HOT FLASH!!! Half of South Carolina is Gay!!!

Check out this link to Mike Rogers' website today. He's officially outing South Carolina's Lieutenant Governor, Andre Bauer.

Apparently it's no secret that the President Pro Tem of the SC Senate, Glenn McConnell, is also gay.

And everyone over the age of 7 with an IQ over 100, which automatically rules out most of the citizens of SC, knows that Senator Lindsey Graham is officially "light in the loafers" (as was Mark Foley, another fine example of Southern Manhood and Good Old-Timey Down-Home Pederasty).

Jeebus, are the voters of SC complete idiots or just in total denial? We know all their politicians are queer as folk.

Prostate Update

I saw my urologist last p.m. He confirmed what I already suspected, that the cancer is localized to the prostate and it will have to come out.

Good news. Bad news. But news.

Now the ball is in my court. He was solicitous and concerned. He answered my questions truthfully. He assured me that he wouldn't feel "two-timed" if I snuck around and saw other doctors behind his back. In fact, he encouraged me to make appointments and to get other opinions.

I've been given names of doctors at New York Hospital-Presbyterian, Memorial Sloan-Kettering and Mount Sinai in New York and at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.

Some of them use the robot, others do not, preferring instead to do it the old fashioned way, through a 3" incision.

My guy at home in NJ has done 600 removals in his career. He does them at a non-teaching hospital in New Brunswick, NJ (St. Peters). His rationale is that the operation is so delicate he doesn't want to have surrender any portion of it to resident surgeons, i.e. "rank amateurs." I liked that.

There's a good 10-15% chance that post-removal I'll still have to have some sort of follow-up therapy, probably radiation. Hey! That leaves a good 85-90% chance that I WON'T.

I'll be incontinent for awhile. A month, maybe two. As for "male potency" (don't you love the euphemisms we come up with for "hard ons"?), well, it'll be about as good as it is now within 6 months. I can wait 6 months. It's already been years.

Ordinarily I'd be on the phone this morning, rounding up appointments, arranging for time off, coordinating everything. But the weather is crappy, and I need a good scary movie... "Ultimate Destination" would do.

I'll deal with cancer next week. Promise.

p.s. But be assured that I know this ... I am loved. A lot. And that is going to make all the difference in the world.

His Name is Roger....

A friend of mine sent me a link via email today and I want to share it with you.

There is a certain film critic of reknown, from Chicago, who blogs. Fair enough. What I didn't know is that he, too, is in recovery.

His name is Roger E. and [click here] is the entry which I find truly inspiring,


and on a lighter note, here's a birther, or teabagger, or Blue Dawg Democrat, or some other kind of illiterate douchebag, trying to explain healthcare reform:

[VIDEO DELETED DUE TO EMBEDDED ADVERTISING BY DOUCHEBAG ON-LINE SO-CALLED UNIVERSITY NAMED AFTER A CITY IN ARIZONA]

Prostate Cancer

Before I left town on my last vacation my urologist had me drop by his office one night for a "minor procedure." It was to biopsy my prostate.

My PSA readings (a blood test) had been varying for years but recently, in the last year, they had been consistently hovering above the number generally recognized to be worrisome by the medical profession.

He took his samples (you don't even want to know about how he gets them, suffice it to say you have zero dignity during the procedure) and I went, gaily, off to the beach.

Well, last Thursday I had my follow-up with him. His face a mask of concern, he told me that it was cancer. 60% of the samples were infused with cancer cells over 90% of their surfaces.

I have no idea how others handle this, but I do know how one person I know handled it -- my ex had prostate cancer and had his prostate removed in 1991. They filleted him like a fish to do it. Afterwards he had to inject his penis with a syringe full of something in order to get a half-assed erection. He did not take it well. Sex was a lot... everything to him. I might as well have been a hole in the mattress, for all the (BITTER, PARTY OF ONE)... but I digress.

Not that I'm exactly worried about that. I haven't had sex with another human being in ... a decade? Two? Well, it's been a long time, and nobody is beating my door down and, to be honest, I have been deliberately NOT looking lustfully at anyone since 1984 or so.

So I'm not really worried about that.

No... it's the pain I fear. I remember how much pain the ex was in. It was bad.

My RN friends assure me that the pain is much more manageable and bearable than the gastric bypass was last year.

That's good news, I suppose.

