He got us Luchador masks! Authentic ones from a park somewhere in Mexico City!
Welcome back Da! Good to have you home!
Category Archives: Personal Bits
Scent of a Whoa, Man!
I’m on the eliptical machine at the Y this morning (need to get a Disney water park body!) and I’m grooving along with my iPhone when suddenly a rather handsome man jumps on the machine beside me. He’s got a real interesting DryFit long sleeve shirt on (one arm is white while the rest is a deep navy blue, kind of Star Trekish) and has a rugby-footballer build, complete with scruff and goatee. He’s the kind of guy I’d play Hide The Penis with… Okay, lets keep it clean, you get the idea.
Before you comment, I’ll just say “I’m married. Not dead.”
After a few surreptitious glances over at him the smell hits me. The smell of socks wrapped in cheese, deep fried in human fat with a coating of hair with a side salad of durian husks and cat urine dressing. As he works out harder, the smell gets stronger.
I start to breathe through my mouth. God help me, I can now taste it. I begin to wonder if he knows he smells so bad. I’m pretty sure that since he bought that vanity shirt for working out, he knows he looks good. Then I think maybe the stench is his protection from guys/girls/Michael Jackson (sans nose) hitting on him. It certainly was putting me off.
I finished my workout and hit the showers. As I dressed I huffed a big drag on my gym bag to see if I was hypnotized by my own stink. Far as I can tell, I smell like Cheetos and lost youth.
Saturday Chores Pt 2
Saturday Morning Chore
Sex Ed From My Mom
So I’ve been schooled as a captive audience, on the mechanics and now as a 16 year old kid not wanting to grow up. In this installment, my Mom kicks some sense into my head.
When I was almost 16 I was biding my time until I could leave Brockvegas to …anywhere. I hated Brockvegas growing up. Still do, for reasons that will become obvious.
I knew I was gay and I was 99% certain I’d be like that for the rest of my life. Not exactly knowing what it was to be “gay” I expected I was headed for a life of shame, ridicule and secrecy. At that time, Dan, my oldest brother, had come out and had brought his boyfriend home for social events. Meeting his significant other was like discovering life on another planet – I could have a relationship and not have to get guys drunk behind the dumpsters at school! Dan’s brazen display of same sex affections prompted me to ask my sister 1000 questions about what it meant to be gay. That’s what sisters are for.
“You know the show Soap?” She started after my landslide of questions about Dan’s personal life.
“Yah.”
“You know Jodi? He’s gay. Dan is Jodi. Dan is gay.” And so it went.
Meanwhile, my father and mother had started their separation proceedings and Dad had moved into his own apartment while Mom was dating a real estate agent and spent most of her time at his house. At the time I was dating a 19 year old woman nearly 3 years my senior, named Donna. I see your two warning flags: yeah it was illegal and yeah I knew I was gay but the social status and allure of being with an older woman who had her own place with no parents around was a high school level career move I could not resist. Can you say “beard”?
One day while at Donna’s place she casually mentioned that she had heard the reason my parents were divorcing was because my Dad was gay.
“…What…?”
“What? You don’t know?”
Back and forth it went between us until Donna revealed that she had a passing conversation with an acquaintance at the local mall. When she told the friend she was dating me, my town reputation came out. So to speak. I was the “gay guy’s kid”.
Naturally, as a teen, emotions are turned up to EXTREME DRAMA proportions and I didn’t confront my father with this for two months. In fact I stopped talking to him entirely because, being an idiot, I thought that since my Dad was gay he was going to molest me. Yes. Naive and stupid and living in a small town, thanks. My behaviour spiraled down into angst-ridden teen lows and spent weeks being the most moodiest, ill-behaved son ever – staying out all night, stealing booze and finally letting slip I was dating an older woman. My mom sat me down and in the discussion about my behaviour, I confronted her with it.
There was a pause with tense glares from each other.
“Go talk to your father.”
That was all I needed. I ran from the room and holed up at Donna’s for a couple days.
After not speaking with him for two months, Mom called him and told him to “man up” as it were. I remember getting a phone call from my Dad asking me over for dinner. Despite the menu being my favorite (lasagna and the “one beer”) and Dad peppering the conversation with fun suggestions (lending me his boat some weekend, trip to Toronto, etc.) I remained the vision of stoicism. After a long quiet dinner of terse conversation Dad opened up.
He spoke of being scared. He talked a lot about love and it’s mailable, intangible forms. He talked about being sorry and mostly he talked about wasted time. I am fluffing it up, of course, because he was an Irish Catholic boy and he basically communicated his regurgitating feelings and thoughts as if they were festering gasses from a sputtering lava pool. The meaning was communicated, at least.
And yet I didn’t come out to him. More on that later.
One Hundred Days
Hello! I am hoping you are having a magical day!
