I am trying to find every reason on earth not to write a word here (or anywhere, for that matter, since here is the only place I write lately, if I write).  And I have found almost all of them—reasons to not write, I mean.  Here is a partial list.  Review access logs; go to the bathroom; check e-mail; make coffee; muse on the potential of various scripting tools to do wonderous things with access logs; drink coffee; check blog to see if anyone has commented (I am a comment-whore); visit sites that link to me; visit sites that sites which link to me link to; visit all the usual sites; drink more coffee; go to bathroom, again; give passing thought to numerous pressing responsibilities; review more access logs; take the top off my scanner and rearrange all the lighting in my apartment so that I can scan my face; post the resulting image to blog; go, late, to work.

Do you think it is easy being a mute blogger, with an undiagnosed anxiety disorder and a spastic bladder, trying to hide from life while living—all without any Ativan at all?  Yeah, you're right.  It actually is pretty easy being me, all things considered.  (Oh, that's another one.  I can listen to NPR instead of blog.  Add that to the list.).  I mean, I could be like Yasser Arafat, with tanks and bulldozers trying to knock down my house—not to mention short and ugly.  Or I could be like Margaret Thatcher, with not only bad hair, but also too old to talk.  Instead of being just figuratively paralyzed, in my hopelessness and fear, I could be actually paralyzed like Christopher Reeve (who, by the way, is actually quite a Superman in his real life).  Or I could be dead.  A condition which, despite all the frightful dark imaginings that seem to recommend it, would probably disappoint.  If everything—and I mean everything—disappoints me now, what on earth (or anywhere else for that matter) would make me think that I would find happiness in being dead?  Nonsense.  I would find disappointment in death, not because there is anything wrong with the experience itself, but because there is something wrong with my disappointment detector. 

My 'disappointment-detector' is like an unplugged TV.  I turn it on, and get nothing but a smoky black image, and conclude (quite prematurely) that Light no longer exists.  I am thus disappointed.  No matter that my conclusion is illogical; I am able to see the device which is telling me that Light has abandoned us.  And no matter that there are things like windows; though they are somewhat less entertaining than TV used to be, they still tend to indicate that Light is continuing on.  But the fact that Light is not gone from my life is somewhat more painful than the alternative.  I cannot explain exactly why this is.  The reason is not explained by the over-simplifying phrase 'misery loves company.'.  On the other hand the problem is not so complex as to be unsolvable, though it often feels that way.  The best way I can explain it is to say that the loss of my magnificent life, which was lost long ago (the reasons for that are another story entirely), feels like it is survivable only as long as I pretend that there is no magnifence anywhere in life.

There is, indeed, magnificence in life.  That makes me cry.

And here am I, wringing out these tears and discovering these truths in one of the most un-original and un-novel of forums, a weblog.  Magnificent.

In about six hours I have to be back at work.  Right now I am feeling an awful lot like the way I feel when it comes time to do something which I have promised I will do.  The longer I wait, the less likely it becomes that the promised thing will happen.  So here's the quick and dirty conclusion to my nostalgia over Peter:

I think the bike on the roof stunt got Peter fired, but because he was close friends with many of the people I worked with—and who knows, maybe because he actually liked me—he and I continued to cross paths, a lot.  Peter was a sailor in the deepest parts of his heart.  He shared with me his plan to live on a boat, not on a houseboat like a shoebox on the water, but on a sleek, big seaworthy sailboat.  As he shared this with me, late in our acquaintance, I was aware that it was his own mythic plan, expressive of worlds more meaning than the mere details contained.  This was Peter's vision for his place in the world, detached from all that would have him lead a conventional life, yet plunging bow-long into a more dynamic, more threatening, more invigorating life.  He shared with me his personal mythology for engaging life more fully than he had ever been taught, and I believe he achieved it.  He was an absolutely capable person around whom I always felt secure; there was no challenge he could not meet, no goodness could occur that would not glint more brightly off his soul than any other, and there was no visible end that I could see to the mirthful kindness in his eyes.  Peter Wiedenman made a place just for me in his myth of joyous life; he told me that I would have a place with him on his sailboat when he got it, and he told me that he had intended to make no such place for anyone, until he met me. 

