I'm trying to identify conflicts in my psyche. I see two in particular that really create a problem.

1. Politics: Sorry but...I know I'm right. It isn't about knowledge or education, but how you examine the problem. I examine politics the same way I examine everything else: existentially. I pay attention to the terms we are using and how we use them. If I catch a snag, I go back over the argument and make sure I have a clear understanding of the terms and how they are being used and what relevance they have. Since I'm just a dude who works for a living and I'm discussing these things with other people who either work for a living or maybe own a business...not uber rich tycoons or government officials...I tend to focus on what we ordinary people actually CAN do that will be effective. I ask the question, "What do any of us truly have control over and what DON'T we have control over?" Most political conversations I read or hear are so far in abstraction as to give me a headache. I get cranky as soon as I hear the phrase "We need to..." in reference to something that someone thinks government needs to do. That goddamned illusion that we have some sort of control over government again! Every time I hammer out the hard questions and get people to think in concrete terms, I get told that "maybe I'm right" or...in some cases, like a totally insane socialist, outright refusal to discuss the matter any further. I certainly don't get much in the way of serious discussion.

Let's face it. We LOVE the conveniences that the corporate system has given to us, including the luxury of broadcasting our lives and opinions on an Internet blog site and going to see really cool movies, being able to listen to awesome music by simply sticking a 4" silver disk into a machine, or watching a movie by doing the same. Most of us are so involved with this kind of crap that we have to be reminded that someone ELSE installed the sewage disposal system we use, so we don't have to go to an outhouse to take a shit, and we don't have to heat up water on the stove and pour it into a tub. And we don't have to light candles or oil lamps for light. But amidst all this, we are aware that the corporate system is crumbling...slowly?...or is it quickening?...hard to tell sometimes. And it makes us uncomfortable. Yet some of us, like me, want to usher it in anyway.

But that's not really my point. My point is that, while most people I know have had their minds made up about politics, I actually went through a good 15 years constantly questioning seeking out different views and even changing my own views radically. I can say now that none of you knew me when I was a socialist. Most of you met me when my libertarian ideas were dawning. Now I'm some bizarre flavor of anarchist for which I cannot rightly find a catchy word. I have arrived here because I continually look for the concrete and refuse to wallow around in the abstractions. And because I focus on the individual control and influence. And because my method is systematic, rather than speculative. But because the vast majority of people do not even think this way, I end up in endless annoying conversations that go nowhere because, in order to fully realize the truth of it, the person would have to spend intensive time with me, allowing me to show them how to think this way.

In other words, discussing politics has become a total waste of my time.

And yet, when I see people discussing a political subject and both of them are talking in terms of pure abstract and that the conversation is entirely too ridiculous, some part of me feels that if I stand there and say nothing, I am, in fact, contributing to ignorance and stupidity. Not many people have learned to examined things the way I have. Not many people ever notice that when they start talking and saying "We need to..." and "The problem is we just don't..." their actual definition of the word "we" shifts from one sentence to another. One minute, "we" means the government, the next, "we" means people governed, next again "we" means an entire country as a whole, and then after that "we" means certain segments of the population and finally, "we" means the whole damned human race. Over and over, I see this shifting around and people are totally oblivious to what they're doing. And when your words are shifting around like that, you are simply NOT having a meaningful and productive conversation. It is not grounded or focused. It is not organized. You are just engaging in cerebral masturbation. You are talking noise.

And the "shoulds". Nobody seems to grasp that every time you use the word "should" you are talking in ideology, not concrete reality. What's more, you are posing as an authority that nobody granted you. Again...it's just more noise.

So...if I get involved, I have to control my temper and even when I do, I often walk away feeling pissy. But if I don't get involved, I feel like a piece of valuable information COULD have been passed on...and I didn't do it. How can I complain about ignorance if I, myself, am not contributing to education?

So there's the first conflict: my feeling of social obligation to offer people what I honestly do think is a clearer and more organized and objective perspective so they may learn from it versus my need to protect my own, rather sensitive psyche in order to keep me in a positive mode. Getting angry is fine. Wallowing around in perpetual anger is not. And when I say "positive", I don't just mean all smiley and happy. I mean focusing on solutions and clarity FIRST and then acting in accordance with that. Consistency in thought and action. More often than not, political discussions make me feel like I was Charlie Brown and Lucy got me to try and kick that fucking football AGAIN and I ended up falling down on my ass AGAIN. SUCKER!!



2. Science and spirituality: In my mind, there is no need for one to go against the other, but I keep finding that it seems like science has become a kind of fad. It's "cool" to be all into science. Especially physics. And likewise, if you are spiritual, then that means you're ignorant and fucked up and a throwback to Medieval times. You know, there was a time when I had started having a moment of silent appreciation for every meal I ate before I ate it. Sort of like prayer, except I didn't put my hands together and say "Thank you, God for this meal." I just sat and looked at it, acknowledged that today is a day that I get to eat and the food will taste good. But...many times, I've been gotten glared at or criticized or made fun of because I want to take a moment to feel gratitude for having food, instead of just chowing down like a fucking pig. And so I have gradually stopped doing this. I stopped doing it in public and then the practice just stopped in private as well. And I feel...unsettled by this. I can honestly say that the more I try to focus on gratitude, the more empowered and enraptured I feel and it honestly does change what's going on in my world. Nearly all of August and the first week of September, I was in an almost perpetual state of rapture. And everywhere I went, people smiled at me in public. Seriously! I got warm, genuine smiles every time I went out. And it was like, WOW! There really are a lot of people with at least a fair amount of love to show and give!! And I'm smiling back. And I feel great!

But many times, when science is being discussed, and I say many times...not ALL of the time and certainly not MOST of the time, it seems like there's something really self-absorbed going on there. Like two or more people gloating over how big their brains are. "We're so cool. We talk about brainy stuff." Sometimes it's very subtle, other times, not so much so. It certainly becomes obvious when science is suddenly compared to religion. Then the ego REALLY comes out.

I keep thinking about how many disorders we have in our society these days: bipolar, hypertension, ADHD, chronic fatigue, OCD, and all those different styles of autism...and all those people who are taking medications to offset it. I keep thinking about how those conditions are nearly nonexistent in places like Christian and Buddhist monasteries and the Amish communities, where the spiritual life is the prime devotion and that it involves community.

I only learned a vague outline of Einstein's theory of relativity and I want to learn it in detail. But I am repeatedly confounded by how venerated his is by the scientific community, and yet, he was such a deeply spiritual man, moved by mystical experiences and setting his mind to work on interpreting them.

By contrast, those who have no such experiences of rapture, or of the mystical, seem to be entrenched in judgments and cynicism. So much of their egos rest on how smart they think they are or how cool they think they are. The self-parodying hipster seems to be the culmination of this. Look how cool and hip I am. HA! HA! What a joke! No, I'm really a dork! But because I confess to being a dork, I rise to a higher, more sophisticated level of cool and hip. And I only stay there as long as I keep being ironic about it.

Something about that is really revolting to me. Just...fucking gross. It's not so much that I don't want to be around those kinds of people. It's that I don't want to BE that kind of person. There's something...dishonest about it. I fear falling into that mindset.

Yet, I also fear that if I keep on this spiritual path, I may lose my critical thinking skills and I don't want that either.

I love praying. And yet, I do it in private because I feel like I'm going to be ridiculed by other people if I do it in public. And I ask myself, is this a matter of courage? Or is it a matter of "not casting pearls before swine"?

Some of my friends are spiritually devoted and some are not. I feel more relaxed around those who are. Around those who are not, I feel like I have to cover up, be a different person.

I miss my moment of silence before my meals and I feel violated by officious and cynical people who can't respect it. It brings out ugly emotions...makes me want to see humanity just get wiped out. I am appalled at the lack of appreciation and respect in society, the showcasing of intellectual egos, the sneering humor. It makes me feel dirty and contaminated.

