Dan Hartman turns a frown upside down.

I had a rather rough day yesterday. It was just one of those days that seemed like things just weren't going to go right in that 24 hours. I met up with a friend to hear him spin some sleazy disco and he laid down some tracks. I knew I was safe from the day when that bass drum kicked in.

Three Risilient, Beautiful Women

Each of them took their own path twelve years ago and through all the difficulties and monstrosities that they faced they recoiled and sprang back not losing their charm, wit, and beautiful vulnerabilities. They are living proof that a mass of complications succinctly placed one after the other does not always leave you embittered and old. I'm so happy they are back in my life. I love my Chach, Ass, and Lo.

Sonnet 116 at 3:00 AM

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose Worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom:
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

At times I find myself unable to sleep and I will wonder around familiar verse and script...mostly dusty books. I have always found that this is my favorite sonnet. It speaks volumes of truth and over the past year it has been a liniment for my own heart. If love has waned or sauntered off due to circumstances or differences it wasn't REAL love. True love is constant through any difficulties. True love is unchanging no matter what obstacles or hard trials that you will find throughout life.

Falling In Love With Julian Casbalancas All Over Again

Food For Thought

A long conversation with Yuri and I found that his humor and his perspective was a comfort.  "Jonathan, only a masochist would love such a narcissist.  He did you a favor by cutting you loose."  And perhaps he is right.  His voice is so mellifluous and he seems to have always gotten me even when I never really got myself.  I cannot be more thankful for some honest to God truth delivered in a time when I truly do need a good catharsis. 

In The Gloaming

I spent my first night on a beach sulking and crying in a foreign land.  The stars fell into the sea.  I put this compilation together out of a few of the songs that were playing.  My feeling, my emotions are what make me human but I find that they are what are keeping me from truly unraveling.  My armor has fallen in a pile at my feet and I feel so safe to just let these feelings bleed out of me.

Summer Courses Over...Heading For Tel Aviv

After what seemed like an intense think tank session placed inside a pressure cooker summer courses are over.  I now get to relax and thankfully I have family that pitched in together so that I could go visit.  It's been over ten years since I was last in Israel.  This should be pretty interesting.  Two weeks of sun and being in what I remember as one of the greatest places on earth.  I will be in Tel Aviv-Jaffa for six days.  I'm really excited to see the renewed Israel Museum.  I'll be in Jerusalem for only a couple of days.  I plan on making a visit to the Kotel, or as many know as the Wailing Wall or Western Wall, to lament losses over the past few years.  I definitely intend to put a prayer in the Kotel about Eric and I.  I will then be off to the kibbutz where I will see more family.  Masada is beautiful and I worked there for a summer a long time ago.  I plan on not doing much work this time but just dropping by the Sea of Galilee and maybe letting some of this grief just melt off of me.  It has become a privatized kibbutz since I was last there so I guess I will see how the new take on socialism is now.  I couldn't have asked for a better gift from family so far away that has been so concerned about me.  Thank you so much Yuri for instigating this whole thing.  I am happy that my distant family took you in when I left so long ago.  I love you forever.  Maybe this time we won't have to sneak around so much. 

I Harbor No Doubts

On this day I broke a fever bred by the love lost almost two years past now with the calamities elicited by the fates.  I was sleeping to dream so that I could procure some solace in the meantime, and my slumber took most days and nights away to some place where I would not tend to my wounds.  I acquired sleeping medications and benzodiazepines from my doctor.  As of late, that fever was too much to endure.  Thoughts of where he his, if thinks about me, if somewhere he still loves me was driving me to carnal sickness.  I had gone days without eating or sleeping.

For a breathing I called myself "fortune's fool" partially to assuage my own guilt. In other words, I thought of the consequences of my actions as caused by fate or luck, and I was just a bystander or victim.  For another moment's passing I took in the weight of the world and considered myself my own saboteur.  I suppose the "fool" might be meant as a reference to a jester rather than just a patsy.  Now, guilt permeates me like foul humors on capricious tangents.  I don't battle it.  At first, I was trying to find comfort in accepting such an axiom.  Then it became pathological and took over my essentiality and my umbra.  Such a device is love and loss, especially when done by your own hand.  I was never unfaithful to him.  I found myself unfaithful to myself by not giving reverence to my own needs.  This festered to an abscess that was eroding my own humanity until it extravasated all over him.  Just when I think I have moved on I am beset by a marauding of thoughts of him like the haunting of a dead lover in an Emily Bronte novel.

Now, on this day, I've gone back to where I was before I found myself much altered by paying so much heed to things that are etched into my history.  Perhaps it is time for me to truly move forward as he so easily does.  He always used to be able to drop things that happened and move on with effortless ease.  I admired that and at the same time I loathed it.  I felt like "HEY!  I'm here.  Did you forget that I even happened?  Or is that the intent?"  I felt so left behind.  I felt given up on.  I felt truly bereft.  Now I am more atribilious.  I am trying not to let it all spoil me just as he is trying not to become an embittered, aged cynic.

To listen to our senses and our instincts at all times would keep us from adventure.  It also keeps us so inhibited with trepidation that we become shut ins inside of ourselves.  I refuse to be that way.  I learn from my personal history and I know that the only one that I want controlling me is me.  I do not want to dictate my heart with the beckoning of a man that is not me.  I've put myself first over this past year and a half and I am planets away from where I was.  That does not swear off any future fevers of loneliness and heartache but it makes sure that I am fashioned with the mechanisms and armor needed to fend off such unhealthy habits like dropping the life you know for another man and relocating to a wasteland.  I'll stay in wisemind as much as I can.

