I didn’t have a car while I lived Phoenix. Because of that I mostly rode my bicycle, ran or took the bus. At one point I worked at the Doubletree Inn and lived about five miles from there. I used to run back and forth to work, and shower when I arrived. It was part of my fitness regimen at the time. But sometimes I would take the bus. Since I lived on Camelback Road there were always buses running, unless you needed an early ride. As the Catering Manager, sometimes I needed to get to work prior to 5am. You guessed it. No buses running that early. So on this particular day I was walking to work in my waiter’s outfit.

Now this may seem a bit of a generalization, but it seems like there are a lot of gay waiters. And busboys, as the saying goes, will fuck anything that moves and a few things that don’t, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to be thought gay as I was walking along in my black pants, white shirt and bow tie.. But anyway I was walking and hitch hiking to work and got picked up, in two ways. (I did think it was only one way, honestly.)

So this guy picks me up and seems nice and “normal” not gay in the least. okay, how do I justify that? Well, it was the early 80′s and gays had to be more careful back then. It still is no picnic, but there is more tolerance and even some acceptance. More liberal folks (me included) actually do have the gay friends we say we do. Not like the “some of my best friends are colored” sort of bullshit you’d hear from racists and homophobes, but truly. I have a lot of gay and lesbian friends and I love them. Well, some of them. Some of them are assholes just like the rest of the population. Their assholes are just used as an entrance, as well as an exit (in the case of gays.)

So on with the plot already.. This guy gives me a lift and I am a bit groggy. He seems a bit stoned, I will say, but when he says “how about some blow?” I thought he was talking about coke. cocaine, you dig? And I replied, “cool. and to think I was looking forward to a cup of coffee.” He pulls off into a side street and asks me “what’s your name?” and I say, “Roger” and he says, “I always at least like to know someone’s name first.”

Which I thought was kind of strange, but he’s also going to give me a line of coke, so I move along with it. Whatever.

So he reaches out and starts to undo my belt. And I’m like, “What the…?” as I open the door and leap out of his car. He did give me a ride for a couple miles, so I give him a bit of an explanation, like, “sorry, I misunderstood. I thought you meant do I want a line of coke, that kind of blow.” He offered to still give me  a ride to work, but by now I was totally freaked the fuck out, and didn’t want this guy knowing where I worked. Knowing I was a waiter downtown somewhere was already too much info. Who knows he could have been a stalker too. I was really fucking cute in those days sort of androgynous looking, and I don’t need  any trouble. Skinny androgynous naive white boy. Better play it safe.

I took off down the alley and booked out of that scene quick. I was shaken, but later found it pretty amusing. It’s funny now as I type it thirty years later..

What is your favorite method of disciplining your wife when she doesn’t listen? Hey, we all have those moments when our wives attempt to use their own thoughts and reasoning to come to a solution, and we know that can’t turn out well. That’s when you have to break out the harsh measures to keep them in line, right?

Cuff your muff? Too much or not enough?

It doesn’t have to be whips and chains, Let’s face it, whips leave marks and those marks can lead to trouble from the external folks. we don’t need another PFA do we? Marks are proof that perhaps you can’t handle your little hellion. Indications that your wildcat is not trained well, right? She needs to be obedient though, and any method is better than none, right?

Okay you should know that the above is certainly not part of my thought process whatsoever. So imagine my surprise when I spoke with my father in law about his daughter. This was when I was having some issues with my first wife. She was staying out late some nights after work, and was cheating on me, but I wasn’t quite aware of that stuff yet, so I was speaking to her father when the subject of divorce was rearing its head. I basically came out and said, what can you do? It was asked rhetorically, sort of like saying it is what it is, but what can you do?

He says to me “you should chain her to the radiator when you go out. Then she can’t leave.” I was dumbfounded. Here’s this 70 year old man counseling me to chain his daughter, his daughter mind you, chain her to the radiator so she can’t get into any trouble while I am not around. He says, “that’s what I did.” Wow, so now I get a picture of my mother in law chained to a radiator. It also makes me think “she was trouble at one point?” It seemed unlikely.

