April 22, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 15 – No One Needs to Know

I am someone who is all about rituals. Deliberate or otherwise. Today has been a cloudy, wet day and all I want to do is cuddle up on the couch, watch the movie Twister, and eat strawberry fig newtons. I’ve been like this since I was a kid. I don’t know where or when this custom began, but I did it quite frequently when I was younger. Can’t say that I followed it into adulthood, though.

As today is another Friday, I spent most of my morning trying to decide on what song to use for this week’s blog. The ones I have lined up in my mind didn’t seem to fit my mood. Then I looked at what some would consider “gloomy” weather and it occurred to me what I should choose.

This song was used as a promotional tune for the film Twister. I don’t think it would have ever been a single if it hadn’t been for the movie. Then again, maybe it would have. Either way I fell in love with it because, at the time, I only listened to country and Shania Twain was one of those hot artists who had burst on the scene. I remember repeatedly listening to the mixed tape my neighbor had made for me with this song on it. It was midway through Side A and the portable cassette player I had didn’t have a rewind function. So at the end of the song I would have to flip the tape over, fast forward, and then flip the tape back to Side A. God, even typing that out was exhausting. I can’t imagine how I suffered through. Especially since I am someone who obsesses over a song and will usually listen to it over and over until it has lost all meaning.

I don’t even remember where were going, but I remember sitting behind the driver’s seat in our station wagon, window down, singing along to this song with my headphones on. In the middle of doing my rewind, my mom shouted over her shoulder that I was off-key when I had my headphones on. “What do you mean?” I had asked. She elaborated and said that when you couldn’t hear yourself sing, properly, you would go flat. That had to have driven my mother crazy. She could never sing herself, but she was someone who would tell you if you were off or flat. This was because my grandfather “could sing.” He recorded himself for demos and was even the head of every church choir they happened to come across.

Where the rainy weather and fig newtons came from is a mystery. The first time I ever saw this movie was at the theatre inside of the Buffalo Bills hotel and casino. I sat near the front of the theatre and my cousin, who is sort of like a pseudo sibling, sat toward the back. I’m pretty sure he sat back there because he wanted to sneak out and get alcohol while I was distracted. He was the type. I was too distracted with the movie.

Our annual trips to Buffalo Bills was another one of my obsessive rituals, now that I think about it. Always during the summer time or my birthday weekend I would want to go there. I loved the over-the-top cheesy decor, the access to a single outdated movie, and the large video arcade. I could roam free there and never worry about being harassed. For whatever reason they let you get away with it there, more-so than in Vegas. They were sticklers about kids being anywhere near slot machines.

This memory got me wondering what other strange rituals I have and do. At least the ones that I am relatively aware of. I’m sure there are ones that I just haven’t picked up on. For instance, an obvious one, if I am ever feeling blue I will pick up Long John Silvers. Nothing fills that cavernous void much like the greasy goodness of fast seafood. There was a time that I had it every day, for lunch, during an entire month. This was due to the fact that my prior place of employ was a soul sucking/crushing hell hole.

Then there is my obsessive pattern of only eating my fortune cookie after I am 100% done eating, and then I eat one side, read my fortune, and then eat the other. Once it’s gone I shove the fortune in my pocket, because no one should ever throw away good fortune.

There is my annual rewatch of Will and Grace and Golden Girls. I’ll start from episode 1 and work my way through. I’ve done this for the past 10 years.

Then there is the more insidious habits… The ones I dread to share but for the sake of clarity I shall.

In a past blog I have disclosed that I am a sex addict. Most don’t know about it and most view it as a joke or an excuse. It’s not, for me, at least. I can see how my patterns and emotional turmoil fuels it. I share this because in the past I would “act out” (which means engaging in behaviors breaking my self defined sobriety) I would immediately follow it with consuming some kind of unhealthy food. It was almost as if I was “click and treat”-ing myself. (Aka reaffirming that behavior with some sort of “reward.”) As a way to curb my bad choices and maintain a lengthy sobriety, I just cut out the middle activity and went straight for the food. Got a month of sobriety and twenty pounds.

Strange how most of my habits center around food.

Can you tell I was a fat kid growing up?

It has occurred to me that these topics all stem from the same space: my obsessive compulsion. The need to re-perform these rituals during certain events or feelings of emotional turmoil. It must bring me some sort of comfort or I imagine I would stop.

