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Seems I feel like writing today… despite not having much to say.

I always intend for my blog to be this unfiltered place where I can go and write whatever I want without fear of anyone reading it. In many ways this creates a paradox for me. I need to know that nobody [I know] is reading it in order to say the sorts of things I often say, but at the same time, the fact that no one reads it makes it less interesting to keep up. I want people to read what I have to say and respond to it. When nobody reads, it becomes difficult to care about it.

And yet if lots of people were reading, it would change the way I write. I might think twice about spilling a particularly personal detail. I might hold back a viewpoint that some could find offensive. Anonymity is at once a safety blanket and an adversary. No one knows who you are, but no one cares either.

I guess you could say this is me making excuses; just me trying to justify why I haven’t written here in such a long time. I could pad this blog with all manner of posts about my varied interests in the same way that most bloggers do, but that was never the point. I didn’t create this blog to talk about my favorite band, my new hobby or the day-to-day hassles of life. I wanted this to be a place to put into words the feelings that have no other outlet.

It could simply be the case that I haven’t had many of those feelings lately.  It could be that my life has finally reached a point where I am comfortable with who I am and the direction I’m taking.

Somehow, I doubt it.

and then… nothing

So there I was, all set to put up a new post today, when it occurred to me that maybe this isn’t the right place for it.  The topic of said post is one that I’ve dealt with before here on my blog but I think that it deserves a much nicer stage than this.  I know this will disappoint my many fan (sic) but it’s a decision that needed to be made.

When I find a place for it (and I’ve already got one in mind) this will be the first place you hear about it.  I’m hoping that its new home will give it an opportunity to grow into something larger than I could ever hope to accomplish with this blog.

Stay tuned.

off topic

Oh Pitchfork, why must you hurt me so?

I mean 8.5?? Really??

I guess it’s a good score, but I think this is more than simply a “good” album. I mean you gave it a lower score than Shut Up I Am Dreaming and it’s clearly a better, more assured album. OK, so maybe score isn’t everything, right? You can’t just look at the number and get an album. No, but the review should reflect the score and although you may think 8.5 is good enough that there’s no reason to complain, your glowing review says otherwise. I can’t find a negative anywhere in this review. Why isn’t this at least a 9.0? Is this album simply not pretentious enough to garner a score in the 9s on Pitchfork? Or maybe Sunset Rubdown isn’t on Pitchfork’s list of bands-we-like-that-make-us-better-than-you.

anything

Were you ever told as a child, “you can do anything you put your mind to”?

In the thirty years I’ve been on this earth, I’ve never stopped believing that.

As a kid it helped me dream, as an adult it gives me nightmares.  I am consumed by the idea that I have this enormous potential and have nothing to show for it.  If there really are no limits to one’s accomplishments, where does one start?  How do you go about finding your one thing in the enormity of all things?

Lucky for me, age takes some of those options away.  I’m not going to be a professional sports superstar.  I’m not going to compete at the Olympics.  I’m not going to be a fighter pilot or an astronaut.  I’m too old, and in some cases, not even all that interested.  I know now that whatever it is that I’m meant to do, it’s probably not going to involve athletic ability or a whole lot of physical exertion.  My means are certainly more cerebral.  If only that made this any easier.

I’ve always been careful to keep myself balanced.  I try to always mix a little art with my science; to keep both sides of my brain (an antiquated notion, I know) in decent working order.  The phrase “jack of all trades, master of none” is not unfamiliar to me.  In fact, although that’s meant to be a somewhat derisive term, it’s a badge of honor for me.  I always felt being adept at one thing above all others was limiting yourself.  Now that I’m a bit older, I envy those who are exceptional at one task and were lucky enough to discover it.  My greatest failing is that whenever I feel as if I’ve found my place, I see a better one just across the way.

Have you ever heard the term analysis paralysis?  It’s the idea that if you spend enough time thinking about what to do you end up doing nothing at all.  That is my life.  Every week I have a new idea and the next week I have some reason why it can’t be done and another grand idea that I’m certain this time I can do.  All of that dreaming as a child has come back to burn me.  Now all of my ambitions are beyond my means, or at the very least beyond those means coupled with the restraints of everyday life.  I feel stagnant, motionless.  I feel like my career should have started at least half-a-dozen years ago but I’m no further along than I was at twenty-two.