But Nunzio is from Italy, straight off the boat at one time, and has old school ideas. He would have fit into the spanish inquisition pretty well. He would probably enjoy torturing folks.

Funny thing was that once I had cuffed Holly to our bed. Way before this advice had surfaced. She wasn’t fond of that. It was just once, and I wouldn’t let her go until she said “release me Master.” It took a while for her to do that. I left the room and came back about two minutes later and then she finally said it. After I unlocked them she was pissed. So I’d imagine the whole chain and radiator might not have gone over very well either. For me the handcuffs were just a silly role playing thing that only lasted five minutes or so, but she took it wrong. (But she bought the handcuffs, not me. I’m thinking she probably thought the situation should have been the other way around.)

Switching gears, I saw this advertisement online (you know, one of those ads next to an article that you could click on just to help support paying for this site -hint hint) And the add was claiming to be able to teach you “kissing techniques to drive your partner insane” Okay, do you want your partner to be insane? I have dated some close to insane women, and trust me, you would rather not go there.

Close Encounters of an Alien Kind?

But the ad had this graphic next to it —>

Now tell me. Would you want to kiss lips that looked like that? would those lips entice you to lean in for a kiss? Would the woman behind those lips be better off if she were driven insane? Are lips that are drooling/oozing blue saliva through bluish teeth appealing to anyone? What are advertisers thinking? Or maybe they are going for the “alien scifi geek” audience. The guys (or girls) who dream of making it with a being from another planet. The blue aliens from Avatar were sort of sexy, but they weren’t drooling blue crap.

I used to masturbate a lot when I was a kid. I would imagine that most boys went through a phase like that, and many men never get over that stage. It’s sort of like a lifelong toy that we have that is really hard to break and nearly impossible to lose.

A minute to lose it, more likely

So I pretty well desensitized myself early on. Since I was a virgin until the age of 19 that meant I had a lot of practice in solo work, but once I actually got a partner they were generally pleased that I could do the energizer bunny bit. Actually one of the early times, with my first fiancé I left her hobbled. It wasn’t on purpose and I’m not bragging about it. I really felt somewhat badly about it to be honest, but she pushed me into it, inadvertently.

She taunted me, knowing I wasn’t experienced and told me that she didn’t think I could do it “like a man.” Her words, not mine. I took that as meaning that I couldn’t last a long time, so I masturbated just prior to sex with her and it was a long, long time. Later, I found out she meant that a “real man” would pleasure a woman with lots of foreplay and oral sex, but for gods sake let’s be clear about things upfront, Okay? Otherwise you may end up bow-legged and hobbling. She was something of a liar because in addition to the “like a man” comment she also told me early on that I had the biggest cock she’d ever seen and that it had to be 12 inches long.

I’m willing to play make believe, but I laughed out loud when she said that. (That was before laughing out loud became LOL.) I told her that it was a good size, bigger than average, at the least, but I wasn’t Long Dong Silver.

Anyway, getting back to the meat of this article, masturbation, I once tried to do it with a shower head. I figured it was called shower head for a reason. You know? So we had one of those water pic things and I noticed that it sort of tickled by balls a bit while I was rinsing off the soap, and I thought, why not? I wasn’t the first (or the last) to use a shower nozzle. I really think they invented those hoses for masturbation.

But I didn’t think about temperature. I knew I wanted to start out with it facing my head, but turned the shower off to position the nozzle. In the meantime the temperature had changed, so when I pushed the shower transfer button thing, steaming hot water came out and pretty much scalded my schwanz. Wow. Last time I tried that I’ll tell you. I kind of wonder what that same scenario would do to the sensitive tissue of a vagina. Not good, I would imagine.

Anyway, as time has gone on, real sex is the norm and masturbation is fairly seldom. I hear a lot of married guys say something opposite and I wonder what they are doing wrong.