And I even see this spilling over into politics as well. Occasionally, I see people from other countries criticize the US, saying we will never get a Universal Health Care system because we Americans are just too damned selfish and don't have any sense of "collective consciousness". My view is that I believe in a personal duty to help and give to others...hence my desire to do volunteer work...I feel called to this. My Guiding Spirit is saying, It's time you realize it's not all about you. Start doing more for others. That's been like a nagging at my psyche. BUT...I don't believe in sticking a gun to someone else's head to make HIM help and give to others. That is the critical difference. A lot of Europeans don't seem to understand this. This idea of mandating social responsibility...does it REALLY make you a better person?...being forced to do this? And does it REALLY benefit society that much more?


Anyway, these are the main two conflicts I am dealing with and I'm trying to figure out how to resolve them.

I was very tired last night when I wrote that second half and wanted to get the memoir completed, and in my haste, I think I left out some important details. So here, I want to go through those:

First, one of the things the Forum Leader talked about was problems. People have problems. We all have problems. But he made a very interesting point: most of us view problems as a problem and we want to live lives WITHOUT problems and so we are constantly trying to REDUCE our problems. But a look at history shows that some of the truly great people in this world, the people who made significant changes, the people we sometimes quote...those people took on GREATER problems.

This was a significant factor in my own breakthrough because, if we remember, I walked into the Forum feeling like this fucked up faggot...no future, body full of disease, constantly living under the great hard rock of depression, and trying to escape through drugs. And there was that wonderful world of well-adjusted, happy and successful people, the married bourgeoisie, the people I silently sneered at as "the middle class mediocrities" as my own way of evading my thought that they had accomplished what I never thought I could and therefore lived "that good life".

In the Forum, I saw one ordinary, bourgeois married person after another go up to the Forum Leader and talk about how their marriage had fallen apart. They had cheated. Or wanted to cheat. Or even if cheating wasn't there, they weren't getting any more sex. Or...at bottom line, they just felt like they were living with and sharing a bed with...a stranger. They no longer knew their spouses. And they were lonely. They didn't even KNOW they were lonely because their minds were conditioned to believe that only single people get lonely. Married or partnered people don't. This was the institution that they'd always been taught was the "norm", was what you were supposed to do, was what gave you happiness. And it wasn't working for them. And so they had just shut down.

Moreover, many of them were also crushed in spirit by financial worries. Living in perpetual debt. Paying and paying and paying. Get up, get dressed, drag your ass to work, do you ritual toil so you can earn that money to PAY, and then go home and dump yourself on the couch and watch TV until it's time to go to bed. Any energy you have left gets spent yelling at the kids or arguing with the husband or wife. In many cases, no energy is left for that.

These people were miserable, living in quiet desperation and just "going through the motions" instead of really LIVING a true, vibrant life!! And there are STILL thousands more people in this sophisticated, post-industrial world living JUST LIKE THAT!! Perhaps...millions?

Seeing all these people in this state really shook me out of my own world of problems. And so...it was this view into other people's...um...pardon me for saying so judgmentally but...their sorry, pathetic, little lives...that made me realize I wasn't doing that bad after all.

I also forgot to mention that I was not the only person there who was sitting through the whole thing with a feeling of suspicion slowly growing. I mentioned that I had to do the exercise of sharing a secret of shame or guilt with another, and I did with that woman and she didn't take it well. We also had to do another exercise where we shared our Forum goal with someone else. At that point, I had been sitting in another seat, next to this older, married man. I shared my Forum goal (to feel like my life wasn't so bad after all, to be free and to feel good about life again). When it was time for him to share, he said, "Oh I didn't do that. No, I'm just here out of curiosity." I asked what he thought about the Forum and he said, "It's an interesting mix of various psychologies and philosophies. I'm familiar with most of it. But they're presenting these ideas as if they thought it all up themselves and that's dishonest. And I think this program is way too expensive." I got the feeling he was holding back in his opinion. The way he said it...it was as though he, himself didn't mind paying $375 for this, but he noted that the Forum seemed to be targeting the middle class and soaking it.

This man was the quiet observer, perhaps in the same way that some Shakespeare plays have a character who acts as an observer. He points out the critical problems or crises going on. He is right there in it, yet remains unaffected by it.

So...it wasn't just that a little scarab appeared coincidentally after I walked out that I feel I had a genuine transformation. It was the whole process of watching how the Forum unfolded for everyone else, the metaphorical value of the Forum Leader at the podium, resembling my father, the hollering preacher, the fact that I followed enough of what he was saying to see the sinister business side of it, and, as I stated in a comment already, how all of this fit together with the 7 of Disks card in my weekly reading. That card meaning "Failure". I didn't technically finish the Forum. One could say I failed. And yet, it was my only rational choice. There was no way for me to return to a rational state otherwise. I spent over an hour, more like two hours, seething with rage. People need to get that anger out, one way or another. You cannot expect someone to settle down in an situation like that. Anger is pressure. When pressure builds up, some sort of valve needs to open to let it out, or the container will explode. In the past, I have endured extremely angering situations because I felt I "should". I did not respect my own psyche and self worth enough to realize that I needed to set a boundary and act accordingly. But in the Forum...I did. How else can I explain the gushing wave of serenity that flooded my soul once I got out of that building? Should I not have felt guilty or ashamed that I couldn't "handle it"? No, I felt nothing of the sort. I felt good. Right. I did what needed to be done. And that was my breakthrough. The scarab was just my Guiding Spirit's little gift in the material world to make that clear to me.

...as continued from part 1...

But now we come to the dark side of it all. Many people kept wondering whether Landmark was another business scheme like...Amway? I had never heard of Amway but that name got brought up several times. And Scientology got brought up a few times too.

There was another word that the Forum Leader used, which got in the way of everything else. That word was "enrollment". As he started in on convincing people to call their spouses or parents or children or siblings or whoever else, he referred to these as "enrollment conversations". As a real smash motivator, he encouraged people to "be unreasonable". He stated that being reasonable was what kept them in their state of stagnation, their quiet desperation. So...to make that breakthrough...to really transform their lives...they had to "be unreasonable."

He was very clever about his use of the word "enrollment". He did not bother to actually define the word "enrollment" as he had with some of those words like "authentic" or "transform". He neither confirmed, nor denied the proper use of the word, but merely stated that his use of this word was different from what "people normally associate with the word". But see, when I got home from Saturday night's session, I looked up the word "enrollment", just to put a little perspective on what I was hearing.

According to the dictionary, the word enrollment means "to register, or to enter in a list, catalog, or roll; to prepare a final perfect copy in a written or printed form."

Over and over, he used the term "enrollment conversation" and, after looking that word up, I kept thinking that his improper use of this word was...inauthentic. I suddenly remembered that, at the very, very beginning of the Forum, on Friday morning, he had, indeed, informed everyone that the Landmark Education Forum was, in fact, a business. I wondered how many other people remembered this. He kept encouraging people to be "authentic", yet it seemed to me that if he was truly authentic, he would have stated plainly that the Forum relied upon people who took the course to be the advertisement, to persuade others to also take the course, and that the authenticity and integrity of the Forum would be verified by the enrollee's own experiences.

Now, in checking my notes, (I have an entry in my private journal that I've been using to help recall as much of what happened as I can), I remember that I wasn't just going through issues with my mother and with women, but also recalling two separate situations in my past, when I had been gaybashed. Once, I took a man home to have sex and he tried to strangle me. Then, the second time, I went to the baths in Portland and met a black guy named Tapestry Ashton, who was one of the Radical Faeries and whom I had originally known in San Francisco at those hot tub parties. We left the baths and walked to his place, and on our way there, two guys who were clearly tweeking hard, pulled up in a car, got out of the car, zeroed in on me and began to harass me. They totally ignored Tapestry. Tapestry told me to run. I, unfortunately, was stoned so this sudden confrontation left me in a state of almost childlike confusion. Then one of them punched me in the face and Tapestry actually shouted at me to run. So I ran. I ran for some four blocks, crossed the street and then hid inside an alcove in the old church where the City Nightclub used to be behind. I waited. They didn't follow. Eventually, I saw Tapestry walking up and I came out and he asked me if I was okay. He said after I had run, they simply got back into their car and drove off.