Such precious gifts I walked away from, pretending I did not recognize their value.  The absolute, non-erotic, spiritual beauty of generous souls like Peter has more than once scared the shit right out of me.  But worse, it scared me on a level too deep for me to know, for long before I met Peter I had chosen not to feel such depths, and to function in a superficial safe zone, unmoved by deep currents.  And even as he was loving me in the way he did, I was aware enough of its significance to carefully keep my distance from it, and to maintain the scrupulous pretense that I didn't even know it was there.

Peter's father had a heart attack in California one day in that summer of 1989, and Peter got on a plane, not knowing if the man would be dead by the time Peter arrived.  He came back weeks later oh so subtly changed, with just a twinge of skepticism, or maybe a slight little hint of fear.  His father survived, but I think in the ordeal Peter realized that certain relationships will never be what they could have been, and certain people will never reach that mythic place he has prepared, even when it becomes real.  I think Peter knew when he returned that some men will forever be victims, no matter how much he loves them.

Sail on, sweet Peter, over whichever shining sea you have chosen, while here I publish another whiney post, and get...

More coffee.

Okey dokey, I want to make blogger's edit your blog page my browser's home page, changing it from one of the news and information pages (the Guardian, the Boston Globe, CNN) it usually resides on, but I am torn.  Shouldn't I also want to know what goes on in the world?  Besides, who would keep an eye on the genocidal politicians?  I mean, I know we in civilized society have systems and people in place to do that for us—to watch the genocidal politicians.  Unfortunately watching is all that ever seems to be done by those systems; the journalists, the opposing political parties, the mothers of these soulless despots.  That just isn't enough.  However, when I try and watch them myself, it is simply too much.

Ahh, coffee cup dilemmas.  I suppose I have GE to thank for my leisure comfort, and for the ability to sit, sock-footed, and contemplate their crimes.  Thanks go out too to the big-money, power-mongering conservatives who keep it all in order—growing the economy, controlling the culture, restraining all those wild anarchic liberals.  And that's just their domestic venue.  They are blood-spattered rapists abroad, all their actions beneficiently intended to prevent our precipitous fall from our familiar American standard of living to something closer to the standard at which 99% of the world suffers. 

More coffee. 

And why make the page at which I compose these diatribes which I spew into my spitoon-website, why make this the page I come to every day, automatically?  I wish I came here reluctantly, but I can't control my eagerness to bitch and moan.  I am still playing the part of victim; I have not yet moved into that next role of my existence, ...I don't even know what it's called.  Besides, I might not assume that role until a later lifetime.  In the meantime, as a victim, bitching and moaning is the only comfort I know.  Is that pathetic, or what?

Peter Wiedenman.  The name is all I have been able to keep.  The rest all scared me too much.  I remember the moment I saw him; he walked in late to an orientation meeting at a summer job on Cape Cod.  He had short blonde hair, except for a braided tail that hung down to the middle of his back.  He had to keep it hidden while he was working, he was a waiter.  That was odd because the place was very tolerant of a whole lot, but he had a reputation there, at Wequassett Inn.  Peter lived nearby, and had worked there before, and he was mischievous and irreverent.  He was fearless. 

I concluded he was way out of my league; cute, young, charming, and popular with all the right sorts of people—or more accurately, unpopular with all the stuffed shirts and authority figures.  I didn't want to embarrass myself by revealing the powerful attraction I felt toward him.  He was 20, I was 30. 

It is amazing how low a person's self esteem can be; I was certain he would disdain me from the start—if I were fortunate I thought, I would be able to evade the focus of his attention completely.  How completely, completely wrong I was. 

Very early into the season, Peter suggested to me that he and I go swimming the next night in the pool on the property, which of course employees were forbidden to do.  I was scared and looking for hiding places from this attention that I was so afraid to want.  But at the same time I was thrilled, and lost.  I thought Peter might be gay.  I felt guilty for hoping that he was.  We did it—swim, I mean—I brough.  a bathing suit, he was naked.  He stood above me, at the edge of the pool, a perfect, tanned young body.  I focussed on swimming, pretending I didn't notice.  He wanted me to do exactly what I wanted to do, but I was paralyzed with fear, hiding in the water.  His ego must have been at least a tiny bit wounded, and I went home, sorely dissappointed in myself.