Thanksgiving was a wonderful holiday for me, back in 1990, as it was this year. (2011)

I spent the weekend in Virginia with my oldest sister, her husband and daughter. My wife and I (and my stepson) traveled down from Pennsylvania and the trip down was uneventful. The weekend was spent eating, drinking and playing games. My favorite at the time was Risk
. But Sunday rolled around too quickly and it was time to hit the road and head home.

We got an early start hoping to “beat the traffic” but quickly ran into a parking lot on route 95. It was the worst I’ve ever seen it. We were literally at a complete stand-still and i put my truck in park to wait it out. I had a Ford Ranger, which is about the smallest of pick-up trucks and with us stopped my step-son Kyle fell asleep. Little guy had a long weekend and was exhausted.

Kids have an over-abundance of energy until the shut down. They go from flying high to totally out in o.7 seconds flat. Kyle was no exception, and pretty much nothing would wake him up, so when we finally got going he stayed asleep. Soon we passed a one car accident off the side of the road.

the murder weapon

Sad. Someone had lost their life. There were lots of police cars and fire trucks – although there was no fire – plus ambulances. Flashing lights all over the place, but I was just glad to be past the accident scene and finally able to continue our long drive home. We had a good four hours in front of us and I was hoping to keep a good pace.

After about a mile I noticed there was a cop car behind me. I glanced down at my speedometer and was glad my speed was only slightly over the limit, but I slowed down to match the “double nickel” that was posted. He matched my speed. This didn’t worry me especially, until another car joined him, following at a close interval.

I looked for an exit from 95 figuring that I would just take a detour and the police could go on their way. Exit speed posted was 35, but no one actually obeys that, do they? I did – that day.

They continued to follow. Once I got on the side road I told my wife I was pulling over. I was sort of freaked out by this, but was still cool. Kyle was still sleeping.

As soon as I pulled over a bunch of cop cars swarmed around me. I was surrounded by four cars – front, back and both sides. Amazingly enough, there were ever two more on the other side of the divided highway. What the fuck?

So I just turn off the engine and sit. Cops have their guns out and are coming up to my window yelling for me to get out of the truck and to keep my hands in plain sight and up in the air. I am all about following directions.

They take me to the back of the truck and frisk me. Then they allow me to take my hands down and they start questioning me. Where was I coming from? where was I going? what was my business in Virginia? These are mostly Virginia State Police, but mixed in are locals and county cops.

They pulled my wife from the car (not literally pulled, but got her out) while my son continued to sleep. She’s at the front being questioned and I’m at the back. They think I murdered someone. This is news to me.

The accident we passed was no accident. Apparently it was a road rage incident where someone in a white pickup truck forced a car off the road, the car tumbled and the driver was killed. I had a white pickup truck. I was in the area. I had scrape marks down the side of the truck. This was not looking good.

I explained that we were visiting my sister, and that we were caught up in the traffic that the accident had caused. My scrape was on the wrong side – the accident was on the left side of the road, my scrape was on the right side of my truck. The dent and scratch was a pretty good one, but it had rust in the creases and was obviously old. I said, “do you think if I had caused that accident my son would be asleep?”

So all the factors added up. I couldn’t possibly be the right guy. This wasn’t the right truck. Oh, in addition, I had a gray tailgate. I asked them if the truck identified had a gray tailgate. That would be pretty easy to notice as someone is driving away, don’t you think?

But they weren’t convinced. They had to hold me and check the story. Seriously??

They kept me on the side of the road for over an hour. Finally Kyle woke up and wondered what was going on. At last they handed me my driver’s license and insurance card and told me I could leave. That was it. No sorry. No nothing.

So we moved on down the road. Between the traffic jam and the Virginia State Police A four hour drive turned into a six and half hour ordeal.