It’s not that I lack the ability, it’s that I convince myself I lack the time to execute my ideas.  It’s the good old blame game.  I blame life for getting in the way.  I blame my job for limiting the types of material I can work on.  I blame my friends for having their own shit to do and having little interest in mine.  I blame money for its ever-present requirement.  It seems I blame anyone and anything other than what is truly to blame: my own laziness.

So ya, it’s not like I don’t know what’s going on.  I guess I just haven’t figured out how to fix it.  How do you become less lazy when it’s so much easier just to be complacent?  When do you get to the point where anything is better than nothing?

marriage

It’s a lie.  I know you’re out there, you people that think marriage is this great solution to one of life’s most painful problems.  You think one day you’ll find someone perfect who won’t ever break your heart or treat you with callous disregard.  You think the years of constant misery spent dating all the wrong people will some day come to an end and you will be with “the one” you were always meant to be with.  It will be the perfect marriage, full of happiness and content.  It’s time to wake the fuck up.

It’s some Hollywood manufactured bullshit that love conquers all.   There are two kinds of love, romantic love and the kind of love you feel for family.  Romantic love is weak and fleeting.  It fucks with your head and convinces you that you feel things you really don’t.  It’s only true power is guile; it can disguise itself in lust, infatuation and belonging.  Marriage will stomp all over romantic love.  It will just take one giant shit all over it.  I know that’s not a fun image but you need to see it to believe it.  The only chance romantic love has in a marriage is if somehow it can transform itself into the other love, that unconditional love that like an ugly, disgusting cockroach can survive almost anything.  That love, that love can fucking bust through walls.  It can have the piss beat right out of it and still come back for more.  That’s the love that can conquer all, and let me tell you, people don’t dream about that love.

This morning my wife said to me, “When I die, I hope I come back as a man.”  That’s the kind of thing you hear in a marriage;  a matter-of-fact statement, delivered with such contempt that you can nearly see the thorns spiking from the words as they fly through the air.  What she meant, and believe me there is no room for misinterpretation, is that men have it easy in life.  What she probably didn’t mean is to have those words tear through my soul as if to disembowel it from my very body.  What she probably didn’t mean is to stab the heart that pours itself into trying to make her happy with nearly every beat of its miserable existence.

I’m not going to ramble on about how most married guys I know certainly don’t have it easy.  That’s not really the point I’m trying to make here.  What I’m trying to tell you, however bleak it may sound, is that there is no end to pain where the heart is concerned.  Love is not easy.  As with most things in life, its rewards come at great cost.  What you need to ask yourself is whether or not you’re willing to pay.

and so the Bible says

“God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve”

This is the all-too-familiar refrain I get from my brother-in-law whenever the topic of homosexuality is raised.  Let’s ignore for the moment that I doubt anyone in the history of civilization has ever invoked the Bible to support a rational argument.  Instead let’s concentrate on the fact that this man (or man-boy) is trying to object to male same-sex relations on moral grounds.  The sheer hypocrisy of it is astounding.  This is the same person who for the last few years has bordered on alcoholism; who has put untold amounts of illicit substances into his body; who was recently arrested for driving under the influence and has been charged (but cleared!) with assaulting his former girlfriend.  This is a person who has absolutely no right to take the moral high-ground, and it gets my back up.

“Well he didn’t create Evelyn and Eve either, but you don’t seem to have a problem with that”

He of course has no response to this as it’s absolutely true.  That’s not to say that it does anything to sway his opinion.  In his world, and that of many men, women are somehow exempt from the rule that says you can’t have sex with your own gender.  I can’t really blame him entirely for this attitude; he gets it honestly from his equally bigoted father.  Of course, I also cannot be blamed for my absolute hatred of this type of attitude being perpetrated through generations of men.

One time this conversation came up in the presence of his girlfriend.  Normally I can count on the girlfriend to have a more liberal viewpoint, but this time it wasn’t the case.  It was her opinion that the act of anal sex is what makes male homosexuality morally unacceptable (and again, here’s a person with no business arguing anything on moral grounds).  This amused me to no end.  Why?  Well it was no secret to me that her boyfriend happened to enjoy anal sex with women quite a bit.  It was also no secret to me that he had approached this particular girlfriend about the activity and had been rebuffed.  She didn’t know I knew that though, so maybe that’s what made it all the more entertaining.

