the number of honest gay men must be so close to zero, as to be functionally zero.

Since I don’t like liars, I’m expecting for dating to be pretty unpleasant.

My other half was a Democrat when we met. I was a Republican. That was back when gay men were just happy to find someone else who loved them and didn’t care about stupid crap like politics. Sure, we canceled each others votes out for years, but over time, we both moved to a more centrist view and then both left our respective political parties so we could hurl insults at Democrats and Republicans, without being hypocrites.

The process of us moving toward more centrist beliefs took many years, and honestly, it was a fun process. We both learned a lot. Mostly, we learned that we loved each other.

I doubt I have that many years ahead of me so I’m not going to engage in another long term conversion project. I have decided in general that I’m not going to date Democrats. Of course rules are made to be broken and someone who is particularly interesting could be forgiven their political insanity.

Given what I’ve seen with the dating apps & sites. I’ll Pass! I think I’ll find a bar or pub that’s comfortable when I want to be around people and other than that I’ll just live my life doing the things I want to do.

There are things I’m interested in and perhaps with a little discretion I’ll find other guys who are interested in those things too. Maybe I’ll just get some nice subtle rainbow items. (Old rainbow not that new abomination!)

Something to hang on my backpack or dive gear, small but noticeable to the discerning eye. Possibly I’ll add some swag from my political party affiliation too. I could also add some swag from the Atlas Shrugged website… That would be over most people’s heads, but some might get it.

This adornment might be off-putting to most, but to the kind of folks I’m interested in hanging out with, or knowing in the biblical sense, it might be a way of winnowing the wheat from the chaff.

Alternatively, I could simply resolve to confine my dating to nothing more than prostitutes…

“Your cash is on the counter Chad, thanks for the mediocre blowjob, now get out.”

I must admit that does seem to be more direct, more convenient, and quite possibly cheaper …

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Perhaps we’re slicing it too thin.

I was scanning the bread and circus news this morning and ran across Matt Gaetz (R-FL) asking questions of the Air Force Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. Richard Clark.

I thought, “This should be interesting,” and opened the article . There are times when I feel almost sorry for the top brass still in the military. They must long for the days when they could call all the recruits, maggots, faggots, pussies, or worthless excrement.

“Recruit! I dropped a deuce this morning with more brains than you’ve got!”

Ahhh, the good old days!

To be clear I wasn’t able to serve, so I never heard any of the myriad insults directed at me. But through my friends telling stories I gather it was brutal.

Holy shit! I just realized with all the bullshit gender fuck stuff, A DI probably can’t kick the door to the barracks open yelling, “Drop your cocks and grab your socks,” anymore, for fear of hurting someone without a cock (or socks,) feelings.

Ain’t that the shit?

Anyway Gaetz was questioning Lt. Gen. Clark about the Brooke Owens Fellowship that sets up internships in aerospace companies.

“Okay,” I thought, “it sounds like this fellowship is one of a number of similar organizations designed to encourage women and minorities to take jobs in areas where they typically haven’t had a large representation. That’s cool, and it’s nice to hear the Air Force is supporting that.”

Having worked in aerospace I can say that in higher level positions women were few and very far between. The executive staff did look like a boys club. It wasn’t all that surprising, since most of the executives had come from the military and given their ages, they’d earned their stripes at a time when there weren’t a lot of women in the military.

Notice I said earned their stripes.

Gaetz was annoyed that the Brooke Owens Fellowship excluded so called CIS Men from the running when setting up internships. Gaetz was questioning why the Air Force would support such an organization. A reasonable question, but …

I’ve been to the Brooke Owens Fellowship site and didn’t find any particular exclusion. I did find the usual word salad of diversity, equity, and inclusion terms. My brain shut down attempting to process the Fellowship’s explanation of purpose… It’s very likely that Lt. Gen. Clark hadn’t been to their web site or reviewed all the internship admission materials personally.

I think Gaetz was unfair to Lt. Gen. Clark I’m sure that Gaetz doesn’t have the time to personally review every bit of paperwork that comes across his desk and might well have been blissfully unaware of the Fellowships requirements if it hadn’t been brought to his attention.

As I read on I was thinking, “Gaetz shouldn’t have done a preamble to his line of questioning like this, he should have asked the Lt. Gen. the real question, just straight up.”

I was about to bail on the article but scanned down one or two more lines…

Gaetz asked Lt. Gen. Clark if he knew what demisexual meant. When I read that, in my head I heard the sound phonograph needles made when they skipped off the record.

Lt. Gen. Clark couldn’t define what the word meant. I can’t say that I blame him.

This is what went on in my brain.

Demi-Sexual…
—Possible meanings:—
Late Pubescent but still a virgin?
A person generally ambivalent about sex?
Yet another bullshit transgendered condition?
Half sexual (perhaps someone who’s only interested once in a given period like Spock)?

I knew, Demi-God meant half god, half mortal. See Hercules, or Perseus. However I suspected my foundation in English and spattering of other languages was probably not serving me… Again!

This is perhaps what was going on the the Lt. General’s mind as well…

I looked it up. After all that’s what one does when confronted with a word or term never before seen.