We continued to his place and...sort of had sex but I wasn't really into it, as I was very shaken up by the experience. Also, he had...I can remember three elaborate altars in his apartment. One to Bast, one to Ganesh and one to...Kali. I remember seeing a dead snake, preserved in liquid in a jar on that altar. That altar totally creeped me out and for some reason, I made a connection between what happened to me and his worship of Kali. Perhaps that was just my fear. But despite the fact that we traded phone numbers, when I left Tapestry's place the next day, I felt very relieved and made a very solid decision NOT to ever call him and even avoid him if I could. I have no rational explanation for this. Just that it strikes me as so very odd that, when I was with him, these two drugged out lunatics jumped out of a car and accosted me...and me alone. Between the two of us, he looked far more extreme and unusual (a black guy with long, silvery white dredlocks). All I can say is that, in retrospect, my feeling was that I would have been better to simply stay at the baths and cruise someone else.

Since I'm on this subject, and since these are memoirs about my past, I might as well go deeper into it. We want to believe that we are strong. We all have a sense of dignity. To find myself confronted with TWO psychos, not knowing how to fight and feeling as though even if I did, being stoned would have hindered my abilities...ultimately, having to RUN...this was very humiliating. Let me repeat that. It was VERY humiliating. I even wished I had not reconciled with Tapestry after having run. I wish I had kept running and turned a few blocks and just forgotten about him and either returned to the baths or made my way home.

And the man who tried to strangle me in my own home. This was when I was living in that old haunted house, but AFTER the naked people had moved out and black trenchcoated boys had moved in and all the bedroom doors started sprouting padlocks on them. Granted, they were shitty roommates, but just having them there helped. He knew I had roommates. I had told him and he was nervous about that. He had exhibited several behaviors that would put up red flags in most people, but I guess I was drawn to what I perceived as rough, masculinity...that I see now as blatent hostility. So when he pounced on me, held me down, put his hands around my neck and began to squeeze, saying "ISN'T THIS FUN? THIS IS THE KIND OF FUN I LIKE TO HAVE!", he was also trying to cover my mouth. I got my mouth free for just a split moment and screamed as loud as I could. And then we both heard thumping and rustling about in the bedrooms right above us. He jumped off of me and said, "I don't like you. You scream too much." I told him to leave and he said he was going to finish his beer. I said no, he needed to leave now and I rushed to the door and opened it. He put on his coat and left quickly and made it out the door just before my roommates came downstairs in pajamas and underwear, Dave holding his shotgun. I told them what happened.

Later on, Dave had a conversation with me. He told me I needed to seriously re-evaluate what kind of men I was attracted to. He mentioned that sometimes when we were walking out in public, I would point out men I thought was hot and he was rather disturbed because they seemed dangerous and fucked up to him. I am glad he had that conversation with me, because I listened to him and did, indeed, begin consciously assess what was attractive in a man. I will say now that I see other gay men finding the same things attractive that I used to. Certain types of walks...the stomp, leading with the shoulders, and the "tough" look, which I now see is the look of anger and hostility. Many gay men interpret this as "butch". I see it differently now.

Anyway, all this was being called up during my Saturday session at Landmark, and this is not the kind of thing that I could confront in the way the Forum Leader was commanding us to. I couldn't call up those psychos and confess something and invite them to the Forum...not that I wanted to. These issues were outside of what the Forum was addressing and I didn't know what to do about them.

So when Sunday came around, I found myself just hoping things would get better. And they didn't. I started getting extremely angry just listening to the Forum Leader go on and on. More and more, he was looking like my father, as I remembered him standing at his podium, arrogantly preaching and bullying people around. It wasn't calling up any issues, other than than sense of someone conducting an ugly stage play of an event from my childhood as some kind of sick joke. I suppose he wasn't bullying. But it seemed that way. In my state of anger, I saw everything he said in a different light. I saw it as bullying and he was making people cry.

And to this day, I can honestly say that I have no memory of anything he actually said for all of Sunday...except for occasional mention of people's rackets and that term "enrollment conversation" and his constant encouraging to "be unreasonable".

I finally decided that now was the time for me to take my stand. I'd had enough. He demanded we be unreasonable? Fine. I would be unreasonable. I would go up there and erase everything on his chalkboard and write FUCK THIS SHIT! on it and see what he had to say about that. I was ready to explain to him how inauthentic it was to use the term "enrollment" out of context, to repeat it over and over so as to become subliminal suggestion. I was going to confront him. It took up some nerve. I wasn't sure I could do it. But I told myself that if worse came to worse, I could just walk out of that fucking place. So I raised my hand to be called on.

He didn't call on me.

He called on someone else and that person went up to the microphone and wailed out his problem and the Forum Leader addressed it. Then he asked for someone else. I raised my hand again.

Again, he didn't call on me.

This went on for some four or five rounds. He even looked right at me and then passed me up and called on someone else raising his hand a couple rows back.

It had taken me some two hours to work up the nerve to confront this man, to do everything I could to temper my anger and clear my head and focus on what I needed to say and do. I had to keep steeling myself up. I was going to start by saying, "Well, you're encouraging us to be unreasonable so..." and then I would walk up and write FUCK THIS SHIT on that chalkboard. I was going to do it! I would not back down! YES! I was going to make a big, fucking ugly scene.

But he never called on me. And somehow, that blew the whole thing out of whack. I didn't know what to do. I sat there fuming. And fuming.

I could not think of anything else to do. What I would have liked to do was just step out and think for a bit and then re-enter, but their policy was that once you step out, you can't come back in. You have to STAY IN and endure the situation until the next break. You could not even step out to go to the bathroom!!

I realized the longer I stayed, the angrier I would get. Everything this man was saying was pissing me off. And suddenly jumping up and having an outburst didn't seem to have...quite the same impact I wanted as being called on and then stepping up.

This was the point of no return. I had only one choice. Because I simply COULD...NOT...CALM...DOWN...as long as I had to sit there listening to him go on and on and make other people cry.

So I gathered my things, got up, and quietly walked out.

I opened the doors and walked out into the hall. Some stupid bitch with a big fake smile on her face approached me tried to say something to me but I looked her in the eyes, then looked right past her and kept walking. I took my name tag off and threw it into the garbage.

It was a beautiful day outside. Warm and sunny. And as I kept walking, I just felt better and better. I felt this deep, wonderful peace wash over me. I could not think of anything except how beautiful the day was. This, incidentally, was in the Fremont district of Seattle and I was approaching one of the streets with neat little shops on them. I spotted an antique store and decided, what the hell? I'll do a bit of shopping.

I went in and wandered around. Most everything was way too expensive. But then my eye caught something: a metal scarab with a small loop at the top, so that it could be put on a chain and worn as a pendant around the neck. It was about three quarters of an inch long. Only $12.00. So I bought it. And I felt good.

----------------

All that happened in the early afternoon. I went home and did some writing. At that time, I had a functioning printer so I wrote about the event and printed it out and pasted it into my private journal. Sometime later in the afternoon, I checked my voice-mail and some woman from the Forum left a message asking me to call her. I didn't bother. And I never heard from them again.

I was still friends with Mark Hunter at this time. The following Wednesday, he stopped by to say hello and asked how I was doing. I told him about the Forum. He became interested and asked for details so I really laid out the whole story, right up to where I walked out. I mentioned that I had a lot of mixed feelings about the whole thing. I felt like I had failed, but I wasn't sure how. I had noted that my tarot reading had included the Death card and also the 7 of disks: FAILURE. Yet, something about the whole situation seemed fucked up to me and I just could not figure out what else I could possibly do!

Hunter asked me a very interesting question: "What did your hair look like?"

I told him it looked like it did then. At that time my hair was bleached blonde and it conflicted severely with my dark eyebrows and, at that time, I also had a dark, chinstrap beard, -so it was obvious I was not a natural blonde.