So I need something explained to me because I just don’t get it.  Why are men (and some women) so fucking afraid of homosexuality?  I mean I have my share of irrational fears, but I like to think that I can at least provide some rational arguments to defend them.  I hate flying but, ya know, people have been killed — like lots of people — in airplanes.  Who was the last guy that turned homo just by being near a homo?  It’s like this weird cluster fuck of logic that makes people think that someone else being gay has even the least bit to do with them.

I’m not gay.  That’s not some kind of knee-jerk response to being accused either, that’s an honest fact.  There was a time in my life when I had wondered whether I might be, but it just turned out not to be.  You see I don’t think gay sex makes you gay, just as I don’t think straight sex makes you straight.  Being gay (man or woman) is about loving someone and only someone of your gender.  I sometimes want to drill that into people’s heads.  If you think you might be gay but you can’t imagine spending the rest of your life with someone of your gender, you aren’t gay.  It’s a completely different frame of mind that transcends any single act.

So this message goes out to all those homophobic guys that touched some other kid’s dick when they were in boy scouts and now have to spend every waking moment asserting their heterosexuality: get over it.  There’s nothing wrong with being curious about sexuality, whether it be yours or anyone else’s.  In fact, your lack of ability to embrace the sexuality of your own gender is a fucking weakness.  And to any homophobic women out there, shame on you.  Has your struggle not taught you to embrace the power of your own gender?  I expect better from you.

yo-yo

I think I’m the easiest person in the world to turn on. I say this because I still get erections like I’m a teenager. I was walking through the grocery store the other day and my underwear had settled in my jeans in just such a way as to create a little friction down there. It was a good thing I had the cart in front of me — I may not be well endowed but my erection is still pretty obvious in a pair of jeans. I told my wife about this problem after we left the store, “I wondered why you were walking so slowly”

I mention this for a couple of reasons. The first is that my wife is reading Superstud by Paul Feig. He spends quite a bit of time detailing his experiences with masturbation as a kid and there are some funny moments about him procuring “inspiration” for his favorite habit. That led my wife to ask me what I used to get off when I was that age. I actually had to think about it. It’s so easy now that you almost forget what it used to be like.

My Dad had a porn stash that I would raid on occasion. Mostly older stuff from the 70s and 80s, but that was more of a treat than anything. I didn’t get to use that all the time. No, it really didn’t take something on that level to get me going. I can remember just sneaking the bra section of the Sears catalog under my bed. If you aren’t a guy and didn’t grow up in the pre-internet age, then that probably seems pretty pathetic to you. I won’t try to justify it. All I can say is, you do what you have to do to get the job done.

The other reason I bring this up is because a few months ago I had a kid, and if he’d been a boy, I would have had to make the decision about whether or not to get him circumcised. I didn’t know until just shortly before the birth that this was such a highly contentious issue. Frankly, I’m not sure why it is, so here’s my effort to settle this for anyone who might be wondering.

First of all, I’m circumcised. Second, I so don’t remember it. I also don’t believe any hippy bullshit that says it’s some sort of infant repressed memory that changes my attitudes toward pain. Even if that shit were true, there’s no way to prove it. That’s just a crock of shit.

Next, newer research has shown that the foreskin is the most sensitive part of the penis. So the theory goes that by removing it, you are depriving your child of future pleasure. Is it possible that the foreskin contains nerve endings that can add to sexual pleasure? Absolutely, I’d buy that. Does that mean removing it will make you less capable of feeling sexual pleasure? No fucking way. Honestly, if I were any more sensitive down there when erect, I don’t think I could function. I can ejaculate before I’m even fully hard if I want to. What I’m trying to tell you is something that’s pretty much universally accepted, the most important sex organ isn’t between your legs, it’s between your ears.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the last thing: it’s totally cosmetic. I’m not at all afraid to admit that there is probably no medical benefit to circumcision. I think a circumcised penis is probably easier to maintain, but let’s face it, how often do you really need to convince a guy to spend more time washing down there? I think this is a tough one for people to understand. We accept that some women want breast augmentation to feel more confident, but we don’t really put a lot of stock in a circumcised penis giving more confidence. I’m not sure that it does. I know that as a circumcised man I would want my kid to be circumcised too. I hate to admit that I would bury something like this under the guise of “tradition”, but to me that’s just what penises look like.