Closing and Opening

Well, summer courses are coming to a close.  For this I'm thankful.  To cram all that studying into such a short amount of time was a little more intense than I expected.  Lately, I find myself thinking about how I wish I could erase or fix things that are done and through.  I find myself lonely at times and try to comfort or cushion myself with daydreams or just a really good cry in the bathroom....sometimes the only place you can be alone.  It is taking more time for me to heal from this last attempt at trying to get love right.  Maybe somethings are out of my control.  Being one that likes to be in control it makes things a little more helter skelter.  Sometimes it seems like when I finally get a step forward I'll get knocked twenty steps back.  If I could erase and retract so many things I would but I can't and that really does kill when I allow myself to feel around in the past that seems so much like the present.  I can remember, like it was yesterday, leaving for Austin or phoning Eric all the time.  Pictures taken that truly are images of heaven that take me to hell.  I can't say just how much I miss him and miss what we had before that December night because the void that is there seems like a bottomless pit at times.  Oh.  To have something so amazing and so visceral and so great screwed up because you fell so short on yourself.  Beating myself up isn't doing any good but just picking up and moving on seems like I'm leaving so much behind.  I don't like to be the one to leave anything.  I know what it's like to be left behind.  I am all too familiar with that.  Perhaps that is why it is so awkward for me to leave anything.  It's hard for me to give up on anyone....well I give up on myself a lot but sometimes I don't even consider myself for consideration.  I'm ambivalent.  I'm complacent.  I'm idling by on a razor thin soundwave.  It'll get better.  I know.  And I know this time alone will be really good for me.  I'm making leaps and bounds in my life, career goals, and therapy.  I'm far from where I was even a couple of months ago.  I'm grateful for that.  I just wish there could be a do-over allowed.  Well a few of those would be nice. 

Just When I Thought I Was Over It

I find myself telling John that I can't be with him because it isn't being honest with myself.  I am still in love with Eric and that wouldn't be fair to anyone.

Way to go K.C.!!!

Way to go K.C.!! You've achieved over 143 HIV infections within just five months. That puts Jackson county over California and New York. We're gaining on DC and Atlanta. Watch out! BTW, the sifilis count is over three hundred since February.

Love, Loss, and Leaving

After careful consideration, I finally came to terms with the fact that Eric is TOTALLY out of my system.  It came to me when John, the new man in my life, was sitting across the table from me.  Everything just comes so easy with him.  There is no pressure or need to prove anything.  I have never had anything like this before.  Best of luck to Eric.  I hope he finds what he needs but I am VERY glad that it is not me.  That relationship was a crap shoot from the start.  Relationships shouldn't be a crap shoot.  If you're meant to flow through life with someone then you should be able to rely on them being there no matter what....that's if you're ready to have that kind of variable in your life.  I guess some just never are.  meh. 

School is rolling on nicely.  My instructors put everything on blackboard so I am kind of getting spoiled.  It's cool though.  It's good to be spoiled every once in a while.

Slipping Into The Mundane

I'm slipping into the mundane.  I'm enjoying it too.  Losing weight, gaining muscle, and feeling great.  I've had a few dates here and there.  It's nothing too serious which is good.  Summer courses start June seventh.  Other than that...things are just rolling along.

Met a new dreamy guy and gearing up for summer courses.

I just got back from a date with a dreamy guy.  He's kind of got a dull life which is AWESOME.  He also has drive and ambition.  He's 11 years my senior but looks like he's my age.  I don't know.  We'll see where it goes from the first meeting.

Summer courses are around the corner and I am VERY excited.  It's time to make some things happen in my life.  Things never fall in your lap unless you're just one of the privileged. 

Take Care,

Jonathan

Spring brings cherry blossoms and possibilites for love.

After much time getting over my head trips spawned from my last heartbreak, I might actually be ready to proceed with a prospect that kind of fell back into an old love.  I picked up a cello from a friend that isn't using one that he had randomly lying around his house.  My new lover is very worn but age has always left a better taste in my mouth like a good wine.  If I just keep up the capacity to completely honest with him we will make beautiful music together.  At Millcreek Park we were playing and many people stopped to gawk.  My hands were all over him.

There was a man that walked by and stood to listen to me play.  He walked off to his car and retrieved another cello.  We played together, the four of us.  It was my first foursome.  Later the guy and I had dinner at a gay owned and operated bistro around the corner.  We've seen each other twice since, him and his wooden lover aussi.  That is all I'm divulging at this point.  Last night was my second Saturday with them.  I hope there is more.  This time things are so much different and by different I mean not as demanding in a pathological, controlling manner at the start. I'm walking into it all with clean hands and a newly healed heart.  It helps that he's Greek....the land of a three day work week.  They know how to take it easy.

In the heat of passion

So, I finally had my super duper slut moment.  I was in a restroom...oh this can't start out good with a preface like this...I was in the restroom at a shopping establishment and this guy comes in.  He's a hot daddy type...early fourties maybe.  Tight black shirt, greaser hair, tatted sleeves, tight jeans.  I'm standing at a urinal and he gropes my ass.  I turned to look at him in shock.  I got all flushed with fever.  I don't eat off the floor of a bathroom.  He walks into a stall so I zip and shrug off my conscience and followed.  The door closed and he lifted me up by my ass, my legs wraped around his waist, we kissed intensely, his hips grinding into me all hard, we're both tumescent, then I just start getting flop sweat, it's getting so hot and humid, his hands go down the backside of my jeans and cups my cheeks, then I get all scared.  I pushed off and quickly walked out.  This was such an unusual circumstance.  I walked away with a hard on and a lesson.  I'm just not the kind of guy that can get it on in a Nordstroms bathroom.

April

Oh April.  You're here.  Please bring more promise with this new season.

Happy Birthday E.

I hope that this year of your life is much better than any that preceded it. I hope it prefaces something even greater than you could imagine for yourself.

Jonathan

SHUT YOUR FACE WHEN YOU'RE LOOKIN' AT ME! THAT'S RIGHT. SHUT IT! SHUUUUT IIIIIT!

Gag gag eww ra ra fagga fag la la......someone please gut Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta like a fish.

FINALLY!! It's about damn time.