"And what were you wearing?"

I told him I was wearing the same long sleeved, button down rayon shirt...except I was also wearing my black, leather blazer.

He asked, "Did you see anyone else looking similar being called on?"

Come to think of it...NO!! And there were some other guys with leather jackets or piercings or had some other "alternative" look about them in the Forum. I can't remember if any of them raised their hands. I know a couple did not. But if any of them did, they didn't get called on.

"See...you're going against your natural hair color. That's often viewed as a kind of rebellion. And black leather is even more so. So he didn't call on you because he probably sensed from your appearance that you would cause trouble like that. He was probably making a point to pick people who looked easily dominated. And if you were angry, it probably showed in the way you sat in your chair and stared at him, like you were demanding that he call on you with your eyes."

And you know, I have been around so many people with tattoos and mohawks and other eccentric or alternative ways of dressing...I have totally forgotten the impact it has on..."those other people" I suppose. It's part of who I am. It's natural to me.

Then I mentioned the scarab pendant and showed it to him. I asked if he knew what it symbolized because I knew he was fairly well educated in Egyptian mysticism.

He said, "It symbolizes death, rebirth and transformation."


----------------


So...in looking back on it all...yes, I got my breakthrough. I got my transformation. I was raised in an environment in which the adults screamed and yelled at each other and called each other names. Every little thing became a power struggle. And I wanted to express my anger to the Forum Leader by doing something that would induce a power struggle. And instead, I learned to just...walk away. I had the choice to enroll and I did. I took that chance. And I DID learn a great deal!! But when the pressure was on, I realized I still had the choice to just get out of there. I didn't have to stay. Nobody was forcing me to and I realized that my choice was the right one.

Perhaps the Forum Leader wasn't really bullying people around. And, perhaps that woman who tried to talk to me was not really a stupid bitch and maybe her smile was not fake. But that was how it seemed to me. So that was..."my story".

I reported the whole thing to Roscoe and he had a different take.

"You didn't do the Forum," he said, "You were there, but you didn't participate. You didn't do it." I listened to his reasoning and thought about it. But, as much as I love that man...we do disagree from time to time, as everyone does. And this time, he was wrong. I did the Forum. And I got what I needed. It just happened in a totally different way than I expected or he expected, or even as THEY had it planned out.

Was it worth it?

Yes, it was.

Would I recommend it to other people?

Eh...depends on the person.

One last thing: This is written on October 2nd, 2009.

My card reading for this week, using the De Es Philosopher's Stone deck, was:

# 15: Insight

# 7: Breakthrough

# 6: Confrontation



I still have the scarab too.

During my thirties, I attended three different programs, all of which I consider having contributed to my spiritual development. The first of these was the Landmark Education Forum. This was a three day workshop, or seminar...whatever.

Roscoe had done this workshop and invited me into it. So I first attended an introductory lecture. I don't remember much about that lecture in general, other than that there was a lot of vague talk about "becoming more human". What I do remember was that after the initial lecture, we were separated into different groups, with those groups adjourning to separate rooms. Here we got another lecture, albeit a shorter one, about the nature of complaints, what it means to complain and what it accomplishes. The group leader handed out paper and pens and asked everyone to think of a complaint. She encouraged us to find one that really bothered us, something that we think about at least somewhat frequently. Then we were to write down the complaint. I believe my complaint was something along the lines of "I hate that people are so driven by money and materialism and don't seem to want to live for the experience of life." The group leader asked us to share our complaints with the group. Suddenly, I felt vulnerable, but I went ahead and raised my hand and she called on me and I recited my complaint. She made a strange, sarcastic remark: "Of course. All we care about is money and a brand new TV." She said it offhandedly and quickly and then called on someone else, thus not allowing me time to respond. In doing so, I have to admit though that I had a moment of enlightenment because I listened to some other person's complaint and it sounded ridiculous to me. She answered his complaint with a similar sarcastic answer, one I rather agreed with. And it went on like this. I had a glimpse of myself in other people. I saw how I piss and moan about things, just like other people do.

She had us draw a line down the middle of the paper, dividing it into two columns. The first column would then be called "Payback" and the second column would be called "Cost". So she asked us to list some paybacks for the complaint. We were all a bit confused so she explained some more that, believe it or not, we all get a payback from our complaints. Up until this point, she was being what I would consider somewhat authoritarian and coldhearted in her approach. But then she sort of softened up and said, "This is a serious exercise. I'm asking you to dig deep. You're going to find some things that show us that...sometimes we're not very good people." It is difficult to describe but, in seeing her face, her body language, her use of the word "we" instead of "you", the fact that she was asking, that she had suddenly dropped the hardline attitude and seemed to be reaching out to us, and that very gentle way of saying "...sometimes we're not very good people," I found myself opening up a bit more and other people did too.

Someone raised her hand and meekly said, "I get to be a victim."

"Yes," the group leader said, still gently, and wrote it on the chalkboard behind her, which paralleled our papers. More paybacks came through: get to look down on others, get to feel superior, get obsess over other people's problems instead of addressing our own, get to feel entitled, get to hold grudges.

"Now let's examine the costs," she said and we did some thinking and wrote stuff down. When time came to share out loud, I raised my hand and said something like "I stay angry." She nodded and wrote it down. Other costs: close people out, dwell on the negative, loss of happiness, feel powerless, "go through the motions" of socializing instead of really being present, and the ultimately, the complaint seemed to give birth to other complaints.

She talked about how so many people live their lives with all of these complaints. They get all of "this", (pointing at the payback column), and sacrifice all of "this" (pointing at the cost column). She explained that this mentality actually molds your entire perception of reality and thus...your life. And she explained that the Landmark Education Forum's design, purpose and goal was to help people break out of this and become empowered, to make their lives really work for them.

The meeting was finished, we were handed little folders with information and a kind of application of sorts and people filed out and reconciled with the people who had invited them in (like the way Roscoe had invited me in). I had a brief conversation with an old lady who was part of the Forum. I was having difficulty with the application because it was asking for a goal...what did I want from the Forum? And I was not sure how to put it into words. The old lady asked me some questions and I told her that I basically felt like my life was really fucked up and that I was a failure and that I felt trapped. I explained a bit about BCTI scam that left me paying on a student loan for a worthless "education" and how I just didn't feel like my life was going the way I wanted it to go, that I was stuck in some sort of socially commanded lifestyle. I wanted to feel like I was an okay individual, and not a total fuck up. "You want to be free," she said and I nodded. She seemed like she understood and, oddly enough, she did not try to push the Forum on me, but just said to think about it carefully, because it was an intense workshop. In retrospect, I think she sold me on it by way of reverse psychology. Had she said, "We can help! We can show you the way!" I would have been skeptical and maybe passed on this.

There was a problem with cost. The workshop cost some $375. I discussed it with Roscoe and he offered to pay the $375 up front, with an agreement that if I did the program and got something out of it, then I would pay him back. If it didn't work for me, I owed him nothing. So I enrolled.


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I attended the three day workshop at the end of April in 2002. First, worth mentioning was that my three card tarot reading for that week was:

Atu VII: The Chariot

Atu XIII: Death

7 of Disks: Failure

I'm pretty sure I was using the Thoth deck at this time.

I had an idea that the Forum would be a course in applied existentialism, and I was correct, for the most part. The Forum presented many conceptual elements of Zen Buddhism, western occultism and existentialism. However, I should add that Scientology also contains variations on these conceptual elements. I have occasionally referred to Scientology as "a cult for people who think they are too smart to get sucked into a cult"...which is to say that because Scientology derives from some of those things I mentioned, it is a very intelligently crafted cult. Your average trailer trash or ghetto resident would not get Scientology...too far over their heads. But its method appeals to the college intellectual. And I mention this because I think that the Landmark Education Forum is somewhat like the Church of Scientology, with a noted exception that, instead of advertising as a religion, it advertises as education. Yes, very clever. Nevertheless, I walked into the Forum with as open a mind as I could.