So what am I getting at with all this rambling? Circumcision is a personal choice and you shouldn’t let others influence your decision. Is it necessary? No. I can’t make any case for saying that you should circumcise your child. All I can say is that not once in my life have I ever wished I was uncircumcised. That’s not to say I have a problem with it, but simply that I’m happy and confident in the way it looks. As the practice becomes less and less common (as seems to be the trend) we may soon see that the circumcised penis becomes an antiquated ideal. I kind of feel bad about that in a way because I just happen to prefer the aesthetics of it and I know that I’ve heard from a few women that do too. Should the penis really be an object of vanity? Well, maybe that’s one for another day…

no question here either

I remember a joke from when I was younger.  It went, “Ninety-four percent of men masturbate; the other six percent are lying”.  It’s funny how differently men and women relate to masturbation.  It seems no coincidence that the most common nickname for the vagina invokes a cat.  They are generally considered independent and self-sufficient.  Dogs on the other hand, you need to take them for walks a lot or they start to get a bit antsy.

In one way or another I’ve been masturbating since I was about 7-years-old.  I wasn’t aware of exactly what it was I was doing at the time, I just knew that rubbing my body against things led to this really good feeling.  I refer to these as the Glory Days; the Humping Years; the Before-Things-Got-Messy Era.  In those days, way back when my penis pointed more up than out, there was really nothing sexual about it.  Even so, a part of you knows you’re doing something that you shouldn’t do when other people are around to notice.  This is probably where all the guilt you acquire as a teen starts to build up.  This is phase one of our exercise program; not everyone does this phase.  Some will elect to skip this step and move straight to phase two: wrist development.

As a teenager, things ramp up dramatically.  Hormones start to take effect and before long you’re at it two or three times a day.  Yes ladies, you heard that right, two or three times a day!!  I’ll pretend for the sake of not scaring you all away that two or three times is a lot (while all the men chuckle to themselves).  During this period you also start to receive the message that this isn’t something you should be doing.  In high-school I’d have bet there were guys that would rather eat shit than admit they were jerking themselves off every night.  I often think there is no greater teenage taboo than masturbation.

Then you hit phase three: the great fork in the road.  You meet a girl, she starts taking care of things for you and everything is awesome.  Except, you can’t be with that girl every moment and sometimes urges creep up when you least expect them.  Do you suffer through the “blue balls” until you get some together time or do you rely on old righty (or lefty) to keep things in check?  You decide to break out the old exercise routine, “just to get you through”.  Alas, you get married.  Turns out it’s a good thing you kept up with your exercises!  “Not me!” you say?  Sure, you could get lucky and have mind-blowing sex every time you ever want it for the rest of your life.  Ya, that could happen (*cough*).  For the rest of us guys it’s time to bring in the designated hitter.

Lather, rinse, repeat.  Then you die (presumably).

I suspect this isn’t the story arc for most women.   Not only is it unlikely you’d start so early, I doubt you’d partake so often.  We’re different, guys and gals, so that’s to be expected.  The other thing though, the thing that really matters, is that for a guy it’s just getting off.  It’s satisfying a need.  It’s not about intimacy or sexual expression.  It is a means to an end.

Here’s what I think.  I think we all have a downstairs brain.  A woman’s downstairs brain needs to be activated.  It needs the upstairs brain to say, “hey you, let’s get going”.  A guy’s downstairs brain never shuts up.  It’s always down there yapping away.  There’s only one thing that shuts that brain up, and even then, it’s back singing its song in no time.  It’s a tough call as to which I’d rather have.  Speaking as a guy, that downstairs brain can be a pain in the ass.  On the other hand, I’m happy that it’s always so willing, and it’s probably worth a pagan sacrifice or two to make sure it stays that way.  You girls, you’ve got it good in that you don’t have to spend so much time shutting yours up.  I guess it just sucks that downstairs brain doesn’t always talk loud enough to be heard over upstairs brain.

you thought you knew

So here’s the thing, you’ve probably read the last few posts and thought to yourself, “Man, this guy needs to get out more”.  You’re probably right, but not in the way you’d think.

Everything I’ve written so far doesn’t explain what is probably the weirdest and most important thing about me: I am freakishly “normal”.  I have a wife.  I have a daughter.  I have a house.  I have a nine-to-five job.  I pay the bills, I do the laundry and I even sometimes wash the dishes.

So that’s all pretty standard, right?  So here’s the really crazy stuff:  I don’t drink; I’ve never been drunk in my life.  I don’t smoke; I’ve never done any drugs.  I’ve only ever had sex with one person (many, many times).  I’m tall, but not too tall.  I’m skinny, but not too skinny.  I’m not in great shape, but not horribly out-of-shape either.  I married the only woman I ever loved (in the non-platonic sense).  I am without a doubt the most boring person I know.