He didn't let up as the season progressed.  Not that the focus of his attention on me was withering, but he did persist.  Once he sneaked in the night to the bungalows where most of the employees stayed and, outside my door, he took my bike—which was as important to me then as it is now—and he climbed up on the roof, completely unnoticed, and propped it there, directly above my door.  In the morning, late as usual, I came out to jump on my bike and dash two miles to work, but the spot where I left my bike every night was bike-less.  I was stunned.  Someone stole it, I thought, panicky.  But I was late, and I would have to deal with the theft later.  Just then a co-worker was in the parking lot, starting her car, and I asked if I could get a ride in with her.  "Somebody stole my bike," I said as I got in the car.  Then, as I looked back at the building I had just come from, I saw it.  My bike, a teal Bianchi, stood upright in the roof-gutter directly above my door like a kind of makeshift bicycle store sign.  And I knew, with a giddy pleasure, that it was Peter's attention focussing on me again.

(I'll have to finish later.  I am late for work, as usual.)

You like Ulysses?

Please don't like me.  I don't like being liked.  People who know me seem to know this through some instinct or perceptiveness that is alien to me.  I make a concerted effort to conceal my discomfort at being liked.  I mean, being liked is something I am supposed to want, right?  So I try to appear as though I want people to like me, but despite my efforts they know the truth.  People are magical.

You see, I can't give in.  I can't like myself, because then I will have to cry.  He has been hurt—not lately, but hurt in his essence, back near his origins.  And if I give in to liking him, I will have to care about what happened to him then, and I will have to cry.  It won't be just a tear, or even a sea of tears.  Though some tell me there is a limit to these things, it feels like there will be no end to the tears.  It will be an inundating, annihilating flood.  It will not have an end, but it will end everything. 

I am not sure, but I think others have been there, to a place that is after the end of everything.  Maybe if I went there, I would discover what comes after the end of everything.  Or maybe I would discover that no one ever goes there, no one in their right mind, anyway.  Maybe I would realize, after it is too late, that all the people who do like themselves got off this train back at the last stop because they did not want to go this way, to the end of everything.  It would be just me and the old woman who keeps staring at me giggling, the crazy toothless lady with the dead leaves in her hair.  She is always on the train that goes to the end of everything.

Everybody has always known something that I have never understood, they all share a kind of common fabric, and I try to pretend that I am a part of it.  A friend once called it standing in anxiety, trying to think of something spontaneous to do.  Everything about me is wrong, I am not attached to that fabric, and the best I can hope is to deceive some few who are included, some one.  The best I can hope is to deceive myself.  But I already know too much.

I don't want to be alone.  But I am afraid of you.  I don't want tragedies to happen that always happen as a part of life, things like losing limbs or getting paralyzed, like breaking hearts, like dying.  And I won't survive that original pain, so I split myself in two, and I keep him, ...where?; I don't know.  I keep him—somewhere. 

Already time for bed, again. 

Why does this always happen?  Another day is gone, and I'm just getting here.

Anyway, I told my boss today to take her bonus and stick it.  She wanted to give fifty bucks each to me and three others who came in on almost no notice to do overtime this week because somebody quit unexpectedly.  It went like this:.  Unsmiling, she solemnly called me into her office.  Her face betrayed nary a hint of good nor bad—well, maybe a hint of bad.  She closed the door, and whispered conspiratorily, "We're giving this to the four who came in to do overtime.".  She produced a folded fifty in my direction.  As I took it she said, "But you can't tell anybody, because we can't give it to everyone.". 

"I won't do that.  Keeping secrets breeds suspicion and distrust; it's not worth fifty bucks for me to do that.  I won't do it for any amount of money.".  She snatched it back. 

"Well," she said petulantly, "then don't take it."

"OK," I said, "Thanks for the thought.".  I really kinda meant that.  She glared as I left.

Had I not been exposed in the past to their breathtakingly insulting and demeaning behavior, I—stunned—probably would have walked away with the bill, and despite later misgivings, never returned it.  But I have had practice with the fifty dollar bill at the place where I work.  And the last time it happened, I swore it would never happen again. 

Either give it to me, or don't.  Either be grateful, or be not grateful.  But spare me your disingenuous gratitude, and keep your strings-attached bribes that you call generosity.  If it's not above-board, it's not a bonus—it's a liability.