As I said, the Forum's workshop lasted three days. Each day was a session starting at 9AM and going on until almost midnight, with three half hour breaks and an hour and a half lunch. This is a long time to be all cooped up in a room, sitting on rather uncomfortable chairs amidst a crowd of people you don't know, listening to a speaker.

The Forum Leader looked a lot like my father and that immediately made me uncomfortable. I can see now, in retrospect, the synchronistic confrontation involved there. And I also got an uneasy sense in my gut when, just as the Forum was starting, the Leader spotted a man sitting on a pillow on the floor at one end of the audience. The Forum Leader asked him to sit in a chair. The fellow said something about being Native American and that it was traditional for him to sit on the floor and that he was perfectly comfortable this way. The Forum Leader insisted that he sit in a chair and held up the Forum until the man became embarrassed and found a chair to sit in. I interpreted this as an authoritarian leverage for conformity.

The Forum Leader then started with a question: "Are you coachable?" This to mean, are you willing to lay down what you already think you know, and allow someone else to guide you? It is interesting to me, to note how often the wrong questions are asked and for what purpose. For instance, when interviewing at BCTI, I kept asking the recruiter the wrong questions...questions that usually required a "yes" or "no" answer. I always got a "yes". I should have asked something more like "What things does BCTI teach that would help me start my own business?" Likewise, more responsible questions at the Forum would be "How coachable are you?" or "How willing are you to be guided?". But he simply asked "Are you coachable?" and, knowing now what I didn't know at that outset, he was addressing a great number of people who were unhappy with their lives and really wanted some serious changes for the better, but didn't know how to make that happen. They were there because they WANTED to be coached. So, of course, they all nod their heads. The Forum Leader re-emphasized the question and made suggestions about how intense the situation could get and then continued asking "Are you coachable?"

The idea here was to get people to let their guards down and really open up. Which is good. And not so good.

He started a lecture on what we "know". More specifically, what we know that we know. Then what we know that we DON'T know. A brief word to what we don't know that we know, and finally, the emphasis on what we don't know that we don't know. He drew a circle on the chalkboard and made it into a pie chart showing the rough estimates of what we know that we know, what we know we don't know, and on and on, with "what we don't know that we don't know" encompassing a very large part of the pie. All this to sort of say, "See? You ain't so smart. So get over yourself about how smart you think you are."

He explained what the Forum was all about in an almost riddle-like manner, so that you suddenly realized that the Forum had already started and you were participating, even before you understood it. From there, he introduced many different ideas, which I would call linguistic restructuring. That's my term, not theirs. What is important here is to understand that a word is only a word. It symbolizes a thing. It is not the thing itself. Thus, as Robert Anton Wilson has said in his books, "the map is not the territory." But we don't just use words. We don't just speak them. We think them. We think in the language we speak and we get used to the symbols having a certain meaning and then attribute that meaning on a fairly regular basis. So a big part of the Landmark Education Forum, at least as far as that workshop went, was to cancel out certain words and replace them with others so that you're entire thinking begins to change and you see your reality from a similar, yet somewhat different perspective.

Two great examples: the Forum Leader introduced the words transform and breakthrough. He talked about how everyone was unhappy and wanted to change things in their lives and he discarded that. "You are not going to change anything," he said. Then he introduced the idea that we could transform our reality. He talked at length about transformation. And all this made sense to me, except that I kept thinking...the word "transform" simply means "change". And "breakthrough" also refers to change. Those two words are particularly important because I have two cards in my Osho Zen deck that are called Transformation and Breakthrough...AND, my tarot reading, for that week included the Death card, which usually means "change" or "transformation".

But the word "transformation" has a certain emotional content. It is dramatic and exciting. It stirs up energy in a way that the word "change" does not. So here we have the linguistic restructuring taking effect. Simply by using the word "transform", people already begin to feel more empowered to make certain critical changes in their lives. Again, having read Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology and Prometheus Rising, I was familiar with these ideas, but I had read those books back in my early twenties, and, despite my suspicions, I was actually enjoying the fact that I was having some of these concepts re-introduced into my mind...sort of dust out the cobwebs and reinvigorate great, powerful ideas. For other people, this sort of applied existentialism was brand new and so they were really having a great experience with the whole thing.

Another good example was the Forum Leader's doing away with the ideas of "good and bad" or "right and wrong" and replacing them with the ideas of "what works and what does not work." This I particularly liked. Focusing on what works or does not work has been a big part of my politics, in addition to my personal thinking. Notice that "works" and "does not work" are actual verbs, whereas "good", "bad", "right" and "wrong" are merely adjectives. This separates abstractions from concrete phenomena, turns an idea in your mind into something that can be realized in action on the material world.

But existentialism has another key element in it, and element that separates it from postmodernism. And that is the insistence that you are responsible for your thoughts and interpretations. And it was here that the Forum became more intense. The Forum Leader started to talk about "what happened" and then "your story". He gave several theoretical examples. "What happened" refers to the actual events in a situation. "Your story" refers to your own opinions, projections, feelings, theories, motives. This was where he invited people to come up to a microphone and talk to him and tell them what was going on in their lives and he would help them sort it out. I heard all kinds of stories about crumbling marriages and falling outs between people and their parents. The Forum Leader would listen to what they said, and then say, "That's your story. Now here's what happened." and he would reduce the entire thing down to actions, with the addition of the person's own motives and feelings. The person would then start in with "But she thinks..." or "But he just doesn't understand..." and the Forum Leader would correct them, pointing out that they don't necessarily know what the other person thinks or understands, except insofar as what was actually said.

Next on the list was the "racket". A racket is a sleazy deal. A con. A swindle. The Forum Leader explained that most people do the things they do to look good. We always want to look good. We don't want to face the fact that sometimes...as that group leader once said, "We're not very good people." What's more, we get so caught up in notions of "good and bad" or "right and wrong" that we forget that we sometimes do shitty things AND good things. We neglect to see the humanity. In fact, we may come to see humanity itself as "inherently good" or "inherently evil". So everyone is running a racket. Everyone is using his story to make himself look good and someone else look like a cad. You're either a victim or a martyr...not a person who neglected to set and enforce boundaries or to stand up for what you believe in and not the person who's being held responsible for saying unkind things to someone. You're a righteous crusader, "telling the truth"...not a gossip or a backstabber. Everything you do is the right thing to do...even if it all blows up in your face. When that happens, it's the other person's fault...or the world's fault. You're now the victim. You're never the villain. You're never the coward. You're never the flake. You're always the hero. You're always the do-gooder. You're always the responsible one. Right? This is the racket that the Forum Leader was talking about. How we use our words to make ourselves look good and how those words mold our thinking so that...we actually are believing our own lies.

Another term: "authentic". He discarded the word "honesty" and replaced it with "authentic". The difference? Ever meet someone who brags about being "brutally honest"? In my experience, such people deliberately make the truth hurt, and then shrug innocently, stating that they just "tell it like it is". But if we're all interpreting things differently, then nobody ever really tells anything "like it is". This "brutal honesty" business is a racket. The proof here is that these kinds of people don't like having someone "tell it like it is" to them. I've experienced this double standard in the vast majority of "tell it like it is" types. They can't take it, but they dish it out in great quantities. What's more, they make a point to be brutally honest in order to keep the other parties on the defense. As long as you're telling him what he's about, chances are, he's now on the defense and has no chance to tell you what you're about. Like the old saying goes, "The best defense is a good offense." So you speak a little louder and a little more abrasively and don't have to worry about someone else challenging you. By being confrontational, you avoid being confronted. And that may be "honest" but not authentic. See how that works? And all this is justified by the insistence on "telling the truth". Notice the use of the word "the". THE truth. Not your truth. Not truth as you see it. But THE truth. Because you have clear vision and you can see THE truth where others can't. Right? That's your racket, your sleazy maneuver to make you look better than other people.