Demisexual – noun

a person who experiences sexual feelings and attraction only after developing a close emotional relationship and not on the basis of first impressions, physical characteristics, etc: since demisexuals require an emotional connection to feel sexual attraction, building trust is key.

Again, I’m thinking, “okay, I can see this, and have experienced this in my life.” It makes sense as a method to describe folks who aren’t entranced instantly by looks and lust. I thought perhaps that instant lustful attraction was something that was only the province of the young. I remember it fondly but appreciate not being driven by it now. (I still question the use of “Demi”.)

I’m not really sure that this slicing and dicing of human sexuality into finer and finer categories is healthy. Isn’t it possible that eventually the slices are so thin, the filtering so fine, that no-one is going to have sex because a prospective partner doesn’t check all the boxes?

As I’ve aged I’ve become far more selective, and far less likely to just want to shatter the commandments in an instant. I had no idea that there was a name for it, much less that there were people who might be this way from the get go.

As I said above I accepted it as normal aging.

Ahh! There’s the question. Is this something that is, and has always been, a part of the wonderful spectrum of human sexuality, which now has a definition? Or is this just another way to create a specialized and potentially oppressed group?

As I looked further into online definitions and encyclopedia entires I couldn’t help but feel it was about creating a group to need to “Protect”. A healthier mechanism might be to acknowledge that sometimes you’re looking for something more intimate than just a quick orgasm.

My friend John described this feeling as, “Sometimes It’s just not worth filling the kiddie pool with lube.”

I share his sentiment, if not his particular kinks.

In my case I’ve attributed this to age, a certain personal jadedness, a bit of experience, a realization that physical pleasure can be had easily solo, but satisfaction and /or gratification seems to be a function of knowing the other person in a wider context than them walking in, stripping and 20 minutes later walking out again.

Having been on both ends of that particular equation. I’d prefer to be the dude walking in, being serviced, rather than the person who has to spend the next 45 minutes cleaning up. (After all, kiddie pools full of lube are a pain in the ass to empty, and get out of the living room before your parents arrive for Sunday dinner!)

Maybe the rise of Demisexuals isn’t about anything other than people being confronted with the immediacy and anonymity of endless meaningless hook-ups at our fingertips.

There was a time when that was exciting, it was the “Orgy” paradigm. You didn’t know these people but there was a smorgasbord of flesh to sample and the only limit was your energy.

Even orgies become commonplace and mundane if you’re in one every night. Sex itself can become formulaic. Porn is a great vehicle to describe this. A porn scene is essentially…

Plausible (or not) reason for persons to be in proximity.
Attraction sparks interest (or not). Alternatively horniness / rampant lust results in persons removing enough clothing that erogenous zones are exposed.
From there everything boils down to “Kiss Kiss Kiss, Lick Lick Lick, Suck Suck Suck, Thrust Thrust Thrust, Cum Cum Cum”
The only real issue for the writer is describing which orifice “B”, “C”, “D” is invaded by Tab “A” and the realization that not all orifices may be available.

Strictly speaking, real interactions between people aren’t all that different if there’s no emotional connection or component. The perk for porn actors is that they’re getting paid. I suppose that in part explains “OnlyFans”.

If you’re going to rub one out, why not on camera, hearing the cash register sound effect accompanied by some personal request?

Even that can get boring. Where do you go from there? Ever kinkier sexual activities, or at some point does jadedness and cynicism take over, making even the pleasures of masturbation, nothing more than another function like taking a leak or evacuating one’s bowels?

At some point when your friends notice you’re not getting as much action and that you aren’t interested in any. Perhaps you need to be able to say, “I’m demisexual. Oh, you didn’t know?”

After all, the hardest and perhaps the most dangerous thing these days is to be non compliant. Identifying with a “protected” group may be one of a few methods to be an individual and not be stigmatized as a MAGA Republican, or Domestic Terrorist, because you’re no longer interested in meaningless sex with complete strangers… Granted that’s a bit of a leap.

Oddly, prior to the ubiquity of hook-up apps, people were arguably Demisexual as a part of normal everyday life. That’s why we went out.

The purpose of nightclubs, bars, and theaters, was so that we could meet people and decide if there was enough of an emotional connection, or sufficient inebriation, to move on to being naked with each other. We used the time to answer the fundament question, “Was it with the risk of an unwanted pregnancy or social disease?” If the answer was “yes” then we’d spend a night in sweaty passionate embrace and hope for the best the next morning.

In those days, at least we talked. It was required that we say something more substantial than;

“Hi”
“Sup”
“Power bottom”
“14 inch, very thick cock”
“1234 Anton Street apt 104 door is open”
“Cool 10 min”

We used to hate doing the walk of shame. I know guys that do the walk of shame 3 times a day and think nothing of it.

They haven’t reached Demisexual status yet. I suspect they will one day, when they’re holding their phone while having sex, ostensibly filming their pistoning cock in a random hole, but in reality checking their email.

Perhaps all these names and victim groups should be a wake up call to us all but especially to psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists, that continuing to label and normalize isn’t fixing the problem.

Maybe it’s time to speak brutal truth to each other, not worry about hurt feelings, and see where that gets us.

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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.