But what about AFTER the removal? What then? Will I have to have chemo? Radiation? Will I be incontinent for the the rest of my life? Or even a month?

There's a new machine, Da Vinci by name, which is a surgeon-controlled robotic octopus which, according to the hype, does all of it's work through one teeny hole in your gut and which does NOT damage, the way old-fashioned surgery does, the delicate nerve bundle which surrounds the prostate and which contributes to a male's intense joy at the moment of ecstacy.

Shit. Look, I'm scared. It's cancer and I'm scared. I wasn't scared at quadruple-bypass surgery or bilateral endarterectomies or even gastric bypass -- but this time I'm scared.

I need help. Gods, yours and anyone else's who is willing.

Oh, and yes, I plan to not drink over it.

I'M BAAAAAaaaacccckkkkk .... with Jason Mraz.

In my dreams.

But I am back from the Delaware shore. And I threw my back out in the process of unloading the car after a nearly picture-perfect week at the beach. Sigh.

All the news that's fit to print mostly has to do with Wingnuts, Freepers, Teabaggers and Birthers gettin' their knickers in a twist over the proposed healthcare reform legislation (Obama Death Panels passing sentence on everyone over the age of 30, etc.) WTF? I say leave the Death Panels where they are now, at the insurance companies which routinely make life or death decisions and deny people all kinds of treatment. Assholes.

Rather than joining that fray, I found this little item on Andy Towle's site. I happen to be in love with Jason Mraz and his cute little hat and his cute little bod and his cute little voice and his cute little ass.

Take a look at this and see if you don't agree with me... for a "straight guy" he sure is pretty gay-friendly.

Down the Shore - 2009

We're heading back down to our old haunt, Rehoboth Beach Delaware, for our annual outing. This year we are officially four, with various and sundried drive-by couch-surfers who'll be crashing with us throughout the week.

Here we are:



Just kidding. This is an old snap of the beach patrol in Dewey, the next beach town south of Rehoboth.

Not that I've been very good about posting lately but I'll probably be even worse between now and August 8th, when we return.

Stay out of trouble while your father and I are away and we'll bring you a nice, big box of Dolle's Salt Water Taffy and a stuffed bear from one of the boardwalk arcades.

And keep out of the liquor cabinet.

Love,

Mom

Swimmer Butt

Aside from the Blue Dog Democrats who are effectively and substantially eviscerating anything even approaching universal healthcare in this country, and the Senate Judiciary Committee which finally got off it's collective fat-ass and nominated Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, there isn't much else in the news except this:



A swimmer named Ricky Berens had a "wardrobe malfunction". And here are the pictures to prove it, above and a close-up, below:



See? There is a God. Sigh.

Borrowed Time

My heart attack is 20 years old this month.

I was on a Metroliner from Wilmington Delaware to New York City at the time. It was a Sunday afternoon. I'd been on vacation that week in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, where I ate badly, smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish.

In other words, business as usual.

A few minutes after the train pulled out of New Brunswick, I caught sight of the (late) Twin Towers of the World Trade Center some 30 miles off in the distance.

That's when I first felt it. A tightness in my chest. It felt like someone had balled up their fist and was shoving it straight up under my sternum. I didn't know that that's where the heart is actually located. I thought "how odd. it must be indigestion." What did I know about heart attacks? Nothing. I thought you were supposed to feel a shooting pain up your arm (I didn't).

It didn't go away.

I got back to New York and I got home.

It didn't go away. I slept fitfully that night.

It was a hundred degrees in New York that July. My ex and I went out to dinner because it was too hot to cook. We went out that Monday night, the next night (Tuesday) and the night after that (Wednesday). We went to dinner at the Post House (a chop and steak joint) that night. I had the prime rib (large), with a baked potato and lots of butter and broccoli with hollandaise sauce (yeah, I know).

After dinner, we decided to walk over to the Lex line from the west side. We got to Astor Place. I collapsed on the platform.

The doctor said I should've died. He said I'd had a massive coronary. I needed a cigarette and a drink when he said that.

I kept drinking and smoking for years afterward. I didn't care. Even though I was a high-powered Wall Streeter at the time, I was very unhappy and wished, deep-down-inside, that I was dead.