So..."authentic" means you don't just "tell the truth" but that you take responsibility for your choice of words and your intention behind it. "Authentic" means you are honest with yourself. That you present yourself honestly, as a real person, who sometimes doesn't do the right thing, or does the right thing for the wrong reasons. Not the do-gooder, not the victim of everyone else's dishonesty, or everyone else's "inability to deal with your honesty." You are a human being who runs a racket, just like everyone else does.

Of course, I noted a certain irony. Here was the Forum Leader lambasting "honesty" in favor of "authenticity", yet he was accusing people of being sleazy, using the same "brutal honesty" that he condemned. As people continued to walk up and describe certain things in their lives that bothered them, and tried to spin their "innocence" on the matter, the Forum Leader would just outright tell them, "You're lying!" and then explain the story back to them according to facts and explain the racket they ran. It got very intense. Brutal. People protested and he ran them down. He exposed them. And it hurt. It was brutal.

But then again, we all made a choice to enroll in the Landmark Education Forum. We all took that chance. And what he was doing wasn't so terribly crooked. Zen Masters do their own spin to break down the ego. We wanted the transformation. The whole idea here is that if you want a transformation, then you must be ready and willing to be broken down. This is reprogramming, using linguistic restructuring. And when we take this chance, all we have to cling to is trust. Trust that this person is going to build us back up into a better person. Even as I use the term "reprogramming", I can feel the negative connotation it involves. We like ourselves to some degree. We want to hold on to what we like. Even if we want to become another kind of person, possibly a better person...we are wary of trusting another person to make us into that. And the Forum Leader addressed that to some degree. He kept reminding us, "Are you coachable?" Are you willing to be guided? Are you willing to be reprogrammed? If you are unhappy with certain things in your life, only YOU can change them, but you can't if you stay with the same programming. So is reprogramming really all that bad?

For the record, "reprogramming" is a term used in Robert Anton Wilson's Prometheus Rising and it was never used in the Landmark Education Forum.

And I can also understand that, in order to really breakthrough, as they put it, to transform yourself, or to "create possibilities" (another term the Forum Leader threw at us), you may have to reverse the polarity in yourself. You stop with the BS about what a great person you are, what a do-gooder, and what a victim, and you throw yourself into the Abyss, you face all your shitty deeds. You take responsibility for your actions, without labeling yourself either good or bad, but simply human, and you forgive yourself, and you start dealing with people on a different level.

Now, I was not just sitting there going "Mm hmm...yes, I'm familiar with this." I was busy examining myself as he told us we needed to. Despite the fact that the Forum Leader looked like my father, that didn't become an issue for me. But what did become an issue was my mother. I felt that she didn't accept me for who I really was, was always trying to mold me into something more suitable to her tastes, and I felt she didn't allow me to be angry. She criticized me for being angry. Now that last statement was an actual event. My mother DID make statements like "You're so angry all the time." with a tone of blame...like I had no reason to be angry, like there was something wrong with me because I was angry. Hearing her chastise me for being angry made me more angry. And as a result, I was growing to hate her and then...I was projecting that hate onto other women. I was turning into a misogynist. It seemed to me, that all women were manipulating bitches. I kept "seeing" all the strange and different ways that women play themselves off as victims in order to leverage control over men. I kept thinking how gloriously lucky I was to be a fag, because I don't have to deal with women so I could fuck them. Being attracted to men, I could write women off in a way that a straight dude could not. But I felt my mother had her talons sunk into me. I felt like "a Momma's boy" or that she wanted to keep me that way. That she kept me weak and sissy-ish. That she made sure I would never be a "real man".

And actually, this fits in with the father issue as well for me because there has been some research done on the business with single mothers...particularly raising boys. Boys raised by single mothers tend to grow up a bit maladjusted. They either overidentify with the female or they go the opposite. Young men who were raised by single mothers are more prone to violent crime. It's a hard call because...what are the single mothers to do? If the father is a deadbeat or an abuser, he has to be removed for the sake of the child. On the other hand, I also know that courts tend to rule in favor of the mother in custody cases, even where the mother is clearly less capable than the father of caring for the children. I've seen a few cases personally in which the father was more stable and could easily care for the child, male or female, than the mother, but the courts gave custody to the mother anyway. And in my case, I may have turned out somewhat maladjusted, but I would have preferred to be put with my mother than my father. After all...HE was the one who thought I was possessed by Satan every time a stove electrocuted me.

So we had to do an exercise. We had to confess a dirty secret to the person next to us. Something that really bothered us. Something that the Forum itself was bringing up to the surface. Well, it just so happened that I was sitting next to an older woman, who was married. So here I had to confess this to her and she had to confess her thing to me. She went first and I don't remember much of her confession. I think it had something to do with her marriage, that she took her husbund for granted and didn't really pay much attention to him anymore and yet, imagined that their marriage had become estranged because of him. I think that was it. Might have been more. I was, quite honestly, not really listening to her confession because I was feeling the anxiety over mine. So then came time for mine. It was VERY uncomfortable to look that woman in the eyes and say, "I hate women. I hate them because I hate my mother and I know I project what I perceive in her onto other women."

And to be honest, when I was done, neither of us really felt that much better. I didn't get a sympathetic look from her. She was not the warm, understanding female who would see beyond this and know the "goodness" in me. She was an ordinary woman with her own problems, most likely not used to dealing with a gay guy who hated women and she offered nothing to me. My confession disturbed her and I could tell from the way she pulled herself in very slightly afterwords, that she did not want to be next to me. And we had to keep sitting next to each other for another hour or so.

The next step was to actually call the person we had a problem with and make our confessions. This was now the end of the second day and it was after midnight. So lots of people were calling their parents or spouses and then standing in corners or in hallways or even outside the building, and sobbing and confessing over their cellphones. Some waited until they went home to call and confess.

I did not call my mother to confess. Why? I told myself that it was because she would not understand what all I was going through, this whole Landmark Education Forum thing. But I think more because I wasn't ready to forgive her for her part in it. Despite what I could see in myself, I still had some realization that she too played a role in the dysfunction. I needed her to be okay with me being angry. I needed her to listen to me, to try and understand my anger and to realize I may have a right to some of it. I didn't feel she was ready for that. I may have been wrong. Or I may have been right. Who know? But I was still angry at her and I could not confess in that state of anger. It felt...humiliating...to even think of it. In recall, I can say that, this was way back in 2002 and since then, my mother and I have worked a lot out together. I have forgiven her and have even come to realize I was wrong in a few assumptions, and she even still feels guilty for things that don't even bother me, things she wished she could have done differently.

And in recall, I am actually glad I didn't call my mother at 1am to confess. Because my mother absolutely HATES to have her sleep interrupted and I really doubt that she would have appreciated what I had to say, in light of me interrupting her sleep.

The Forum Leader had also lectured on the illusory nature of the word "is". How we use that word to establish an innate essence or quality of something, rather than describing its properties. For example, we say "Martin is a thief" instead of "Martin stole a bottle of booze last Friday." See the difference? If Martin only stole that one bottle and never steals anything else again, IS he still a thief? If we say, "Judy IS a liar," because we caught Judy lying about something, could that not imply that Judy lies all the time, even though we may witness her telling the truth about other things? Again, Robert Anton Wilson's Quantum Psychology tackles the problem of the word "is" in much greater detail than I care to do here.

He lectured on the number 2, what it means philosophically. Our logical minds divide things up between this and that. He was outlining the philosophy of dualism, and then followed it up with non-dualism, which could be said to provoke the mind into action better than monism. Crowley talks about this in his chapter on the 0=2 equation in Magick Without Tears.

So again, more concepts I was familiar with, yet being re-introduced to them through a different means and a different language...linguistic restructuring. In case I haven't made it clear thus far, I rather enjoy linguistic restructuring and, in fact, I think it's a necessary tool for keeping us in a state of genuine understanding, rather than the degraded state of "knowing". The former remains vibrant and active in the mind. The latter stagnates and begins to fuse the symbol to the object symbolized until the mind no longer perceives the difference.