It doesn't hurt to look at you as much anymore.  I see the scar over your left eye and I don't cringe.  Yes.  There is still that little twinge of guilt.  I think there always will be.  We both walked away from this with our own scars I guess, huh?  Funny how I thought that you were the be-all end-all, the quintessential element that would keep the earth turning.  I remember staying up for hours, sleep deprived, talking to you.  Those awkward days that were riddled with distance and frustrating phone calls due to some great divide....I think we both lived out our time with each other rather passionately.  For one time in my life I spent hours hyphenating and modifying my name with different styles of cursive.  Now, I look at that and feel kind of silly.

I've got a body pillow named Eric.

I've been staying out at my family's home in my hometown b/c my brother is going through a divorce and I really feel I need to be there for him....Nevertheless, I guess my mother found me cuddling with my over-sized body pillow in my sleep and muttering Eric and other loving terms of endearment to it...oh pathetic.  If only I had the nerve to get drunk on a bottle of wine and go out to just jump into a meaningless bed to try to find my validity...oh wait..that's not how you do it if you want to live a life that is accomplished and meaningful.  Alas, I'll kiss many men on the way to something more meaningful I'm sure.  Meh.

Just can't get enough....

Of that tainted Anita Bryant O.J.!!  I actually had a nightmare that kind of rolled Anita Bryant, John Briggs (The Briggs Initiative), Sally Kern, Westboro Baptist Church, Prop 8, and boring Eastern Euro gay porn all together.  I woke up in a sweat and had a bowl of Fruity Pebbles. 

No Faustian Charmed Life

03-04-2010
Ring Ring
“Momma.  I made a bad choice.”
“Oh, baby.  What’d you do?”
“I couldn’t help it.  I had to look at Eric’s Flickr account.  I had to see him again and it just hurts something awful and I can’t stop crying.  I’m trying to pull it together in the library bathroom.”
“Jonathan, you’ve got to stop looking at him.  You’ve got enough with battling the memories.”
“I just can’t stop the sporadic urges to take a peek.  He looks so beautiful.  He looks like some great, fuckin’ phoenix that has risen out of the ashes of some excruciating tribulation.  I feel like such the bad guy”

She put her mother bias hat on and began to transmit complex babble that wasn’t really helping.

“Jonathan, you’ve got to understand that you are sick with a disease that you will fight for the rest of your life.  You didn’t know what you were doing and when he had plenty of time to leave he brandished a knife and slit your throat.  Following, he left you for dead.  Someone that you are going to spend your life with doesn’t do that.  You have got to focus on what you have right now.  You have your family and their support and you will never be without that again.  He wasn’t what you needed, clearly.  He didn’t even stay around to find out what was wrong with you.”

“Well, of course not!  He was frightened, mother and dealing with an eviction and beaten up.  Mother, he has a titanium plate in his face.  He’s almost fuckin’ bionic.  Sorry.  Excuse me.”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s just that it’s been over a year now and it feels like such a fresh wound.”

“Honey, you have to give it time.  This is what it is and you have to learn to go on from there.  Love can’t be all about drinking and palling around.”

“It was so much more than that!!  There was so much raw love and passion and affection and I felt so safe with him.  I didn’t feel like he would take flight and I was just so scared to talk about what I was experiencing.  And accepting it and just moving on?  You sound like him.”

A rekindled sense of longing began to flicker into my voice again.

“Quintessential Eric: emotions held firmly in check, cold, clinical, and so accepting in order to just continue the flow of life without obstruction.  I can’t help it.  My heart is so tender and it always has been.  I never loved anyone like I loved him.  It scares me to think that I never will.  I don’t know if I ever want to love anyone else.  In fact, I know I don’t.  I know that he was the one I feel I was born to be with.  Now I’m just some bad guy.  Oh, this pain is wrenching my insides out!  It hurts so bad.  I’ve lost loves to death in the past and it never hurt like this.  It’s all on my hands.”

“Honey, you’re gonna hurt but you have to stop looking at him.  This isn’t good for you and can just lead to more pain.”

“I just love him so much.”

I slid down in the corner of the stall I was occupying, convulsing in sobs that bounced off the cold, white tiled walls.  The acoustics seemed to bounce the sniffles and sniveling hiccups on the swiftly taken inhales through the desolate weeping room.

“Will I ever feel a love like that again?”

“Honey, do you have an ativan on you?  Take it and get home and go lay down.  Summer and I are coming tomorrow and we’ll have a day.  Go home.  Take a pill and Momma will be by tomorrow to take you shopping and coffee and a facial.  I love you so very much.”

“I love you too.”

Click


I went home and layed in bed exhausted by my public breakdown.  I don’t have those often.  I took the benzodiazepine prescribed by my doctor and cried myself to unconciousness.  When I rolled over in the darkness of my room the clock’s bright amber light read 20:05.  I picked up the phone and dialed Harry….my good friend that I’ve known for a great part of my life and knows about heartache and gives truth to me straight up with no chaser.  I knew he would give me everything on the real without bias.

“Is this pain ever going to dull with time’s passing?”

“No.  Probably not.  You just learn to live with pain….those of us that haven’t evolved past feeling.”

“Why do I feel so abandoned in this situation?  I mean, he didn’t even say goodbye or answer any of my letters.”

“Sometimes words don’t even really help.  Tuxedo Moon’s “In A Manner Of Speaking” is just a song, Jonathan.”

“Oh, fuck, man!  It just came over me today out of nowhere and it tore me apart.”
Torrential tears came down across the apples of my cheeks as the pain twist deeper every time I admitted the truth of the matter that was always churning under the skin of the gravy.

“I know.  I know.”

His voice was an ointment.

“He is so beautiful.  He is the most beautiful man in the universe and what he does to me nobody else has ever done.  He made me want to be such a better man.  He made me want to be some sort of quasar that was so big and huge just so that I could match what he did to me inside.  I had so much love to give….I’m not done loving him yet.”

“Man, you never will be.  This wound stays open.”

“I feel like the bad guy.  He’s risen out of this and probably moved on with more grace than I could ever have.  This is on my hands.”