I would eventually lose everything (Wall Street, the ex, etc.) I would get sober in 1998. I would have quadruple-bypass surgery in 2004 and quit smoking at the same time. I would have bilateral endarterectomies in 2005. I would be diagnosed with type II diabetes in 2006 and eventually have a stomach bypass in 2008 to fix the diabetes.

Twenty years ago I had a massive coronary.

Twenty years ago, I realize now, God was very busy saving me from myself. Time and time and time again.

I don't doubt it.

Miracles happen. I am one.

North Complicit in Slavery (Film at 11:00!)

Today's title is actually a headline over on CNN right now.

I wonder to myself "what bright young dingbat just found this out?"

As anyone over the age of reason, who has seen the movie "1776", knows:

"Molasses to Rum to Slaves" was sung by Edward Rutledge from South Carolina and directly refers to the triangulation of north/south/caribbean economics in the 18th century.

But even non-musical types have a general knowledge that the North and the South were heavily divided on the issue and not always along geographical lines (Mr. Dickinson of Pennsylvania being a prime example), and that it took all the genial diplomatic skills of Benjamin Franklin himself to eventually broker a deal on the matter, primarily between John Adams of Massachusetts and his followers and Rutledge and his followers. The Virginians, by the way, were ambivalent on the matter.

Franklin could probably not have foreseen just how much long-term damage that deal would inflict on the country, but then, he was faced with the more daunting (and immediate) problem of creating a United States of America, and not merely preserving it.

We were a work in progress then, and we remain so now.

I'm Mad As Hell and I'm Not Going to Take It Anymore!

I am finding more and more support amongst my friends (and here in InternetsLand) for bringing up our collective rage at the sorry state of affairs in this country for LGBTs. I watched President O'Bama do his dog-and-pony for the assembled (unelected) "gay leadership" at the White House, excuse me, OUR White House, on Monday afternoon (early enough in the week to bury it before Friday). The words were comfy and warm however the real support, backed up by actions, was nonexistent. You can go find the video yourselves. The Pink Pussycats (my new term for wimpy "go-along, get-along" Log Cabinish, kiss-ass bloggers and "gay leaders") have the video on all their sites.

David Mixner in his blog today, July 1st, 2009 , said this:

“For me to be a free man doesn't mean I have to make everyone in America like me. In fact the Constitution protects an unpopular minority from the tyranny of a majority.”

This is what he called it: Gay Apartheid

This is what it is: Gay Apartheid

Politicians can mouth off, Religiosos can mouth off, The Powers-That-Be can mouth off, but the net-net is... gay apartheid. Separate, and mostly unequal.

Enough.

And here's Keith Olbermann interviewing Dan Savage last night on the subject of DADT.

Wait for the payoff at the end. Keith swears up a blue streak and it's absolutely worth the wait.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Sour Pride

I waited until after the weekend to talk about this here, even though I did mention it over on Facebook.

Have we come a long way since that mythic night in 1969, when the Queens fought back against a routine Vice-Squad raid of a Mafia-run gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village? Yes. Undoubtedly.

Background check of my bona fides:

I'd turned 21 the week before. I was in the Navy and had just reported for duty after a year of boot camp and electronics schools, to the Naval Air Test Center in Maryland. It was weeks before even a hint of the events in New York managed to filter down to where I was. And where I was was alone and lonely inside my own skin, absolutely convinced that I was doomed to a lifetime of secrecy about who, and what, I really was. I remember being thrilled to hear that there had been a "queer uprising" of some sort in New York City. It gave me a teensy bit of hope that maybe the future might be okay for me, after all.

Long story short, I got out of the service and came flying out of the closet, got very involved in gay lib on a grassroots level at the University of Delaware, got burnt by same, swore off gay lib and gay politics -- moved to Seattle -- moved to New York, attended a few early Pride Parades and most importantly... I saw where it was all going.

It was all going to a party.

The early parades were rag-tag events, scheduled mostly by word of mouth in those pre-internet, pre-email days. Mouth and pamphlets and underground newspapers.

They didn't need no stinkin' permits to march. Everybody just "showed up" on Central Park West and started organizing themselves behind banners. There were no "floats" or flatbed trucks full of scantily-clad party boyz and blaring disco music, tossing Mardi Gras beads to the gawkers along Fifth.

The cops didn't interfere because, to be honest, there were about a quarter of a million of us and about 10,000 of them.

