new blog

Well, using the words fuck, pornography and prostitution caused this blog to be listed as porn by my company's internet filter at work. (Which is highly ironic considering my views on porn.) So I can't access this blog from work. Not that I was going to post much at work, but I want to be able to check the posts the rest of you have. So I'm not going to post here again, and may eventually shut this blog down. I've moved all my posts except for the troublesome one to my new blog. There I'll watch my language. The new blog is greenectomorph.blogspot.com. Sorry, I don't know how to make that into a link.

high school can be awful

I'm posting my response to 'a gay hockey kids life' whose blog talked about older dudes who forget what high school is like, and that he wants to take a straight pill. Sorry to post a comment to someone else, but I wanted to put my thought here.

***
Those of us who are "older dudes" haven't forgotten what high school was like. The homophobic slurs were ever present at my all male military high school. Being called queer or homo was an everyday event for me. I remember the day that it was much worse, when everyone was calling me "homo". Finally at the end of the day someone came up to me and helped. He peeled off the adhesive letters "homo" that someone had slapped on my back hours earlier. I just wanted to die then.
Every night I prayed for it to go away, to be normal, to take a straight pill as you said. But it never came. Now I can say that I'm glad that it didn't. I wouldn't be me if it had. I wouldn't have left my small town, moved to a much better place, gotten the good career that I have, met and married my husband, and had our son.
So yes, high school can be hell. I haven't forgotten, but I did hope that it was better for kids now. And it is some places, including the liberal California town where I now live, it is. The local high school had a gay couple as prom princes a few years ago. For most people, especially gays and lesbians, life gets better after high school. It won't last forever, and you can survive it. And you've got support here to help, Mikey.
***

I remember praying each night not to be gay. High school just sucks for too many people.

Saturday at work

I'm at work on Saturday afternoon. I have to work one weekend day a month, so I chose this Saturday. I like to get the weekend work out of the way early in the month - I've always wanted to do something unpleasant early rather than postponing it. Not that work is unpleasant, just not what I want to do with my Saturday.

Last night my office had our annual "holiday party". I used the quotation marks because the reality is that it was a Christmas party, but that term isn't used so that those of us who aren't Christian won't feel left out. I'm not that dumb, I know what the party really was. It wasn't too bad, a little surreal at times. It was at an Italian restaurant, and we were put in the bar section, so there were two large televisions showing a basketball game at each end of the table. There was a woman who's only job seemed to be walking around with a large bowl of cheese and a spoon, who would appear at your elbow when your meal arrived and exclaim "frommagio?" (sorry if my Italian is off) I declined her offer. Being a vegetarian, my choices for the meal were limited to two: linguine with tomato sauce or linguine with tomato sauce and garlic. I chose without garlic but it ended up in there anyway. I don't want to sound too negative, I had an OK time. My coworkers are generally nice people, I just don't have much in common with them other than that we work together.

I have a follower! That's shocking to me. How to people find each other here? I haven't found a search function. Maybe someone (pops zn?) can help me with that. I've read some blogs that I found on other's lists of the blogs that they read. There are a lot of young gay guys dealing with coming out. It's great that this resource is there to help, and people do help each other out - I even read a suicide note from a 13 year old when he came out to his mother and she locked him out of the house. He survived, and she's coming around. I want to help, but coming out was a long time ago for me. The only way that I could be more out is to have a tattoo saying "gay" on my forehead. I always mention my husband and son when conversation leads that way, I have photos of the three of us on my desk, a gay bumper sticker on my car (well, it's a marriage equality bumper sticker, so I could be a straight ally). I haven't found many blogs from others my age. Maybe I'm an "early adapter" if that's the term for a guy in his 40s who uses technology before many my age. I did that with Facebook.

I'm rambling here. I'll see if there is some work to do now.

proud of my son

I just heard good news about my six year old son. He advanced one level in reading in first grade this week, so his reward is a new book, to encourage more reading. (He has two fathers who are avid readers, so we want to encourage him.) My husband took him to a bookstore and he chose a book that he wanted. But the cover was partly damaged, so my husband suggested that he ask a bookstore worker if they had another. He found a worker, politely explained the situation and asked if they had another book. He was told that they didn't but was offered another copy of the book in a few days or a discount on the damaged book. He consulted with my husband and chose not to wait and to get the damaged book. This may not sound like much, but being assertive with a strange adult, politely explaining the situation, and making a decision about what to do were all good things for him to do. I guess that you have to be a parent to understand.

first post

I've been reading other blogs and thought "Why not try it?" I don't have profound insights to share, just my thoughts and experiences.

For some background, I'm 45, gay, a vegetarian, married to my husband for 1 year now but we've been together for 18 years, and I have a six year old son. I work in health care and live near Sacramento, California in the United States. I'm an atheist and somewhat of a Buddhist - it appeals to me but I haven't been putting the effort into it lately that I would like to. I'm fairly politically active and follow what's happening in the world. My passions are my family and civil rights, especially gay rights.