“Jonathan, nobody can take 100% of the blame in this.  Nobody can.”

“Maybe not.  But I’m seen as some sick fuck that had a psychotic break.  I just hope he remembers that that wasn’t all there was about me.  I wonder what he wonders.  I look at the stars at night and I still find comfort that he’s looking at the same sky.  That comfort soon bottoms out to know or not know if he still yearns for what we had….could we have it again?  Would it all be done so differently?"



“Nobody knows that shit.  You just know that you’re hurt and if the powers that be lead you back to each others' arms then that’s what happens.  It rarely ever does though.  So, right now, you can be a glutton for punishment and keep looking at his flickr account sporadically when the spirit is moving and you’re feeling sentimental and you have your pain and you live your life with the pain.  That’s all we can do.”

More tears.

“I know this is a pain you know about, Harry.”

“Oh I know.  Fuck people.  People fuckin’ blow.  You can’t fuck ‘em.  You can’t kill ‘em and there are so many trivial ways in which it is possible to commit some social sin ”

“Well, actually, you can fuck a few.”

“What?  Like your therapist?”

“We didn’t fuck.  We kissed and I told him that it was time that I get a female therapist.  He agreed and wanted to know if he could see me after it wouldn’t be so obvious.”

“So, when ya’ gonna bone?”

“Not happening.  I tried to have sex once already with someone else and it is way too soon to jump back in any sort of a intimate situation.”

“Porn it is, then.”

Harry parlayed the conversation away from Eric and into a funny little commentary on gay porn, the recession hitting the porn industry, how he finds it sick that I like the more mature, muscular, slightly furry guys in porn as well as some other favorites like Colby Keller, Jon Galt, and Adam Faust.  Of course, no porn conversing would be complete without going into detail about Treasure Island Media and some of the Cobra movies and how NAB they are.  The whole “your hole got so pounded that your asshole turned inside out “a pink sock” or drinking a huge martini glass full of cum from a bunch of different guy makes my skin crawl and some how creates a great diversion to talking about Eric and the exquisite gut wrenching pain that my love for him creates as it endures and refuses to show no sign of ever slowing down as it shoots through the ether and bounces off the plasmatic stars in the heavens.






The retail therapy the next day helped a bit.  I forgot how exhausting it can be if you really put your all into it.  Nothing takes out the pain mentioned though.  I think that is why those of us that know love and loss are so apprehensive and trepidatious to let ourselves be vulnerable like that much, if ever again, in our lives.


Totally non sequitur, but I got my results of testing out of four courses for University of Kansas and their required courses for the nursing program today.  I was pleasantly surprised.  With the college courses and college credit courses I took in high school combined with the courses that I've tested out of I am going to be able to go straight into nursing school as of next fall.  This is all paid for by Missouri's Vocational Rehabilitation program.  Most other students are sophmores by the time they are excepted to one of the best nursing programs in the country at the University of Kansas and have completed all required courses pre entry.  I kind of felt like hot stuff.  I meet with a French professor next week to also see where I will place for a double major.  This is kind of a really exciting thing.  I'm going to be a professional one day.  I will be an accomplished, independent man well before turning fourty and that is a lot more than any man I have fallen in love with can ever claim but that never made me love them any less.  I've never loved someone for their status.  I still close my eyes at night, on my way to the land of nod, and see myself looking into Eric's beautiful green eyes, them looking back into my whatever color you want to place them as, wrapping my arms around him always, and always telling him that he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.  This is something a previous mate of his NEVER did, yet did quite the opposite.  Nobody will ever give him the kind of good love that I gave him.  I know that and it hurts more than anything else.  As long as time makes history I will always feel like I wasn't done loving him yet.


On a lighter note.....my Jayhawks slammed the Mizzou Tigers today.  ROCKCHALK.  JAYHAWK. KU!

Sleeping with your therapist.

Sleeping with your therapist is a terrible idea unless you really want a different therapist.  I thought I would just drop that brain nugget out there.  By the way, the kiss was fun.

For all of you panting poppers huffers out there.

Saving souls by breeding holes.

Why am I suddenly getting kind of repulsed by how porn has desensitized so many things and kind of extracted so much dignity by becoming so everyday? I'm not jumping on some anti-porn bandwagon. I'm just wondering why we have such a focus on it and a welcoming acceptance to the revolting acts of hedonism. By all means, sex should never be taboo. I am not one for proverbial closets, either. However, what is civility without at least a few veils left untouched? I have posed a fashion of being sexual in the past but only in the name of art or just a good shot from the photographer's lens. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Porn is porn and as an ex, a wonderful man, once said "An orgasm is an orgasm." There's just some people you could never talk all filthy to. Take Jackie O. for instance. I wouldn't have been able to say something perverse and disgusting to her. Those people that are so classy and well put together....what about them? I wonder if they were really just sexual fiends in hiding. Meh. Just a random thought. I don't think that I could ever live to say "My hole is my livelihood." I'm not passing any judgement. It's' just a different angle, and not the coveted side shot. Recently, I met someone that claims his occupation as a "Porn Model". I, having no tact, asked "So which STDs do you have?" He chuckled and said "I don't."
I egged him on with part sardonic humor and part not and said, "AH, C'mon. You at least have to have a scorching case of herpes." We got a good laugh out of our meeting. He's a great guy but I can feel his low perception of himself. I could feel that somewhere in this man was a boy that was really hurt somewhere. I've always been able to pick up on hurt, sadness, grief in people even when they think that they've got their best guards up. There's something in the way someone talks, inflection, and their eyes. They also have an energy about them that I easily tap into. Me being a hurricane thundercloud a few times in my life it is no wonder why I am what some call a hypersensitve. Some think we can tap into supernatural things. I don't know about all that but I think my mother's mother put it perfectly when I was still in the womb.
"This one's gonna feel around life with his heart and not his hands."
So, tenderhearted as I may be, I am sitting across a table from a real life porn model and feeling very intrigued and at the same time really turned off. I don't know what makes them different from a whore. As far as prostitution is concerned, I say let people go and do what they want as long as it is not hurting anyone. They may be hurting themselves but that is totally on them to straighten their own shit out.
Ugh....chasing rabbits.
Porn, poppers, and prostitution....Trivial? Absurd? Sinful (when we place personal morality in the mix)? It's porn on film and I wonder...When these people try to live in the real world...Do they have a hard time being taken seriously? I'll admit it. When I was talking to the porn show pony I was having a hard time accepting the possibility that there was some substance to him. I believe that everything is equal in spirit. That is one of the things that Quakers, yes that's my chosen faith, follow. I may get pissed off at particular groups of people, say nasty things, or get upset with the choices people make but when it comes down to it, we are all equal on that level of energy.
Gads! I'm gonna stop now. I'm just transmitting complex babble now.