...to be continued

I had made a decision to continue my memoirs in reference to my spiritual journey in private. I've changed my mind on that. Granted, I will say that I have a few people on my friends list who I don't think really deserve to see or know some of what I describe here, because I think their opinions are more important to them than understanding real people and the realities they face and what they do and their reasoning for doing it. But I realized that, for some reason, just knowing I have an audience, no matter how cold or critical, somehow motivates me to carry on, to keep examining. Writing with the knowledge that someone will read what I write changes something in my style and my perspective. I consider the change productive. So I will be writing the rest in public after all.

And I start with this entry, which was previously locked, and now unlocked.

I realized at Steamworks tonight that I've been experiencing this bitchy backlash from the YouthCare orientation I went to last week.

See, it's like this: I've known Roscoe for almost 11 years now and during that time, he has occasionally pointed out that I can be a rather self centered individual and sometimes very gently tried to nudge me towards being not so much so. Also, my friend Orry is a member of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence and so does a lot of volunteer fundraising. I happen to know the Sisters do other, more intense work than just fundraising. For instance, many people do not know that the Sisters designed the very first safe sex pamphlet (now you know). Safe sex pamphlets are so common these days that nobody stops to think that at one time, they weren't around and then someone...the Sisters...came up with this rather novel idea! But even that doesn't really qualify as the more intense work that I'm thinking of. Some of their work in organizing the AIDS quilt to be shown and, most of all, the Sisters would seek out men who were dying of AIDS in hospitals and visit them. They often found that these patients, particularly the ones in worse condition, were not only abandoned by family, but even their friends had stopped coming around to visit, either because they weren't such good friends and didn't care, or watching their friend slowly waste away was too hard on them so they chickened out. In either case, these men were left to die alone in a hospital room. So in came the Sisters, full of flowers and gifts and jokes and they performed little skits and even flirted with the patients. I remember hearing about how they did this. Their policy was not to show any sadness or pity. They were to be cheerful and funny because they were doing this FOR the patient. The object was to bring some laughs and smiles to these lonely and miserable individuals. The Sister who told me about this said that even though they were to maintain this uplifting attitude all the way until they got out of the hospital, they often found they couldn't keep the smile after they left the room. It was hard work. It was a lot of serious energy being given. And it was heartbreaking to see what was happening to this person's humanity in that little hospital.

Orry hasn't done that kind of work but he wants to. He's currently excited to be training as a nurse so he can care for the elderly.

Roscoe isn't doing so much volunteering these days but he's done a lot in the past and he is still a giver. I see...something different in both of these men. It's so hard to describe that subtle difference, but it's there. And then I think of others who do this kind of stuff and I see this same difference in them too.

So I decided back in late July to take the plunge and I had been thinking of Orion Youth Center, mainly because it was close to where I live and I'd like the chance to work with kids. I will admit very plainly that, since I've been treated like a younger brother who needs to be taken under the wing by so many people in the past, and have gotten very sick and tired of it, for the last year or two, I have been feeling something in me...this desire to be looked up to, to be someone who inspires others and who can maybe offer some wisdom and understanding. I don't feel confident enough to be an actual mentor, but...close to that.

I got an email in August, thanking me for my interest and stating that I needed to attend an orientation. I couldn't make the orientation dates in August but I made the one last week in this month, as I already reported. I was tired and just a bit cranky when I went in there. But when I got out, I was totally all fired up. The coordinator was just going on and on about what these kids go through and what the YouthCare program offers them. I thought it just offered shelter, food and some clothing but it's much more than that. They actually have various stage programs the kids can go through to get job skills, then jobs, then learn how to pay bills and taxes, and finally to actually do it...to get themselves an apartment and become self sufficient. This orientation really opened up my options about how I can be involved, and boosted my confidence.

For instance, she mentioned that a few volunteers get so interested that they want to spend more time volunteering, but of course, they only have so much time, so they make up for it by donating things...like socks. Homeless kids go through socks like you wouldn't believe. Man, I just wanted to bolt out of the building and find some shop and buy a bunch of packages of socks to donate right there and then!! I loved that I could get involved on very simplistic levels..."safe" levels. Volunteering in areas where I wouldn't have to worry about qualifications or long time commitments. All kinds of small, simple ways to help out.

But then, at the end, we had to fill out a document authorizing a background check and, while I think my check will do okay, it's been a week since I've heard from them.

And I realized tonight, that I've been getting impatient. And even bitchy.

See, just that one orientation gave me a taste of what this was all about. I felt good about just attending to learn more and finding that after learning more, I wanted to plunge right in.

A couple times, I have prayed to my Guiding Spirit and asked for more positive, empowering people to come into my life. Both times, I have gotten this answer:

Be a more positive, empowering person yourself, and they will appear.

So...since I've thought about this so much, and since I've taken these initial steps, I feel like I'm at this edge, this precipice, this doorway between two different worlds. And I want to pass. I want a breakthrough. I want to get OUT of that world where everyone sits around shooting their mouths off about what they think they know, and their little opinions about the world and the people in it. I want to jump INTO this larger, new world, where people actually do things to contribute to a better environment. I want to feel that, be a part of that.

But this wait...it's been grinding on my psyche. So I'm suddenly catapulted into this nightmarish world where I see selfishness everywhere my beady little eyes look. A hard one is when I'm at the Paramount Theater and I get assigned to do gum check duty, which means I have to wander around the theater staring at the floor, looking for blotches of gum. And when I find one, I spray this stuff on it to soften it up and dissolve it, and then use a scraping tool to chisel it up off the floor and then throw it in one of the beaver bags. I get annoyed doing this because I think of all thse careless fuckers who have to have something in their mouths, like cows chewing cud, and they can't be bothered to wrap it up and throw it away, so no, they just throw it on the floor or stick it under the seat or the armrest. Fucking pisses me off!

Same with smokers. When they're done with it, they just throw the still burning butt on the sidewalk and keep walking. Or if they're really "cool", they flick it at a building or a tree. I'll say it now: You're not cool, Mr. Buttflicker. You're a shitbag.

Here again, I have to bring up Roscoe. He smokes. But he lets his butt drop to the sidewalk, steps on it to put the cherry out, and then picks it back up and puts it into his pocket until he finds a trash can and then deposits it there. I don't know anyone else who does this.

My mother was talking of the time she met him. She and her husbund were coming up to visit me for my birthday and offered to take me out to dinner. She specified a nice place with good food. Roscoe had already offered and I wanted him to meet my mother, so we had this big dinner at Beppo's (that's an Italian restaurant, for those of you non-Seattleites). So we ordered our food. Just before it was served, a family was seated at the table next to ours, a family with two giggling teenage girls. When we got our food and started eating, Roscoe noticed the girls were checking out his food. So he said, "You want to try some of this?" They blushed but said yes and so he said, "Give me your forks." They gave him their forks and he put a big, heaping sample on each and gave it back. The girls ate it and liked it so much they agreed one would order it and the other something else and they'd share their plates. Their parents beamed at him. My mother was awestruck. She told me, "I knew he was a good man when I watched him do that." Oddly enough, it barely registered with me, partly because I am used to seeing him do this kind of thing, and partly because I'm a rather self centered person.

He does this stuff all the time. All kinds of little things to show that he is conscious and aware of other people and his environment. Always giving and sharing. See? There is a reason why this man is my best friend and why I look up to him and want to be like him.

And Orry. Another wonderful, generous, caring person. And Purple Mark is very generous too (all these people are Leos, by the way...see why I like Leos?)

So...I'm ready. And I look more now for opportunities to help other people out. And it feels great when I can!!

But I want to go further in and this waiting...fuck, it's driving me crazy!! I feel like I'm stuck in Selfish World, like the claws of selfishness are trying to hold on to me, keep me back. I see apathetic and careless behavior everywhere and I'm feeling very hypersensitive to it. I'm trying to hack away at those claws, shouting, "NO!! Let me go! I want to evolve! I want to transform! I want to contribute! I want to be a part of!" And it's just making me really bitchy and nasty.