April 19, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 14 – Sweet but Psycho

It is truly amazing how much sway social media has on my emotional state. As usual I was perusing Twitter, procrastinating, and each post I read is pulling me further and further into the depths of my depression. All I can see is the darkness closing in and the overwhelming sense that we are doomed as a society gets ever clearer.

I know that’s just today. It is this stream. It is just this moment. I have to remind myself of the old adage, “this too shall pass” or I will risk sinking into a depression I might not recover.

On the opposing side of the same coin, social media has brought people together in incredible ways. I am apart of this big gay online community, with friends literally across the globe. I have even gotten the opportunity to meet some of them, which is always a special treat. You never know if your “online friend” is the same in-person. They could have an entirely different personality, or they could actually just be an entirely different person altogether.

If it weren’t for twitter I wouldn’t have met my friend Mark.

The song I chose is a recommendation he had given to me once. I was obsessed with it for an entire day because, as I like to do, I made it about me. I am most definitely sweet but psycho. No truer lyrics have been uttered more so than: “She’s poison but tasty. Yeah, people say ‘Run, don’t walk away.'”

I also find my choice funny, because sometimes I am astounded by Mark. Just because of how large of role he plays in it, even though we’ve only known each other for 4 years and have met just once. There were moments I thought he might be psycho. Sweet, but psycho. Luckily, after meeting him, I absolutely do not think that.

It just speaks to the power of the internet. I mean, this dude is literally mentioned in casual conversation in our house. We have and do (on occasion) speak of him as if he plays a real role in our day to day life. Who does that? How does that happen? This kid is literally on the opposite side of the country.

It just makes me question the notion of past lives and familiar souls.

Because of my husband’s terminal diagnosis I have been diving further and further into spiritual beliefs and what happens to us after we die. I use to believe in a heaven, as a kid. This was also tied to my Christian faith which I have since thrown away after I realized it’s all bullshit. After living through what I have and seeing what has happened to my mother, I’d rather believe there is no higher power than to think that he’s either so incompetent’s that he has no real power or he just enjoys the agony he causes. (If He is even a he at all. But only a man would cause chaos and then take no blame for it.)

So, an “after life” doesn’t really work for me.

My belief of reincarnation has grown stronger, however. There is far more support for that than a heaven. There are multiple documented cases where people can literal recount details of a former life in which they should have no knowledge of. It’s mind boggling and so neat. My favorite one is where the young boy solved his previous life’s murder.

In this journey I have also learned of the topic of “soul families” and how we reincarnate with those we have bonded with. I am someone who has never felt like I belonged where I was born. I find more comfort and familiarity with those who would be called “friends.” But that just makes me think, what did we do to be separated? if that is the case.

Maybe life is finding our spiritual family over and over again.

Mark is one of those for me. I would genuinely do anything for him. I don’t know if that speaks more of me, or him, or just the nature of our relationship.

April 15, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 13 – Suds in the Bucket

Honestly, every day I thank “god” that I am gay. If I weren’t I would be in big trouble. It has become increasingly clear to me the past few months that as a gay man I choose the best male partners. They’re caring and concerned, almost to a fault, but that’s just because I am a spoiled “only child” who tends to deal with his issues solo. For my female friends I become super close with… well… they tend to be narcissistic, self-absorbed flakes who disappear at the slightest distraction.

I don’t know if it is due to the culture of women in general or if it’s just the ones I happen to hitch my wagon to. I am a notoriously bad judge of character. I trust entirely too easy. I let people in without concern because I am overly optimistic in their character. Usually I am left burned. However, more than likely it could be the latter.

I am a feminist. Hardcore. I tend to identify more-so with women than with men, however I, myself, feel like a man. (Whatever that’s supposed to feel like.) My heroes and idols are typically female (i.e. Kathy Griffin, Margaret Cho, Taylor Swift and J.K. Rowling – in a different life). So, I am all about breaking the patriarchy. I don’t think men are better than women, and I think “roles” are ridiculous. Whoever is the “homemaker” and whoever is the “bread winner” should be up to someone’s skill and desires not because of someone’s assigned sex. I also feel that women are held to unfair expectations that they’re only “worthy” if they are married and have kids. Anything outside of that is deemed, societally, unnecessary. It’s truly unfair. And it makes me angry.

In my limited experience, women are brainwashed to feel that they have to “stick with their man” and if they don’t they’re nothing. And the older they get the more immediate this belief becomes. I fucking hate it. It’s because of it that I have lost two of my “best” gal pals.