New Music Friday

New music is usually debuted on Tuesdays. I'm giving myself a couple of days to truly listen and marinate on the new grooves released. Please note that if I did not cover a release it is more than likely because it is crap churned out by the music industry. I have no time to give any attention to work that does not come from an organic, authentic place. Auto tune is the enemy. With that out of the way, lets begin with Sade's "Soldier of Love". It is truly a great follow up to a nearly ten year hiatus with 2000's Lovers Rock. The debuting single is just the fringe of the intensity that this album has to offer. Your best bet is to purchase this album. It's a good investment that will pay out with some mellow feel that has a tinge of sexual undertones. If you are just now getting familiar with this velvet voice that comes from a sexy, 50 year old, Nigerian, mocha sound box this album is just the tip of the iceberg that has lasted a credible career in the music industry since 1980.

I cannot resist giving a bad review when it is clearly due. Hip hop has had a very successful metamorphosis from a hip underground appeal to a major money making scheme that required for the art to lose its authentic, organic appeal. Once in a while a hip hop/rap artist is rocks the mic with the pantyhose and this is not one of those occasions. Since said art has become all about marketing lets take a gander at DJ Kay Slay's single from "More Than Just a DJ". It is titled "You Heard of Us". Spitting out lyrics like "I'm StreetSweepin on the Deegan with this Puerto Rican mami
Long hair, the pussy like tsunami Gucci's on, hoodie over, tell them playas game is over. Soon as I step in the club they like.....(HO!!!)"
Leaves much lacked for any taste. The video is very cliche full of disco balls, skanks, and black men drinking passe high shelf bottles of alcohol. It's things like this that make me yearn for artists like The Beastie Boys, Diggable Planets, Peanut Butter Wolf, and Naughty By Nature.

From there we will travel to the single "You Make My Love" by Toni Braxton. I've always got a sweet spot for this artist. She exudes class and is smooth like a perfect ganache. This little piece of R&B ear candy is a little lack luster but it has the power to make my toes tap. The layered harmonies are quite nice and then you got that big brass reel playing in the background. Well done, Ms. Braxton. Well done.

Lets hop on over to the new single "Everything To Me" by Monica. It's a little slow jam that doesn't necessarily grab you but I've cleaned house listening to this soulful treat she gives us. I just wish she would grab me and shake me with something. This artist has been around for enough time now that she should have done something amazing by now. I really can't think of anything that really sticks out. She is like her vocal doppelganger Brandy.

I'll leave a couple up for you to decide. Check out the single by Alo titled "I Love Music" and the new album by Hot Chip titled "One Life Stand". I find them both very enjoyable and yes, another good investment.

Same Shit Different Day

Other than finding myself listening to The Yeah Yeah Yeah's, Danielle Dax, and She Wants Revenge I am kind of digging the normal day-to-day tedium.  Peace and quiet are totally underrated.  The gym has kind of become my own little club house.  I'll post my progress when I'm comfortable in doing so.  Work has been just jogging along.  Some days, actually most days I am finding myself thanking the master of the universe for such incredible provisions.  Life isn't always sortid.  Sometimes it's just a little monochromatic and that is just fine with me.

Big Fat Thick Fluffy Flakes

More snowfall and it seems like we are tappering off with the white stuff with springtime mist.  Tornado season is right around the corner.  I hope that my life doesn't participate emmulating the weather.  Spring is usually my favorite season, though.  Nature's green is gold and spring always seems like it holds so much promise.  I kind of feel like things are going in a good direction.  The more I'm honest with myself and others about what I want, don't want, can put up with, and can't the more liberated I feel.  Honesty may be quick and painful but hiding things just takes the same kind of pain that honesty has but it's an internalized, drawn out hurt.  I found that I became my worst oppressor when I didn't just communicate the simple things like "This is who I am, this is what I'm feeling right now, this is everything about me".  I'm not one for much mystery anymore.  It just seems like some game.  If it weren't a game then why would you apply sayings like "Don't show all the cards you're holding." to your life.  I'm not afraid of being hurt by anyone anymore.  It's just how I handle it from here on out that is the real deal.  As far as "laying my cards on the table", I'm not afraid of being vulnerable.  I do set my boundaries but I've never been one to close myself off and I never can be.  I'm addicted to the human condition and taking life straight up with no chaser.  I'm finding it much more visceral than building walls to make me less compassionate like some other people do.  Meh.  To each his own. 

And those flakes.....they can keep on coming.  I don't care if it so thick that I can't see in front of my face.  I'm still going to dance and spin around in it.

Uh-oh. Homo no no!

I met my new therapist today and I'm already having sexual transference towards him. Let's call him Hank, because that's his name. This could either be a real problem or I could just turn our weekly appointments reason to get into the best shape of my life. He walked into the office and I just kept saying in my head "Jonathan, you will NOT seduce this one." I don't need any repeats of Dr. Liqueur, yes that was his real name, when I was in high school.

Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are.