Hello.  I have a flat on my bike.  Into which I pumped air whilst trying to get away from work.  Right after I chipped away the slush and ice which had encrusted the vehicle.  With my bare hands.  Then I rode home through small (and not so small) waterways which, dammed with slush and ice, had filled-up all along the road edge to occasionally disconcerting depths.  Oh, and there was wind and freezing rain, too.  My bike is in the shower now, recuperating.  (Actually, I sprayed it with detergent to loosen the grime in which the bike becomes encrusted on wet, dirty days like today.)

I am bankrupt.  Docket #02-41552, filed March 14, 2002.  Any day, I may come home to a dark and cold, de-electrified house, though I am assured by my lawyer that if I am home when they come to shut me off and I present the aforementioned docket number to the Mass Electric employee, that "they should leave it on.".  They should.  Likewise with the phone.  Although Verizon has already shut me off, the CLEC (competitive local exchange carrier), Ztel, my current phone company, will shut me off March 24, unless the bankruptcy court's injunction (represented by the docket number) prevents them from doing so.  No matter how much my lawyer—a really wonderful woman—tries to explain it to me, I just can't grasp the logic of bankruptcy.  She says it is designed to give people a second chance and a new start.  But it still looks to me like none of these companies should ever want anything to do with me again. 

There is a lot of laundry—about four loads worth—laying on the bathroom floor, piled-up nearly to the height of the windowsill.  I have been intending to attack it every day for over two weeks.  There are things in there which I forgot I owned.  The house is a mess, there are computer parts scattered all about, old unopened mail, and piles of semi-discarded papers, forms, newsletters, and magazines.  The biggest accomplishment in my day is folding up the futon. 

This is a low point, in case you hadn't noticed. 

I hope I get up early enough to get something done; I hope very soon that I begin to care whether or not I get something done.  It has gotten so that a little thing like a flat tire is just about completely overwhelming.

Got back from Boston and found a comment from joe.  I thought, either I wrote this and forgot (dementia), or... I couldn't imagine what else.  Then, two lines in: Ah ha!  And I wanted to faint.  Oooo-wheee, baby.  Joe!  The other Joe, the one with a hell of a story, a cut-the-ribbon, christen-the-boat, stain-the-sheet and smash-the-glass story.  The one who...  Well, maybe we can go into the details later on.  The point is that I returned from my reluctant excursion to Boston, and received an invitation to Cologne.  Germany. 

I can't escape life, apparently.  At least not yet.

I remember when cologne was something you gave on Father's Day to that man you couldn't love—or were afraid to love—because you were a boy with a difference, and you knew most of what you felt toward other males was 'wrong' and you weren't really sure which feelings were OK with Daddy, and which were not.  It was cute for the straight boys to want to marry Mommy; it was not cute for me to want to sleep with Daddy.  So we gave cologne. 

Somewhere long ago I noticed Cologne was also the name of a place, so long ago in fact that I thought they named the place after the toiletry.  And I thought that was odd.  It was among the first in this lifetime of many misconceptions on my part. 

Joe.  Wow.  The strong fumes of our past are flooding my brain—his wet mouth, his once-familiar taste, the intoxicating scent of him.  And the absolute clarity of his intentions, which cut through and scattered that nebulous fog-cloud that was me.  Joe loved me, but I...  Well, let's just say I wish I had more substance then.  I was a misty summer evening and he a brilliant noonday sun.  We played and played, chasing one another around the days—so few days—and we tried to stay, we tried.  But showers fell and darkened the teary sun, and a cold wind cut the lonely night to shreds.  They seperated, but not without knowing that once, in a glistening twilight moment, the night and day were one.

And wouldn'tcha know, I mean, isn't it ironic that long after I stopped applying expensive potions from tiny vials to strategic locations on my body (which could, in the past, precipitate a shallow, but none to shabby encounter) that today the necessary proof of my substance is to simply show-up in Cologne.

Forgive the bad pun, I am falling asleep.  Good night.  And good luck today at the hospital, Joe.  You will definitely be hearing from me.

The forecast says the temperature will continue a gradual decline until it reaches eighteen degrees on Saturday.  Eight-fuckin'-teen!  Winter will be plunging its long icicle-fangs deep into our shivering hearts, even as we welcome spring on March 20.  Excuse me while I pour some hot coffee over my head.  (It's like wetting your pants; it feels nice and warm for a moment, but then there's problems.). 