Interesting to think about what the world would be like had you not existed, and that world would be a totally different place than the one that would exist should you choose to snuff yourself.

the theme song to M*A*S*H is Suicide is Painless, and that could be the case. In the movie the dentist in the the MASH unit decides he’s seen enough, had enough,etc and wants to end his life. Well, if you know an anesthesiologist you can literally go in your sleep and it would be painless. The surgeons decided that to put “Painless” (for that was the dentist’s nickname) through a ceremony and put him under, but then allowed him to recover. He awoke with a new perspective.

In the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life” George Baily got to see what life would have been like had he never lived. Seeing just a couple of the changes that his life made was enough to convince him he wanted to live, and to suffer whatever personal challenges necessary to make sure that life went on as he knew it. We all have those ripples in our lives. Impacts both good and bad.

I’ve considered suicide a few times. Once I was playing with a friend’s son. He was young, like maybe eight or ten and I was tossing him in the air and he was shrieking with delight. He kept coming to me and pesting me, and I would throw him a few more times, but then I missed a catch.

He landed heavily and knocked his head on the ground and was crying like mad and his parents took him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed as having a mild concussion. I didn’t know what had happened and I envisioned the worst. I was crying and wandering around the streets of a small town in Texas and if I would have had a gun with me, it would have been used. I felt terrible and thought I killed this boy. Funny thing was that it bonded us together and he would always be asking his father when I would be coming by.

But that day, life was dark. I was really out of my mind with grief and thought I didn’t deserve to live. Oddly enough I now can’t even remember the boy’s name. That makes me sad.

Another time when I was going through bankruptcy and losing my home I had thoughts of despair. I don’t think I ever really got to the point where I was truly considering killing myself, but I did think that I was worthless. Things did not work out according to my “grand plan” and I really felt I had let folks down. Like I said, never progressed to any real thoughts that time…

And then this time. Same as the last, no real thoughts to carry through. But sometimes you think, well, why aren’t things working out? and am I so worthless? Unless I have acknowledgement and someone buying my goods (whatever they are) that the goods are shit. you know?

and I don’t think my goods are shit, but man it sure would be nice to have someone outside the circle notice something. Preferably someone with a budget. I get occasional clients, but not enough, and I put in ignored applications for jobs, and bid on projects. But I am feeling failure-ish.

A door is opening somewhere. have no despair. life will go on. the option isn’t a valid one.

I may have told this one before, but I can’t find it and I’m tired of looking and it’s time for a new post, so here goes.

6th Air Cav

It was weird that I was coming from Germany into this unit and I brought my odd taste in music and my more European style of dress. facing reality I never really fit in anywhere, but I did try to play down my differences to blend a bit. But I lost a great deal of my music collection when a friend broke into my room and stole my CD’s. This was back when CD’s were still cutting edge and few people had a CD player, let alone an extensive collection of discs. So this dude Kyle stole my cd’s to pawn them to pay for his girlfriends abortion.

Eventually some of them got returned and I got an apology and didn’t press charges, but it was the first time I encountered someone in that shape. He was a mess and had no where to turn to. It reminds me of Richard Gere in Officer and a Gentleman. “I got nowhere else to go” wah. Don’t go into my room to solve your problems. please.

And then a friend tripped on acid and ended up in the mental ward on the base hospital. Don’t know how many hits of acid he took, but it scared us all. How many people even know someone who went on a drug binge or whatever and ended up in a mental ward? I’d imagine not many people. No wonder my head was in a bad place.

So there was this girl.. too many stories start out like this. But she really was nothing special. Sort of nice, in a quiet way, bookish, glasses, that whole thing. But when she took her glasses off and loosened her long hair and shook it out, wow, she didn’t look any better. I used to think that always worked, but no.

She had a fiance at home, so she was mostly just around and a friend, of sorts. But then she’d get all mopey and teary eyed (this was just once with me) and I tried to comfort her. In a totally non sexual way. Seriously. But somehow we ended up in her room and she gave me a blow job. She didn’t want to have sex, because that was reserved for her fiance. Strange set of rules there, but that was okay by me.