Unfortunately one cannot help but to eventually skim over a television program whilst bored on a Sunday evening or over magazine articles in the doctor's waiting room that critiques the trivial subject of dress on the red carpet durning "Red Carpet" season.  It all drips with disdain and stupidity. Fashion has recently rocked a nerve with me and I'm really beginning to think that it's totally diminutive in the grand scheme of things.  Hollywood is truly irrelevant when it comes to real people living in the real world.  For some reason we use them as a form of escapism.  Truly you might get better results using crack cocaine.

And in regards to those actors we put on pedestals, I think it's about time we see them for what they really are.  These are people that are so wrapped up in themselves that they had to get into a profession that makes them their own best P.A.L. - personal ass licker.

Poignant grief cannot endure forever.

It seems like that things that we want most are for some universal reason more accessible when we are not looking for it.  Since I returned back home, Kansas City, Missouri, I've been approached on more than one occassion by an old friend or foe or even a former boyfriend or lover.

"Jonathan.  I've always wanted you."

"Can we get together..say a date?"

"I really want to fuck you."

These are all nice little verbal treats that were lopped off the tree of hedonism and epicurian delight and thrown into my lap.  Until the other night I hadn't even needed to think twice before declining.  Maybe it was because I was with someone that I care very much for.  Maybe it was because I know that this person is a true constant in my life and not just some fair weather friend.  Henry and I decided to spend a night at his place watching two seasons of this terrible show called "The Lair".  I've always liked Colton Ford.  He makes most of my friends wretch.  I had a hard on for him until I saw this show.  Not only is the mostly former gay porn models that comprises the cast terrible but they made Mr. Ford, by the way use your real name when you're doing a legitimate acting gig, Grecian Formula his salt and pepper.  He looks terrible without it.  That silver really just added to the appeal.  So script is badly delivered and if you are drunk, stoned, or just giddy from too little of sleep like I was it is like watching a terrible thespian moving disaster. 

The night rolled on with one bad episode after another.  I fell asleep as Henry rubbed my back and we sojourned through the next to last episode of the second season.  His digits pressed harder into my back and yes one thing led to another and we were kissing and then we were fellating and then we were penetrating.  It isn't the first time that I had sex with a close friend.  In fact, sharing that with someone, even a friend, shows you in a different light and you are essentially sharing a side of you that most other people will never see.  It's truly a giving moment.  I had my reservations in the past, not only because it is such an intimate and beautiful and vulnerable and extremely personal thing to share with someone, but because of the grieving I was still enduring because of Eric and the love I still feel so strongly for and this strangely fading dedication I still hold vigilantly for him.

The other night, it was like I was for one moment breaking away from screaming and tearing my garment.  The mourning shrouds dropped to my feet and I gave myself to something that seemed so true to the moment, mutually felt, and safe.  I've heard the saying, "If you can't fuck your friends then who can you fuck?"  I think that I've said that at one time or another.  Maybe I'm just getting to the final stages of grieving or this has been ONE LOOOOOOOONG FUCKING SHIVA!!!

Make you feel my love.

I went to a club last night with Michael, a very good friend that has made a very needed reentrance into my life.  He always added an element when I was around him.  I always just kind of adapted his confidence and self-assurance when I'm around him and I must admit that feeling of empowerment and knowing that I'm not some ordinary not so unfortunate looking gent that trolls the floors of discotheques and scouring the corners of dives to find someone to take home to feel validated.  There is no part of ourselves that we ever felt the need to keep veiled.  I was nursing my five dollar Diet Coke and getting examined by the local talent.  I saw some old faces that I hadn't seen since I left for Austin in 2008 and they quickly disappeared into the crowd avoiding me.  About thirty minutes after twelve I was making my way to the overcrowded toilets and saw a very familiar man making out with another man at the bar.  My heart sank a little I must admit.  I exhaled and walked over to them and tapped the familiar scoundrel on the shoulder.  Rahim turned and presented a nervous smile.

"Hi.  I didn't expect to see YOU here tonight."

"A friend of mine convinced me to come out.  I took the opportunity since I rarely get it.  Who's your friend?"

"Jonathan, this is Kevin.  Kevin, Jonathan."

"How do you do?"

The guy threw me shade and then nodded his head.  Typical.

"Well.  I just thought I'd say hello.  I didn't mean to interupt."

Total lie.

"Goodnight, Rahim."

I turned to go.

"I'll call you tomorrow."

I turned back around.

"I wish you wouldn't.  Enjoy your evening."

I immediately walked back to Michael and requested that we leave.  I told him everything on the ride home.  I had once again put up expectations.  I find that when I do that I am setting myself up for a let down.  Eric would've never done that, I kept saying.  I miss him so much.  I finally purged out all of the heartache of not being able to even say goodbye to Eric or tell him that I loved him one more time or tell him that I wasn't given enough time with him..that I had so much more love to give.  I broke down over the fact that I didn't think he even knew that I truly loved him and that I can never and will never love another man the way I love him.  I might be a little broken up over him you could say.  After nearly an hour of crying on my friend's shoulder he put me to bed and slept on the recliner in my room to make sure that I knew that I wasn't alone...out of his own volition.  Rahim was a Mr. Right Now.  I'm still dealing with the fact that nobody will ever be as powerful as Eric in my life.  Nobody will love me so fully from a beautiful, vulnerable, authentic and organic place.  I love you Eric....wherever you are.

Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.

The consuming desire of most human beings is deliberately to plant their whole life in the hands of some other person. I would describe this method of searching for happiness as immature. Development of character consists solely in moving toward self-sufficiency.


-Quentin Crisp

I pushed off and rolled over to sit up and light a cigarette.  I hadn't smoked in over a year and I had a pack of Lucky Strike in my nightstand that had yet to be utilized.  My bare chest was dewy.  I tugged on the cig off of a lit match.  The sulfur scent filled my nose and entered my lungs.

"I didn't realize you smoked.  May I?"

I flipped the cigarette around to have the filter face Rahim and passed it over.

"Thanks for taking me out to dinner.  I've never had Ethiopian fare before.  I would have never pinned it as a spicy type.  When I think of Ethiopia I don't think of much outside of rice and raw vegetables."