But then, and rather quickly, the marches got sold out. To corporate interests and the aforementioned flat-bed trucks loaded with Party-Boyz.

And Pride stopped being political.

Look, I like a party as much as anyone else. But there is a time and a place for it. And Pride Parades are NOT it. NOT yet. When we have achieved our political goals of full, unbridled, equality before the law ... then, and only then ... can we "reward" ourselves with a parade with floats sponsored by Bud Lite and American Express.

Until then, there is work to be done. Political work. Hard work. In your fucking-face work.

Our lives are at stake here. And a once-a-year, blow off some steam, Disco-on-Fifth, is not a fit way to demonstrate against discrimination and in favor of civil rights for LGBT peoples from coast to coast. All it is is just a fucking bone thrown to us by an establishment with a vested interest in keeping us "uppity faggots" in our place.

A minor annoyance to the majority and a battered-wife reliable cashcow to the Democratic Party.

And if that don't piss you off, then just what will it take?

==============================================

I seem to have struck a nerve with a few people with my post, both above and over on Facebook. My friend Robin posted something remarkably similar on her website. You can jump directly to her post, here. I've also added her to my list of Daily Reads under "Here's What I Don't Get." Check it out. Eclectic, feminist and po'd at the status quo. Like me!

The.Best.American.Musical.Play... EVER!

I'm a big, ol' musical queen. And I've seen a ton of big, ol' musicals over the years. I was even IN a few of them, in college and community theaters, along the way. I'd always thought I'd seen 'em all, and knew 'em all.

Well, I'm here to tell ya, I didn't know jack-shit.

I saw "South Pacific" at Lincoln Center on Tuesday night, and I'm here to tell you, it is the best American musical play, ever.

It beautifully captures the mood of a robust, vigorous nation at war, a country flexing both it's impressive muscles and it's small-town naivete. Yes, it also has bald-faced capitalism (Billis), bald-faced racism (Lt. Cable and Nellie Forbush), worldy sophistication (de Beque) and altruistic heroism (Cable and de Beque).

This show is loaded. Mostly with America, warts and all, with a smattering of ex-patriate France, just the way we all were in the 40's.

The overture starts, as many B'way overtures do these days, small and tinny, sounding more like it's being played on a synthesizer across the street at Juilliard, until... the music builds and builds to the crescendo in the midst of the "Bali Hai" section when, suddenly, like a giant wave pulling back from the shore, the entire stage floor swiftly retracts upstage to reveal an entire Broadway orchestra, the way B'way orchestras used to be ... BIG. 25 or 30 seats, at least. Only then did I really appreciate the lushness of the Robert Russell Bennett orchestrations and the true value of Rogers' brilliant score.

I'm sorry for waxing ecstatic over it, but I was just blown away by it. The cast is great, not a miscue among them. The sets and costumes are perfect and not overdone.

If you see nothing else on Broadway, this year, or ever, by all means go see "South Pacific" at Lincoln Center.

Contuining in a Musical Vein

Because it's my birthday week I'm not going to let anything detract from my enjoyment of it -- including the shenanigans of all those d-bags in D.C. who are now busy sucking up to a few rich queers in the hopes that the rest of us will fall into line, like good little lgbt boys/girls/others, and back the fuck off and shut the fuck up and kill ourselves, like in the good old days.

And right about now my attitude is that they can all go fuck themselves, the lying sacks of self-serving shit.

On a lighter note, I'm going to see "South Pacific" at Lincoln Center tonight. Here is a clip of Mary Martin and Ezio Pinza singing "Some Enchanted Evening" which is one of my earliest recollections of b&w television. This is from the days when these broadcasts of scenes from Broadway shows and operas were considered so culturally important that they were simulcast on all of the television networks, and paid for by one sponsor, to an estimated audience of over 80,000,000.

I Feel Love....

Today, June 22nd, is my belly-button birthday. I was born in the decade in which we fought and won WWII. I'm a boomer. I am not aging gracefully. My motto remains, "It's never too late to have a happy childhood."

But if anything, I am a child of the 70's. The disco era. I came out of the closet when I came out of the Navy. And I immediately started hitting places in Philadelphia with names like Oz, Allegro and The Steps, and places in New York like Barefoot Boy and Uncle Charley's.

This was pre-Studio 54.

Then I moved to Seattle. And in those days (by now it was 1976) if you wanted to dance in Seattle you either went to Shelley's Leg or the Boren Street Disco.

