Stories from a man who fails to meet media expectations of what it means to be gay:
white, frivolous, over sexed yet sexless, shrill, single, stylish, a clown, unimportant, et al.

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Bush declared himself the winner of the presidential elections last Sunday, although it remains to be seen if court will uphold or hinder this. There has been speculation that whoever finally ends up as president will need a crises real or imagined to demonstrate that he has power. All I can picture is the nation getting involved in a war or some conflict�just to show that the president has cajones or to distract the nation from the fact that he doesn�t.

A bush presidency. depressing. I was told by someone that bush has already told the Human Rights Campaign that he wouldn�t met with them or something to that effect. True or not, it�s believable. Just what the nation needs, a return to the reagan era, when the government would look out for your betterment. As long long as you were rich, white, straight and male. The fewer of those you were, well...

Anyway, the week:

I started Monday morning (11/27/00) at Kaiser. Unfortunately, my appointment had been canceled and no one seemed to know why I hadn�t been informed of this. The entire experience was annoying, partly because of the staff blaming each other for the problem, partly �cause I got there early and ended up having to wait first for my doctors nurse, then for my doctor to show to see if he could fit me in today.

I tried to be to be calm and accepting of the confusion, but an older woman who had also been �lost� had an entirely different attitude. She was being a pest and was demanding to be seen NOW! My previous experiences at Kaiser have been O.K. and I hope that today wasn�t an indication of more problems to come.

The reason I had the appointment was because I have a growth on my vocal cords. Not cancerous, more of an wart than anything. It was starting to effect my voice and I ended up having surgery earlier this year to remove it. For the past year, my doctor assured my that only in a handful of cases did this type of growth return after surgery. Unfortunately, I turned out to be one of those handful of people and I was there today was to check on how much bigger it had gotten again and to discuss a second surgery to try to remove all of it.

To check my vocal cords, my doctor has this little camera thing that he rams up and into the back of my nose. It doesn�t hurt, but it is uncomfortable. Mainly �cause I can feel the dumb thing moving around inside of me, or at least I think I can.

The growth was smaller than my last visit and unless it suddenly starts to get large and begin to interfere with my voice again, my doctor doesn�t see a need to take the risks of surgery and attempt to remove it again. I was all for continuing the monitoring verses surgery approach. The surgery was only the second time I've been �put under� (the first was for my wisdom teeth) and both times had me vomiting and feeling retched for a couple of days afterwards. I don�t seem to react well to to the anesthesia or something.

I left to go to work only an hour and half latter than I had intended to. I started my car, backed out of the space, turned the wheel and my watch fell of my wrist. Somehow all the stitching or glue or whatever it is that holds the band together decided to fall apart at that moment. The saying is that things happen in threes and well, there's my car acting up, my watch falling apart. I�m waiting for the other shoe to drop. WorkAlisia has been joking that my car is haunted.

Tuesday (11/28/00) was pretty much just a normal work day, except that anita bryant kept being paged all day long. It was strange thinking that the famous homophobe/former beauty queen was in the building. It wasn�t until I was in the mens room later that day that I realized that it was actually Denita Bryant that was being paged. Of course said knowledge only costed me a burst ear drum, somebody had turned the sound all the way up on the stupid pager system thing in the restroom. Well I didn�t really go deaf, but dang that thing was loud.

I went with workJohn to court on Thursday morning (11/30/00). I didn�t really need to be there, but our boss wanted me there in the unlikely event that John needed any help. As usual, I ended up setting off the metal detector in the lobby of the court building. The guard used the little portable wand thingy on me. My belt set it off, as well as my right shoulder. I have a strong electromagnetic field or something. Luckily enough, I don�t have to go down there too often.

The Judge was in a cranky mood. She was yelling at both lawyers and defendants.

Stop talking!, Take that gum out of your mouth! Now!, If you were well enough to go to work, than you were well enough to go to your N.A. meetings! This is not a joke! She was a little like an angry mom, except that mothers don�t usually threaten their kids with jail time. At least my mother never did.

I spent most of that afternoon in a meeting at our Compton office reviewing new policies and the like with the manager and other people at my level. I ended up binging on Chex mix. I was wanting salt for some reason.

That night I finished The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin. I started the night before and forced myself to stop reading at eleven, because I needed to get some sleep, but tonight I picked it up again as soon as I got home.

I first found Maupin�s Tales of the City books when I was sixteen and a senior in high school. In a very real way, those books helped save me. I had been clandestinely searching for gay images /literature/film/anything, but almost nothing I found was something I could or would want to identify with or was even remotely positive. This was still the early eighties and positive queer imagery was still a rarity. Maupin�s books were one of the first positive portrayals of gays and lesbians that I had been exposed to. While I didn�t want to live exactly the life that his characters were living, the books did show me a world were it was ok to be gay and that gave me the strength to begin the first steps of forging my identity as a gay man.

Because they were originally serialized and thus have different structure, It�s not fair to compare this new novel to his earlier Tales books, but I personally think that this novel is Maupin�s strongest work yet. Without going into details of the novel, it was a roller coaster of a book and one of the best things I've read lately.

Friday (12/01/00) was my day off and I decided to spend it Christmas shopping. Or at least I tried to. I did manage to get some things, but I ended up feeling depressed and anxious. It probably didn�t help that John left to go to Vegas for a couple of days with some friends today.

After spending a large sum of money and yet only having two small bags to show for it, I went back home and watched the rest of the Neon Genesis Evangelion episodes. As well done and visually interesting and slowly, slowly paced as these episodes were, the entire end of the world thing got to depressing for me so I switched to watching Bedrooms and Hallways instead.

John bought the dvd a week ago and I didn�t even recognize the title when it arrived. The movie is an English romantic comedy directed by Rose Troche (who made Go Fish). It took me a while to understand the English accents, but once I did start to understand the dialog, it was really funny.

Hugo Weaving was in the movie playing a �sex maniac� as his boyfriend kept calling him. I spent the entire movie wondering why he looked so familiar. It wasn�t until the end that I realized he was in The Matrix. The box also said that he was inPriscilla: Queen of the Desert, which I ended up watching next since I couldn�t remember him in that movie. Well actually I watched the beginning and most of the end. I didn�t feel like watching the bashing scene so I just fast forwarded through anything that wasn�t funny or a drag routine. I�m not sure why exactly, but after years of not even knowing his name or finding him the least bit attractive, Mr. Weaving was suddenly a big sex pot of a guy to me. I may have to add him to my �list of famous people that John would have no choice but allow me to have an affair with, which is ok because I will never meet them or would even do anything with if should meet, even though they are incredibly sexy to me.�

The only person who ever stays on my �list� is Huell Howser, a local PBS host guy, which John always teases me about. Thinking about it, the actor who played the protagonists straight co-worker was really hunky to.

anyway. more later. nico

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