"It was my treat.  I like taking care of those I like."

He exhaled the blue cigarette smoke and passed it back to me.

"I don't like the fact that you pick up the bill.  I've found that there is viscerality in self-sufficiency."

He chuckled and layed back against the wall of down pillows on my bed.  His chest glistened with sweet sweat beads and black hair matted to a well maintained body.  The room had gotten very heated and the windows had all fogged up.  The thunder was still crashing and the lightening was very apres peau.  The Thievery Corporation track was floating and bubbling around the base of the bed.  His caramel colored meaty hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me over onto his chest.  Chest to chest he planted more lips on my full moist lips and tugged slightly on my bottom lip with his teeth as the kiss ended.  He groaned and slid his hands over my shoulders and down the slope of my sweaty back straight down to the tops of my cheeks under my denim sailor dungarees. 

"I brought condoms."

"Oh.  That's very optomistic of you."

He chuckled and I stamped the cigaretted out in the ashtray on my bedside table.

"Jonathan."

"Rahim."

"Are you one that attaches sentiment to sex?"

"It depends I guess.  If I have the mind set of a lion on the Sahara during mating season in a Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom episode or if I have the mind set that I want to make sure that there is something more to me than a good orgasm to someone."

"You are an exceptional gentleman.  There will always be more to you."

"Also....the variable of whether or not I'm hygienically clean is a very important factor in the equation."

"I've never thought that sex was an equation.  I think sex is visceral....more so than self-sufficiency."

"Sex can be geometric given the angles and such.  In Riemannian geometry, the metric tensor is used to define the angle between two tangents. Where U and V are tangent vectors and gij are the components of the metric tensor G."

He gave an earthquake laugh.

"You sound like Wikipedia is all stored in your head.  I swear you know so much and all of it just kind of is crammed into that lovely head of yours."

"Actually, I read it on Wikipedia today."

We made out for a couple of hours and dry humped through denim then fell off into a slumber.  When I woke up he was gone but I could still smell him on my pillows.

We are the sum of our decisions.

We sat down at Matsu at 7:30pm sharp. I totally looked out of place in this party of four. Bald, porcelin skin dusted with cold weather inflicted rosy cheeks and nose and grey and blue eyes that use to gleam with beams of giddiness due to actually purschasing stock in sentiment and hope and flecks of quirky love sequences to fill my hope chest with. My portfolio is much more diverse these days. I draw the happiness more from the now rather than the what could be or should've been. I'm trying on the suit tailored by the mantra "I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now". I'm finding that it is something that you tailor yourself to...the suit is not tailored to fit you.

I've come to like my pointy, Nordic nose, pouty, full lips, and strong jaw. I used to hate my features. When I was younger I would sooth my emotional melee caused by angst and body dysmorphia by sobbing while stuffing my face full of fat girl food followed by Olympic purging. God then introduced me to Mini-Thins. God bless ephedrine. Oh. Speaking of eating.

We sat down...Noah,a former Israeli soldier now a father and in his first marriage to a full blooded Sioux. A Dr. Nathan Archer. I sat next to Rahim. The table was full of olive complexions and dark, chestnut or raven hair. They all looked so handsome and I felt like an albino but was far from the shame I would have felt before I got a spine. Rahim had been very touchy since I rubbed his back at the Warhol exhibit at Union Station earlier that evening. I'll admit it freely that I enjoyed getting the attention from him. His Persian features compliment mine and I love listening to him talk. He may be a Mr. Right Now. We haven't made it yet and I hadn't planned on going there. I try not to plan too much. Maybe if I just have fun and enjoy the moments the "Now" part will just kind of fall off.

We had gone to the exhibit and I have to say that it was refreshing to see some of Andy Warhols lesser known works. There is rumor of a Lichtenstein and Mondriaan exhibit coming....I just about wet my pants over that one. I love love love pop art. Now if I could see a Koons collection!! Hint hint.

When someone great is gone.

The name January always sparks the thought of having great sentiment for starting anew.  So far this month seems just like all the others.  Not that that is a bad thing.  I can't say that life has really been too eventful since the new year.  I'm making a continuing effort to work hard at the gym and even harder on lowering my intake.  I've found that sugarless gum comes in very handy.  I went to a Greek restaurant the other night with friends and witnessed belly dancing and plate breaking at its finest.  I deal with the heartache of wading through all the guilt and regret for so many past actions that hurt me and many others in the wake of an ailment that became a monstrosity.  I do this sifting through of emotions rather quickly in the morning and gear my mind to fixate on the now and a little bit of the possibilities of the not too distant future. 

I tend to zone out when I'm running, I'm up to two hours of running on the treadmill now btw, and think of all the wonderful things I can do in the spring once I get into a suitable shape.  The pudge I've been sporting over the last year is beginning to melt off rather quickly and I can see the me that I'm more comfortable looking at in the mirror. 

When I think about the last year I think about being in jail of course.  I also think about all the great people that past away in 2009 that touched my life in one way or another.  So...here goes..in memoriam:

Mary Travers

Patrick Swayze

Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Don Hewitt

Les Paul

Eunice Kennedy Shriver

John Hughes

Merce Cunningham

Frank McCourt

Walter Cronkite

Pina Bausch

Michael Jackson

Farrah Fawcett

Ed McMahon

David Carradine

Dom DeLuise

Bea Arthur

Natasha Richardson

Bonkers and Razzles were my favorite candy.

After beating a hasty retreat back to where I came from, after the debacle in Austin had been put to bed, after spending a month living with my family in their FINALLY renovated Cape Cod/Colonial and rediscovering which idiosyncrasies drive me bananas, after getting settled in with my new roommate Calvin, a fellow chocolatier and pastry chef (it's so much easier to live with someone that goes to work at 3 AM too), I stood in our kitchen watching fat, fluffy flakes glide and dance their way through arctic zephyrs that stirred them up with zealous, syncopated blasts.  I popped a couple of fudge covered espresso beans I made yesterday into my mouth.  The flavor burst open an envelope of pleasure and indulged my tastebuds by coating them with sweet and salty chocolate rapture then flowered into a smokey air roast.  The flavors poured down my throat as I took in the waltz of the snowflakes.  It seemed like Tchaikovsky would've been inspired to use this moment to brew new concepts and melodies.