The first I just cut loose. She was a horrible, horrible “friend.” She was someone who loved drama and created it for herself at any turn. In addition, she was a fucking liar. That I cannot abide. I have moments where I have trouble with the truth but I will fess up if I am caught. This bitch though… Oh no. I think her biggest crime, for me, was when she lied about a trip we took together. She said she wanted to drive to the coast to see an old guy friend. As it turns out, it was a hook-up that I drove her two hours to. She dropped my ass off at a Border’s where I nearly completed a copy of “Dear John” by the time she came back. As the time wore on I began to understand more and more… I was livid. She was nonplussed and couldn’t have cared less about my anger.

Shortly after that she dumped her newborn baby off with her mom, signed away parental rights, and moved to Atascadero to be with this dude. As it turns out this idiot was the BIGGEST PIECE OF SHIT. When he was done with the relationship, he didn’t even have the balls to dump her. He made up some cock and bull story about how his mom snitched to the leasing office, of their affordable housing complex, and the lease “only allowed two tenants.” So, she had to move out. He underestimated her desire to stay, though. This bitch LIVED IN HER CAR outside his complex so she didn’t have to come home.

I only now believe that her irrational behavior was most likely untreated post partem and the fact that her parents were horrible religious zealots who once believed that this girl’s baby wasn’t sleeping well because there was a demon living in the donated mattress they had received. If I hadn’t actually met her bigoted parents, I would have questioned the tales she had told me.

Once she finally realized the guy wanted nothing to do with her and her friends couldn’t handle her insane personality, she FINALLY returned home, only to shack up with some dude here almost immediately. The last time we spoke was when she asked me if I wanted to be in the “wedding party” or the “audience” to their hurried marriage. I responded with audience. Her response was terse, but that’s the answer you get when I’m given a choice. For her first marriage, when I was in the “party,” I got put into the audience because her parents wanted a “traditional wedding.” (The second wedding, which I did not attend, had an “Arabian Nights” theme. That’s certainly sure to last.)

We have not spoken since. And every day I genuinely wish I could remove her from my memory.

The second friend… That one hurts. I really loved her and she was my closest companion. I only now understand that I was tolerated. Just a space saver until someone better came along. For me, she was my “ride or die” bitch. Truly. I would have done anything for her. She, like all female friends before her, got involved with a man and I took a back seat. It happens. I accept it. I want her to be happy. This guy seemed like a good one, but as incidences have occurred since it is clear he is not.

This dude was so threatened by me, for some fucking reason, that he would start fights about me with her. We hadn’t even spoken in months. Maybe once or twice, here and there, when I reached out. She had no time for me and that’s fine. I get it. New love – blah blah blah…

One night he went through our text thread and came across a very dark joke I had made with her MOOOOOOOOOONTHS before. Back when they had first started dating. (I mean it took me literally 10 minutes to find this message because it happened so long ago.) Evidently it really pissed him off. She wrote me at 1 A.M. to tell me that I needed to drive an hour, to their apartment complex, and apologize to him in person. All I could respond with was, “WTF are you talking about? Apologize for what?” I had zero memory of this exchange. You know why? Because sometimes I say fucked up shit I don’t mean because I have a very, very dark sense of humor.

Because I know, dear reader, you’ll want to know what I had said… I will tell you. But please, please, please keep in mind I meant nothing malicious in it.

My friend was listing out the good things about him and had made a comment about him “wanting more children.” Well, his last relationship had ended (three months prior to them meeting) because he and his ex-wife (his high school sweetheart) had had a miscarriage. So, being the horrible person I am, I joked back “Well… not more kids.” It was not malicious. It was a very dark observation, but I AM IN NO WAY HAPPY HIS CHILD DIED. Are you insane? And only someone WHO DOESN’T KNOW ME would make that assumption. This mother-fucker wanted to fight me for what I had said and was angry at her for not defending him. IT WAS A JOKE! A bad one, but A JOKE. She lied to him and said she “blacked out” after what I had said because it was “so bad.” Bitch… we both know she laughed too.

Granted I shouldn’t have said it, it is pretty mean. However I had made it privately to a friend who knows I am not that kind of person.

Well, that exchange sat in this dude’s fucking craw until one night, over a year later, I get a text from an unknown number saying “I’m coming for you.”

More than anything I wanted to reply with the GIF of Regina George from “Mean Girls” saying, “Why are you so obsessed with me?” She and I hadn’t spoken in almost two years. The last time we seriously talked was when I called her up crying about Charlie’s diagnosis. That had been the day after we got it.

This time, with this text, she had “decided” to leave him. She was over the fighting.