I went to both. I made a lot of dance friends. We had a great time. We loved Grace Jones and Sylvester and ABBA. But the Queen of Disco was her Majesty, Donna Sommers.

And for our money, this was the song that defined her and defined the era.

Abusive Relationships

Not that any rich queers read me, but if they did or, if you think that you're rich enough to qualify, I would like to ask any of you who donate to the DNC (Democratic National Committee) to:

1. Immediately cease making donations to the DNC.

2. Cultivate local gay and gay friendly politicians by donating heavily to them, instead.

It is CLEAR to all but the blind that the DNC regards the LGBT communities as nothing more than minor annoyances with major bank accounts.

The DNC has absolutely no intention of giving us what it is that we seek, full and equal rights under the law. Not now. Not then. Not ever. And why should they?

If we got what we wanted, we would have no further use for them and would, possibly, stop donating to them anyway. It is in the best interests of the Democatric National Committee to insure that we remain disgruntled enough to think that we have no choice but to back them, no matter how badly they treat us.

In psychobabble this is called "an abusive relationship." We, my friends, are in an abusive relationship with the Democratic Party. Oh, sure, we get beat up in the back alley by the Republican thugs, but our good friends the Democrats are all over us inside the bars, like a cheap NY hustler, smooching up to us and telling us that they can't live without us, until we get them home with us for an evening of raw, hot sex. THEN they get viscious, beat the crap out of us, take our wallets and leave us for dead.

And, fools that we are, a week later we're out there once again, looking for them in all the bars all over town ... thinking to ourselves that maybe "this time it will be different."

Yeah. Well, take it from an alcoholic who thought that every time he drank it would be different ... it's never different. Until we fight back.

I know abusive relationships. I've had 'em. With guys. With booze. With politicians.

What really works with an abuser is to knock the cocksucker flat on his ass.

It's time for the LGBT communities to knock the DNC flat on its ass.

I used to like this guy....

I'm doing more and more posting over on FaceBook these days ... and less and less here.

But I did want to pass along my growing annoyance and discontent with the current administration. Watch this:



Last week, the Department of Justice argued before the Supreme Court IN FAVOR of keeping DOMA ... and in its brief, used the old incest/child-molestation stereotype.

It is clear that this administration has gone from gay friendly to gay hostile... on the assumption that we will always be there for them, like a lover in an abusive relationship.

And trust me, I know exactly what it's like to be in an abusive relationship. I was in one for 15 years, until I got sober.

Maybe it's time for the LGBT communities to get sober and to wake up to the fact that politicians do NOTHING without either a) being bought or b) being publicly humiliated.

I am planning on showing up for the March on Washington in October. I urge every other LGBT person to do the same.

Marches didn't necessarily end the war in Viet Nam ... but they sure made the evening news -- night after night after night.

The Tonys - It Don't Get Any Gayer Than This!

For those of you missed Neil Patrick Harris' big closing number at the Tony's last night...

Well, like he says... it don't get any gayer.

The Weather Forecast

'Cause this is how it looks from NY/NJ these days:

Dear Mister President....

Won't you please start keeping some of your beautifully phrased campaign promises?

Why the Belief in Homosexual Choice Matters

It matters to me because I've never been anything other than homosexual. There were no "incidents" in my childhood. There was no pattern of anything. There was only, from very early age, a yearning, a drive, a need ... for the loving companionship of males, hopefully to culminate in a romantic and sexually fulfilling relationship with one.

I remember being asked, in college at an open-forum Psych class where I was one of the "star-performers" that night, when, exactly, I had "decided to be gay."

I was astonished that anyone would even think that there was some element of choice involved. There was never a moments doubt, from age six on.

Now, many decades later, I know why that question was asked. I also know, now, why it's so important for so many people to believe that I chose.

Because if I didn't, then their whole belief system comes crashing down around their ears. It means that God... their God... doesn't make mistakes, and doesn't make garbage, either.

Worse, if I didn't choose... and they did... then it means that there is a lot of suppressed anger in a lot of people, because they chose badly, and they know it.

Personally speaking, I believe that so many people are angry about this because a.) their God doesn't make mistakes and they know it and b.) they chose wrong, and they know it.

It's enough to piss off the Good Humor man. And Fred Phelps. And Maggie Gallagher.