The irony here is that I am so far from being well-adjusted.  I have what many people would envy at my age — everything in its right place.  But I always want bigger; I always want more.  I didn’t grow up dreaming of being married with children, living in a nice suburban neighborhood and going about my day-to-day life like a Leave It To Beaver rerun.  So how is it that’s exactly how I ended up?

I would love to tell you I regret my decisions, that I’d made mistakes.  Should I have lived my life differently?  Probably.  People will inevitably read this and have questions.  How can you go through a life without a drink?  Without a party?  How can you sleep with only one person, ever?  How can you even call that a life?

To that I only have one answer: it is not a life, it is my life.  If I had made any of these choices differently, I would not be who I am.  Despite my insecurities and the various other issues I’ve talked about on this blog, I’m actually quite happy with me.  I’m a pretty good guy who’s done fairly well for himself.  Sure there’s a lot of stuff I didn’t get to experience that most other people did.  In a lot of ways that’s what this blog is all about.  My life in reverse.  It’s like I started at the end and now I have to go back and open all those doors in between.

inherit the earth? still waiting…

In my about page I mention that I’m a geek.  In today’s culture that’s become somewhat of a badge of honor.  We’ve come a long way from the days when spending time with computers was a quick way to ostracize yourself from the rest of society.  Not to brag (and the irony of this sentence isn’t lost on me) but I was a geek long before it was sheik.  This isn’t an admission that deserves its own blog post.  We’re a dime-a-dozen these days so if that’s all I had to say I could find much better uses of my time.  In case you haven’t caught on yet, I always have more to say.

Back in high-school I was a geek and a virgin.  Geeks and sex are like a chicken and egg problem: was I a geek because I wasn’t having sex, or did not having sex make me a geek?  I think the answer to that question depends on your perspective.  To those around you, the people that don’t really know the first thing about you, the fact that you show obvious interest in non-sexual pursuits pretty much drops you right into the geek basket.  If you’ve got the physical makings of a geek then it makes the label stick that much more easily.  From the inside, things look a little different.

I was physically geeky.  I had glasses, I was thin as a rail and was never really a “looker”.  I wasn’t very athletic and didn’t show a lot of interest in dating when I was young.  To put it mildly, I had some self-esteem issues.  This is, in my opinion, the geek archetype.  I could be describing any one of hundreds of thousands of people here, I know that now and I knew it then.  What I didn’t realize at the time was how much my acceptance of that role affected my sexuality.

Now before I end up in a minefield here, when I say sexuality I don’t mean homo vs. hetero.  I’m talking about my general sexual awareness.  Being a geek in high-school actually left me with a few “scars” that are still healing.

Let’s start with the big one, Shame.  I was ashamed of my own body.  I was a skinny white-boy with nearly no muscle tone whatsoever.  To make matters worse, I was a late bloomer in the pubic hair department.  And if I was late growing hair, what else hadn’t grown as much as it should??  If you’re looking for the icing on the proverbial cake, I also had a decent amount of acne so I battled with that pretty much every day of my adolescence.

Barely settling for the number two spot, Fear.  I feared ever having to be exposed in any way.  I didn’t even like changing in the locker room and I was lucky that we weren’t forced to shower.  I think it was this somewhat funny combination of the popular, athletic guys thinking “I’m not getting naked in front of these guys” and the geeks thinking “no way I’m letting those guys see me naked and/or throw me out in the hall with no clothes”.  Whatever it was, the threat of it ever happening was enough to make me dread every last phys-ed class.

Last but certainly not least, Inadequacy.  I never had the muscles.  I never had the girls stopping in the hallway to talk to me.  I’m sure I never had anyone who would have switched places with me.  I had friends, sure, but it always felt like we were all just paddling along in the same boat.  All of this stuff basically left me feeling like sex wasn’t even a possibility let alone a goal.  The same awkwardness and shame that led me to fear the locker room also led me to fear relationships.  What if a girl did come along that showed interest, only to discover my woeful inadequacy?  Would people see me with a girl and think, “what was she thinking?”  Was it even possible for someone to desire me sexually?

All of this stuff, it didn’t end with high-school.  The truth is the problems never get any smaller, life just gets bigger.