So I was talking with my buddy Mike, and he hung out with her at a bonfire and the same damn thing happened to him. But she couldn’t get him off. After a while a blow job can just turn into a slurp session and (this is just my thought) you are just kind of laying back and thinking, well, this isn’t going anywhere, but it still feels pretty good, so I’ll just enjoy it, and whenever she gets tired, well, at that point we’ll pull up the pants and move on.

This happened to her and Mike three times. He finally said to me, three strikes and she’s out. No fourth chance, which I can’t say I blame him for. I think she was looking at it as a challenge, but she didn’t pass muster. Oh, here’s a really nasty joke I heard the other day. How do you know if you have a really high sperm count? If your girlfriend needs to chew before she can swallow.

What? is that wrong? I thought it kinda fit into the theme of this post. Yes it is over that line of decency, but so is most of the content here. Share it with a friend.

OKay, I can claim no credit for this ass balloon. It’s floating all over the internet. (my internet anyway)
The only way this could be more awesome would be if it was jet powered by blue flames.

Hot Ass Air Balloon -or- Hot Air Ass Balloon. Your choice...

I am touching on an old subject again, in light of new information. I got the news that my son had been arrested for possession of marijuana and corruption of minors. This was all in the same incident and seemed more bullshit than anything else, but what can you do?

He was playing hacky sack with a group of friends around 1130pm in a shopping center parking lot and a cop rolled in to check ID’s. There is an 11pm curfew for those under 18, which was everyone there but my son. He was just 18. And he got patted down and they found a baggy.

no get out jail free card

So I’m thinking of my probation and community service and one of the tasks I had to do was split logs at this remote ecology learning center. There was a group of us and among the group were two young girls probably around 19 or 20 years old. They seemed pretty clueless and did just about no work. They looked at the community service as just a joke, but I think if they weren’t together they would have been up against a wall. (maybe literally) and scared. But with a friend by their side they were joking and having as much fun as you can in the snowy woods of Pennsyltucky.

It makes me wonder how my son will do with probation and all. It also makes me worry about all my kids as they grow up and make bad choices. (we all do) My oldest just got a dui a few months ago, so he’ll be going through all the stuff I did.

Those girls make me scared for my youngest daughter because she is very emotional and naive. She likes to pretend she’s worldly and happening, but she hasn’t had a huge life yet. I think she’d breakdown if she got in trouble.

checking in monthly with a parole officer was no big deal to me. They looked at me like someone who just made a mistake, but with attitude that could have been worse. I am a yes, ma’am, no ma’am kind of guy and after my first visit to the parole office I only had to phone in my parole visits. She knew I wasn’t going to run. I had a family and a stable job. But in those environments, the actual visit, you see the dregs of society. How do these people live?

During community service I heard guys bragging about being caught for their third or fourth dui. Or petty crime, or whatever. Bragging?!? And they thought they were the shit. These were guys who would get chewed up and spit out in a state prison and probably wouldn’t even fare well in a county lock-up. Pathetic losers who talked big about their run-ins with the law.

But there were also the other people, like me, or like the young guys who just wanted to do their service and get back to their real life. We’d do the brunt of the service while the assholes would stand around complaining about having to shovel snow, or clean up trash. It didn’t matter to me. don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

Those losers were going to be caught again, and the next time they’d be doing time. it was a cycle for them. that’s all I don’t want for my kids. Make a mistake. Learn from it. Pay your penance and move on with your life.

The cost of parole was $50 per month. that’s 600 for the year. the fines for my DUI were minimal, but the court costs and lawyers fees ate your budget up. But the real cost is that your insurance is doubled in cost for ten years. I am pretty sure it also impacts job applications. The thing is that my court case was wiped from the records, yet the DOT still has me losing my license for thirty days for no apparent reason. It’s not hard to figure out why. The insurance companies know.

and then you have to stay clean for ten years. If you get caught doing anything else, those sealed records come back to life. Strangely enough a friend of mine got busted for pot a while ago. Really small amount, but he got tagged. They looked through his records and found something from thirty years prior. This shit never goes away.