That lasted for a day. Then she blocked me on all social media and most likely my phone number. All so she could get back together with this dude who, literally, went looking for something to fight about.

After this most recent event I am just done. If she “leaves him again” I’m just not there, nor do I care. We’ve done this song and dance too many times that my heart can’t take it. I got too much other shit going on to deal with some flake popping in and out of my life.

I chose this song because the second friend would do this tune every time we went to karaoke. When I hear it I think of her singing it in some half-empty country bar.

Then, there is the actual lyrics where this young, dumb girl, leaves her life behind to chase some stupid man. Much like all my girl friends.

I genuinely believe women are super intelligent but whenever a man comes into the picture they becomes the stupidest creatures. But… Love makes us do the dumbest, irrational things.

FUN FACT! That last line is a literal piece of dialogue spoken by a character modeled AFTER HER, in my WIP manuscript.

April 8, 2022

The Soundtrack of My Life – 12 – Just Around the Riverbend

So, if you weren’t aware by now, I am a homosexual. If me mentioning my husband and my boyfriend wasn’t enough to let you in on the secret, I thought I would drop in my next track. It also pulls double duty and reveals my immature nature and love of anything Disney. (However, they’re kind of on my shit list at the moment for obvious reasons.)

When this movie came out it made just as much, if not more so, of an impact on my life like Beauty and the Beast had a few years prior. All summer I listened to this tape (yes, tape) over and over again, re-enacting scenes and singing it at the top of my lungs. How my parents did not know I was gay is truly beyond me. I guess hopeful, Christian longing for your son to have a wife and kids, I suppose. (But side note: kudos to my parents for being so supporting and accepting of who I was as a “straight” man and not forcing toxic masculinity upon me.)

This song was a particular favorite of mine. I imagine it spoke to my need for something new and exciting, and the longing for something more, even though it may be scary not knowing “what’s around the riverbend.”

This ballad has been on my mind a lot lately primarily because: 1) it’s a banger and 2) the summer that this movie was released into my open “obsession slot” I went up to stay for a week with my grandmother in the house her and my grandfather had built in the woods. I would wander all through the woods and up the dirt road, listening to this tape and singing. You would have thought that after she and I watched a mountain lion walk up the dirt road, in front of her house, I would have stopped doing that, but no. The show must go on. Even if you may be the meal for an apex feline predator.

It is truly in the middle of nowhere and it’s about 3-4 hours from any of my family, so getting up there to do maintenance is non-existent. As far as I am aware, it is sitting vacant, rotting away. Which is unfortunate. My grandmother loved, loved, loved this house. She truly did not want to concede that she could not live there anymore, because of her age, but she understood the risk of living so far from anything. She ended up coming to live with us, with the caveat that my mother and father would take her up there for a visit from time to time. We hardly did that unfortunately.

From time to time my thoughts become obsessed with “the cabin.” I’ll dream of it in some sort of danger, like an encroaching roadway or housing development. I don’t quite know what these dreams mean, but they genuinely cause me a lot of distress. I dreamt of it a few nights ago and it has been on my mind since. I think because I dread of the state of it. It wasn’t in the best of shape the last time I saw it, some ten years ago.

It’s amazing how something that played such a huge role in your life can just be left in the past. My grandmother would be devastated to know it hasn’t been used in some time. At least, as far as I know. It’s not someplace you can just pop in for a visit. If you go, the first day is mainly cleaning/maintenance. That’s if you can get to it. The winding, hilly dirt road isn’t very friendly if you don’t have a truck or SUV. This last fact has kept me away because I don’t really have any means to get back there, and I am sure as hell not going to put my Toyota hybrid at risk for some sentimental excursion.

Another memory just popped into my head, but this was also the summer that I definitively decided I wanted to be a writer. This was between my 3rd and 4th grade years, which means I had just read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” and fell in love with the written word. I was enthralled with the ability a story had to say one thing but mean something entirely different. I have tried since then to imitate C.S. Lewis’s care-free writing style, but I lack the finesse and polish.

I remember making the grand pronouncement to my grandmother and she was so supportive. She listened to or read EVERYTHING I gave her. I will never forget her support. She was everything to me.

In between singing aloud astride a mountain, my pencil scribbled away in a Lisa Frank spiral notebook about a prince named Kool who comes across a young man, alone in the woods, suffering from amnesia. Kool decides to name him Speed and the two go on wild adventures together. Symbolism for me finding my true identity?! Find out on the next mindless drone of the continuing adventures of a middle-aged faguette!