I got the idea to use lavender with chocolate and kept it to myself until I got to work this morning.  I've got to address the weather situation we've had in Kansas City, Missouri since Christmas.  We've had several feet of snow delivered to our doorsteps and many act like it is a curse.  For the drivers I can understand the nuisance it brings.  For those people that don't live in places that get white outs and ice storms I actually feel sorry for them.  Winter is really  kind of a magical time aesthetically.  Watching a world trapped in a shaken snow globe get blanketed in a soft white glitter and taking in the fragrant, crisp air touched with the piquant smoke of active fireplaces is really an experience to behold.

So what if you get snowed in.  Just because you can't drive in it doesn't mean you can't walk around in it.  Ice storms can be pretty awesome to watch take place too and the acoustics outside when it is smothered in crystals and powder is so clear.  All that white soaks up the noise like a heavily upholstered room.

"Coffee's ready."

Calvin spoke with a whiskey voice much older than his 28 years.  Thankfully, he loved Chock full o'Nuts too.  I refuse to drink anything else except for maybe some Kona from time to time.  We clincked our mugs.

"Ch-yahs."

One whiff of the brew before it hit my lips and I was punched with the potent fumes of Jameson.

"Wha-ho-ho."

I pushed my mug at Calvin.

"This is totally your cup."

I don't like to drink anymore and Irish coffee has never been my thing anyway.  Calvin chuckled at his faux pas and gave me my unadulterated coffee.  I smiled and went back to watching the outside world.

It's not the destination. It's the journey.

A good defense is the best offense?  Do I really need to set up outrageous boundaries because I've been hurt too many times?  Do we all need to do that at one time or another?  Is the heart on the sleeve really just serving it up on a platter to be annihilated by someone's boot then covered with ants as vultures pick apart the morsels left over, scattered pieces across a scorched earth?  Are we hurting ourselves by making ourselves too available or putting too much of ourselves into relationships?  These are all valid questions when pondering what seems like such a terrorizing transaction.

I know that I will never love anyone like Eric.  Nowhere as much or as passionately.  I'm fine with that because it just means I've got a dedicated, undying hope and that says a lot to me about my spirit, drive, and capacity to allow myself to be human and fuck up.  We both walked, or limped, away from our attempt to be with each other with our own injuries and malaties.  It hurts something awful, but if he's not with me I REALLY hope that God delivers a person unto him that can make him happier than I ever could.

Question:  When we joke about the painful things and the secret things we desire, like a gushy squishy puppy dog guts type of love, are we really just casting a veil to hide our vulnerability?

I found myself listening to this track for the first time since my freshmen year.  Mazzy Star was kind of like my Annie Lennox or Torie Amos.  She always took me to that vulnerable place that is sometimes so hard to keep from building a wall around.  It's that vulnerability that is what I find most beautiful in all of us.  It's part of the connection.


Still falling


Breathless and on again

Inside today

Inside me today

Around broken in two

Til your eyes share into dust

Like two strangers turning into dust

Til my hand shook with the weight of fear

I could possibly be fading

Or have something more to gain

I could feel myself growing colder

I could feel myself under your fate

Under your fate

It was you, breathless and torn

I could feel my eyes turning into dust

Into strangers, turning into dust

Turning into dust

Turning into dust

More fun than an E Ticket

I have no doubt that my mother's preagnancy with me was an accident.  Mostly because on several occasions, she told me I was an accident.  She's also not known for her tact.  when I was growing up I was a pretty sensitive child.  I liked the term "tender heated".  She called me out by calling me a limp wristed queen when I was three.  I was also a VERY chubby kid.  she would intentionally buy clothes one or two sizes too small to "mostivate me".  And it did.  I was motivated to start cutting and puke up everything I ate by the age of seven.  My esophageal tears are weapons against getting fat according to her.

I was a puffy, fat, faggotty faggot growing up.  I was also very short, almost runt like.  I seemed to be equally wide as tall.  My fingerts were little, nubbish Vienna Sausages.  There's nothing more repulsive to me than a fat kid crying whilst wolfing down Little Debbie snacks.  Perhaps it's because it directly links me to a terrible, yet at the same time comical, part of my childhood.  As I got older I developed a healthy case of body dysmorphia so that I stay svelte and far far away from husky.  I try to relate to the fat kids like I can with gypsy elvin folk.  But fat kids are always so sensitive and with the tactless behavior I inheritted from my mother I can never tell if a fat kid is crying or if they're just greasy.

My mother also can micromanage someone into having psychotic features.  Case in point, I was seventeen and carving a holiday ham I the kitchen and my mother was putting the last touches on all the trimmings and sending me into a nuclear meltdown with her verbose whirlwind of disaster which she cunningly unleashed with her big, fat trap.  I had gained fifteen pounds since turkey day, I was breaking out, she was behind on all the bills and that was somehow all my fault, I was too homosexual, I was going to hell for that and that alone, my grades had taken a dive because of my "self- inflicted" depression.....Everything was susceptible to be torn into pieces and thrown into the fire that my mother loved to fan.  As she rattled off her battery of critiques, her voice became4 a hum of incoherent keys and annoying pitches like if two MOOGes could make love.  The all sound returned to her nasal high aural sting like a power saw gives as it runs through petrified wood...cutting me in half.

I turned and began screaming in a high monotone and repeatedly stabbing my thighs with the two tined carving fork.  It was the only way I could get the crone to shut up.  It was all soon made better when I got heavy doses of perscription pain killers and given the power to refuse my mother in my examination room at the local ER.  That bill was money well spent.

The Damned Don't Cry