I’ve posted before that I do theater. Some more stories may be coming on various backstage antics and shenanigans, but for now I will talk about behavior.

the audition process for The Rocky Horror Show was going to be different this time. (this is the third time I am doing the production.) The director wanted to hear songs from other shows, so I had to bring in sheet music and sing something similar to Rocky. I chose a song from Evil Dead, the musical. Bit Part Demon, to be precise, and they loved it. None of them had ever heard it before.

Then they asked me to sing Time Warp, Hot Patootie and Sweet Transvestite and then read some of the lines. Not a problem. So I go back up to the auditorium and sit back down with other folks who were also auditioning.

To backtrack. The audition was held in a small room with a keyboard player and three folks sitting behind a long table taking notes. This was different than other auditions that I’ve been to. Every other one had people perform on the stage in front of everyone else who was performing. I think that’s a better route, because if you can’t perform in front of a group, what are you doing there, and secondly, if you (as part of the group) can’t sit still and be quiet, obviously you can’t listen to basic instructions. You can eliminate two sub-groups of people at once that way.

So anyway I get back to the auditorium and there’s a girl complaining because she’s hearing Rocky songs and she’s saying in a whiny voice, “they told us we couldn’t sing songs from the show.” Meantime I’m thinking, you sing what they ask you to. They make that choice. But I’m also thinking I hope this girl is not in the show. But she gets cast as one of the leads.

She’s young and sorta cute, but not “sexy” really, but she has a good voice. But once we get on stage and start the rehearsal process, she is clearly uncomfortable with the sensuality of the situation. Which is odd because you have to know going into the show that it is all about sexual tension and people thrown out of their element. Her uncomfortableness may have worked if she was playing Janet, but not for any other role.

Then she starts saying things like, “I can’t do that” to choreography. it never comes together and she gets replaced and is out of the show. But then she has to also make disparaging remarks.

Here’s a thought. If you live in a small town and you want to do theater, don’t make enemies at the only theater in town. Admit that perhaps a part didn’t fit and then move on. Don’t think your voice can carry you through other shortcomings. Don’t bring a fucking attitude that starts at the audition process. Don’t develop odd crushes on other cast members. Don’t fall into a romance and then break up right before the show opens.

These weren’t all her, just some observations. I think a lot of myself, but I don’t have an attitude. I don’t think I am the prize of the century or that any show is “lucky” to have me. Although, I’m luck, you’re lucky, we’re all lucky. except Eddy. No. Except the ex-columbia.
~~~
This is the waterproof version of the camera I use to record shows. It’s amazing how much high definition content can fit on one 8M SD card. ~ close to three hours.

Well, this is one of the funnier things that I’ve seen online in a while. And apparently I missed it when it was started. It seems that when Rick Santorum was in the senate race against Bob Casey up in Pennsylvania he made references to homosexuality being akin to beastiality and pedophilia.

For the record, there is no connection between the three. Homosexuals like people of the same sex and not children. Pedophilia is a sick perversion. Homosexuality is not.

So after making such absurd statements (to ingratiate himself to the neo-nazi christian conservative extremists who would like to remake history) Dan Savage had a contest to make fun of santorum. The winner made up a slang term saying that santorum meant a frothy mixture of semen and feces that resulted from anal sex.

That slang term was made into a web site by Savage and ranks huge in google because of so many backlinks like this one. It’s also credited with helping Casey win in PA. Some folks hope it will also dash Santorum’s persidential chances. we’ll hope so.

I lived in pennsylvania for a while and santorum is hate filled and very self righteous. Freedom of religion and separation of church and state go together, and santorum would like to take us back to a pretend time when this was a christian nation. Well, it never was a christian nation rick. Like most homophobes it’s probably just a matter of time until he’s caught with a man in a compromising situation.