In exactly 100 days I will be boarding a plane to Orlando to partake in one of Florida’s biggest, gayest events: Gay Days at Disneyworld. Thousands upon thousands of red-shirt wearin’ homos converge on the parks over five days either to make a political statement, a safety-in-numbers thing or just a damn great weekend of fun (depending on your idea of fun). Meanwhile, unsuspecting straight people, when confronted with homosexuality and who had no clue the parks would be overrun with gays of all types, will react with whatever knee-jerk reaction they have inbred to them (depending on their perspective, of course). Some will have open arms and smiles and some with shock and indignation. This Advocate article, to me, seems to blow the whole behaviour thing out of proportion, but I am sure there were a few disgruntle parents there, it would be a miracle if there weren’t. When we went we were offered positive comments of support and glee from straight and gay alike because of our t-shirts. We had great conversations with people in line wondering why we had pictures of each other as 10 year olds on our chest.
I guess you could say we’re in the “Just here for fun and say Hi” category. After two years away, I am jonesing for some teacup ride.
How to Ruin Your Back, The Quickening
Sex Ed from the Cinema
I also learned sex from the movies. Everyone has. But one particular movie sent my (then uber-closeted) father into cardiac arrest when he heard I had seen it.
Picture it: 1972, Brockvegas.* A rather mature looking 13 year old kid somehow wrangles his way into a 2pm matinee of a restricted showing of this movie in a small Eastern Ontario town (actually I think it was Adult Accompaniment, but it was Restricted to someone my age, at least!). I went because I knew all the grownups were talking about it in hushed tones. Shocking. Scandalous! Sexy…
I was nervous going in. I left confused but yet knew that I had seen a masterpiece. When I got home I was honest with my father when he asked where I was that afternoon. I told him the title of the movie and he totally lost his shit.
“How did you get in to see that movie? Why did you go see THAT movie? What do you think was happening in the movie?”
And the last question that left me head scratching (at the time): “Did you like the music?”
What was the movie?
*I know… Sharkboy just finished watching Season One of The Golden Girls.
Fear Factory Pt1
Here are some of the most frightening moments in my life, in no particular order:
I flew back from Lexington, Kentucky, in a turbo prop plane and landed in what was called the worst windstorm of 1995. I hate flying. In a small plane like that it’s magnified 100%. What made it worse was having to approach Toronto over the lake. While the view was beautiful, the wind seemed to be even worse over water. At one point the lone stewardess was literally lifted off the floor of the craft with every drop and bump and decided to strap herself in well before landing. Which, as a nervous flier will tell you, just exasperates the fear.
I was bit in the face by a friend’s dog. I remember going to his house, finding nobody home but the dog in the back yard and thinking that petting him while I waited for him to come home was a good idea (I was 9 years old and stupid). Despite the dog’s growling, I gently stroked his head and neck when… Chomp. The pooch got me on the cheek and nearly bit through the padding on my left hand between the wrist and pinky. I bled like a pro wrestler. I don’t remember pulling away from the dog or the pain, but I do remember a cook from a restaurant across the street taking me in and calling an ambulance. What’s on Special!?
The first time I had sex. Nuff said.
Once, my mom came home while I was really high on acid. She came home unexpectedly and dropped a suitcase in the front hall. She called me to her side and pointed at the suitcase. “This. Is mine.” she said with such force I nearly screamed. “It has a ribbon on it. It’s MINE!” We were in the process of moving from that house and all she wanted to do was say that she found her suitcase and I wasn’t to use it. That’s it. But with LSD cursing through your system, it was as if I she was nailing me down on the spot with every word. I was convinced that she knew I was high and was fucking with me on purpose. Or was she? Why the forceful statement? Did I just say that out loud? Can I go now? Did she say I could go? Am I shaking? No really, can I go? Sure, sure…
Getting married. Seriously. I was pooping a brick during the entire ceremony. Every picture looks like I’m trying to insert my shoulders into my ears, I’m that nervous. Thank god for Sharkboy who averted my oncoming stroke by saying “For richer, and for richer” as his vow.
At the Back of the Universal Serial Bus
My computer is on it’s last legs. How bad is it? As example, I couldn’t download the free Spore creature creator because I didn’t have enough memory and CPU power. As another example, the side panel is off. Has been for two years. Every so often I have to go in there and fudge the graphics card fan to make it stop sounding like an asthmatic marathon runner with a bad smokers hack. I have to unplug and replug in my keyboard/mouse combo every time I come out of sleep mode longer than 2 hours. Photoshop is a “click something-go get a tea-click something-go play Little Big Planet” operation. Children stand in yard and yell “Single core processor! Single core processor!” then run.
This morning, the USB ports gakked out, right when I was updating my iPhone, sending my poor darling into a Download Firmware Update mode. Suddenly I got the dreaded “Cable to iTunes” image. Meaning FUBAR, SNAFU, Fucked.
I’m 120 days away from Disney. Next week I’m going down to 4 day work week at work, which means it’s Kraft Dinner for the next 120 days. This couldn’t come at a worse time.
Anyone want a Kidney? Slightly used.