I am generally a miserable cuss right now because I am leaving my house.  It is my day off, and I am leaving my house.  I don't do that on my day off.  And I cannot come back to my familiar bed, my own clutter, and my precious coffee pot until Tuesday night.  Tuesday fuckin' night! 

I used to gear-up for a trip to Boston, I used to get all psyched and optimistic on the bus ride there, and then I would focus on staying all happy and smile-faced for the potential life-love (read, fabulous regular sex without emotional conflicts) who, breathless, would stumble upon me, cheerful and charming, in one of the ancient gay bars in Boston.  Optimism is not my thing.  Not anymore.  I did optimism once; I met Daniel in one of those ancient gay bars and I made him fall in love with me.  He gave me some fabulous sex, not so regular, and some goose-bumping emotions which I never expected.  I wish I stayed there, I wish Daniel had been perfect, I wish I was not HIV positive.  I half-lived in Worcester then, and half-lived in Boston with Daniel.  Now I fully-live nowhere.

Nowhere, as best I can rekon from where I stand, is better than somewhere over the rainbow.  Things used to be different.  I used to be different. 

Every day.  I have been here every day.  Silent.  Mute.  Every day, with my muse playing soulful notes like a muted coronet—wailing, moaning, pleading, groaning.  And every day I hide from the screeching subway-noise of your eyes consuming my lines, scraping along all the steel-track-length of my thoughts, into my mind, reading my heart.  I have been here hiding from you whatever words would have come, denying, god-like, the incarnation those words so sweetly sought.  You give purpose to the whole goddamn network of neurons and thoughts and tunnels and minds and trains—you give it all a purpose, and a reason for being.  You are the destination of everything I write; it comes from somewhere else, and it uses me as mere passage, bound for you.  It uses me.  It uses me.  I stopped it. 

I am letting go.  Surrendering.  Giving in to its will.  I will, once again, actively participate in giving this thing what it wants, and with hands against headboard I will push back against its invading, penetrating force.  I will cooperate with its appropriation of me for its own purposes; I will make its will my own.  I had my own way for a week, I stopped it and refused it passage through my openings, and I found out again, like a dozen times before, what that would cost.  It costs too much.

I don't want this.  (Or do I?).  If I decide that I do want this, then it is no longer rape, is it?  Then I can happily participate in the crime, and even have a good time!  The words demand to have their way with me—but they require me to fight.  They demand me to scream into the pillow, to squirm beneath their weight, to fight their naked force and break my fists against the wall they thrust, they thrust, they thrust me up against.  The words demand a struggle, otherwise they will not come.  They demand me to be me, contemptuous of their intrusive visitation, raging under their dictatorial commands.  The words demand that I preserve within myself one true thing for them to chase.  I would surrender without a fight because I fear the pain that resistance brings; the words will not allow it.  They demand I feel everything. 

Therefore, make not pain the pleasure, nor subvert the tears to joy; give nothing you rightly own away—give not love, nor agonies, nor joys, nor sultry summer evenings of fading sun away to anyone.  Own them.  Stand up and own them, and cry for your pain, and sing for your joy.  And write for your life.

I love this guy.

A fascinating snippet from a fascinating site.

Oh, my!  So much to think, and so little time.

There is a warm wind.  It shakes the house, rattles the windows which have been open all night, and makes the doors sound like someone is there, trying to get in.  It's a storm; a mild summery Nor'easter, with clouds close and fast moving one way, and above them, high and slow, other clouds moving the other way.  The warm, wild air through the screen makes me glad that I am here. 

On a night like this, with God panting so near, can heaven be far behind?

Thanks Mary.

Starting the last half.

I feel sad, hopeless, depressed.  I need some food, some wine, and some serious recreation to cure my despair.  And as always, I still need to cry. 

Heaven is...  This could be another hundred things list.

I tried to cuddle with Daniel on the beach.  He was not in a cuddling mood just then.  Suddenly he turned toward me, and with his arms around me, I fell back on the sand with Daniel on top of me, hugging me.  At the same moment, I looked up and a shooting star flashed across the night sky.

Heaven is a moment.

There that's better.

Here's a hundred things we don't know about me.  She inspired me.  Blame her. 

They won't be all together—like compiled and then posted—because I come when I come, and I write when I can, and life is not a test. 

Stopping for now.  Got further than I planned to go.  That's nice on hikes and dates.  And on a 'things list' like this.