Some drunks hit me up for money on my way to the store tonight. I said no. But then, after leaving the store, I gave them some and they were more grateful than I expected. So...I felt a little better. Yes, they'll probably spend it on an Old English 40oz and forget about it tomorrow, when they're hungover. I don't care. It just felt a little better than walking past them, with both of us knowing I had a buck or two to spare.

Today, my dear sweet Paramount Theater awarded me a $1.50 an hour raise!! YAY! I love that place! Honestly, I think it's the best place I've ever worked...ever! I just can't stop loving it or feeling immense amounts of gratitude for what it is and what happens there. I don't even care that my job is to clean toilets or that our crew gets blamed for all kinds of petty shit. That stuff pales compared to all the cool shit, like how easy the work is, how much I get paid to do that easy work, the one hour lunches, that it's run by a non-profit organization so we don't have some owner bitching about his business and how much money it's making HIM (the whole attitude of a non-profit is totally different!), that I'm involved in an environment that supports the arts, the fact that I can see any show I want for free...uh...WITHOUT going through their BS comp ticket thing...and even sneak around backstage and see stuff others don't get to see (I got to touch "the Great Oz" talking head that they use for Wicked. It's a whole different story when you have keys to the joint. I even got pics of the instruments inside the walls on the sides of the stage that they use for their silent movie nights...those walls that yami thinks they have outdated speakers in. I also got pics of the inside of the projection booth. I might post those pics sometime when I'm in the mood to patiently upload into the scrapbook on my snail-slow dial up connection. Then again, I might not, cuz I'm not supposed-ta have those pics. Oh yeah, I even gave a little back, specifically to my crew. For about a year now, our "coffee table" was a large cupboard door sitting on top of two paint buckets. I got sick of that. So I went to Value Villains and found a really cool, oval coffee table for a nice price, bought it and hauled it on foot down the theater and put it in our office. My crew loves it. To be fair though, this is something I did last month...not today. But still...I loves me theater!

Fuck, I love my job!

And that other, cruddy job is going bye-bye. No more terrifying sights of 20 year old twinks on meth getting fucked by 70 year old uggos. No more condoms with poop all over them. No more shitty music throbbing in my ears. No more of that retarded CEO creep watching me like a reptile while I do my work, and criticizing little petty shit after making some monumentally STUPID design change ("No more garbage cans in the hallways. They look tacky," he says...So we get rid of them and the patrons just throw their trash on the floor instead. Fucking idiot). This is also good in the sense that there's going to be ANOTHER new manager coming in and something tells me, he's gonna be a major asswipe so I'm glad to be making the exit.

So YAY and more YAY! Out with the bad job! In with the good job!

Also, I have applied to do volunteer work for the Orion Youth Center, or, more properly, for YouthCare in general (although I will probably be doing most of my volunteering at Orion). This organization helps homeless youth by providing meals, shelter, clothing and toiletries, and even has stage-by-stage programs to help them learn job skills and socialization skills to get off of the streets and become empowered, productive and successful adults.

So I went to my orientation today, learned more about what it's all about, what's required and my gamut of options. Becoming an HIV counselor is one thing I'm looking at, also, maybe just a "life skills" counselor, and I'm also interested in just preparing and serving meals to the kids. And they have an outreach program where they drive around in a van and park it, and then hand out toiletries and sort of "interview" the kids to get them thinking about where they're going, what they're doing and what's available for them. I might want to get in on that. I'm totally fucking stoked to get into this!


Mooooooving forward!!

-that I don't waste a lot of time watching TV or playing video games

-that my mistakes have given me some degree of insight into things, where others cannot see

-that I have a mind that can integrate spiritual ideas with an existentialist method and thus, not devolve into vapid superstition, nor vapid nihilism

-that I have not yet caved in to cynicism

-that when seeing people do things that don't make sense, I look for an emotion, rather than writing them off as "stupid"

-that I don't routinely refer to other gay men as "fags" and that I only occasionally prefer the word "queer" but more commonly embrace "gay", which is the most positive and affirming word I've heard so far to describe my kind

-that I am a work in progress and since all of life is a process of development, this is natural and in proper alignment

-that I can feel empathy for others

-that I did, finally get "connected" as it were, even if that connection is hard to maintain and that this connection allows me to function harmoniously without the need for philosophy or other cerebral props (in other words, I don't have to sit and rationalize my value and purpose in life, or of life itself)

-that I am no longer enslaved to debt

-more recently, that I've finally adjusted my thinking to understand my "art" as a simple self indulgence...a narcissism...rather than a gift of "great vision" to the world, and that my real contribution to the well being of others must and will occur in other, less glamorous ways

-that I've aged well, haven't gotten fat or lost a lot of hair, am basically holding up pretty well, relatively speaking

-that I actually survived turning 30, which I once never thought I would

-that I have an ultimate goal of choosing my time, place and manner of my own death

-that I am NOT, as of this date, smoking pot on a daily basis and, indeed, have not smoked for at least a month

-that I don't drive a car or do a lot of airplane flying, have reduced the amount of plastic I use, and am generally not as dependent upon technology as many other people are

-that I am capable of seeing myself in others...particularly in their faults

-that, although I have strong emotions and occasionally go through steep turns of depression, I refuse to blame it all on some disorder

-that I can see clearly, that the era of genuine gay pride is over and the era of gay shame has infected most gay men, and that I can feel sadness, instead of condemnation and contempt

-that I don't feel all that burdened by allowing my sexual identity to be so prominent in my overall identity, since sexuality permeates all areas of the personality in the same way the Central Nervous System permeates all other areas of the body (that, by the way, is backed up by research and development in neuroscience). Being "wired differently" makes me more aware of this and this is natural, not dysfunctional

-that most guys seem to find me pretty good in bed

-that I have relatively few enemies

-that I can forgive...even if not right away

-that I don't have dreams about fighting battles I cannot win, trying to force square pegs into round holes or other exercises in futility

-that I've learned it's okay to drop the sword and still keep my honor

-that I'm happy with having virtually no social life, rather than a social life that revolves around going to bars and/or getting drunk

-that, although I do get angry from time to time, I am no longer living in constant anger, resentment and unrest, and even have great moments of ecstatic rapture (which is to say, a sense of value and purpose and importance in life itself and a tremendous feeling of joy , without the use of drugs or alcohol)

-that, even though I am still scattered, I am BECOMING more focused

"Why?"

I hear the question a lot from those who apparently don't have any interest in knowing the answer. They just ask why and want to let the question sit there by itself.

Why did I do what I did to get HIV?

I was diagnosed with HIV on January 2nd, 2001.

In order to understand the "why" of my actions, it is necessary to go back to near the end of 1999.

The turn of the millennium was coming up and, six months after that, I would be turning 30, a year of great significance to gay men below that age and of a different significance to many other people for other reasons.

First of all, there tends to be a general expectation that one should "have his shit together" and even have his career in order. At least, that's the expectation I always sort of felt from various individuals. You can get away with a certain amount of BS and immaturity up until you are about 25. Then, suddenly, the alarm clock rings and you're supposed to straighten up and start behaving like an adult and have something to show for yourself. You should have something going AT LEAST by the time you're 27 and when you're 30, the project should either be well under way to finish, or finishing up.

Second, the gay subculture, especially today, has a very unhealthy obsession with youth and many mixed messages that go along with it. The ideal is to look about 25 for as long as you can, whilst behaving as though you are a well-seasoned and experienced man in his 50's. Someone once told me, "25 is middle age in gay years." I'd say that's more or less true. Certainly, 30 is a dividing line in a very bizarre way: those under 30, particularly under 26, don't trust anyone over 30, and those over 30, particularly if they're over 35, don't trust anyone under it. Then, of course, there's the fact that a man is in his sexual prime in his early twenties and it goes into decline around 26 so by the time he's 30, it's over...at least to many minds. Particularly to those under 25. Gay men under 25 have a LOT of delusions about aging and sexuality and maturity. And, in some ways, maybe that's the way it needs to be. Perhaps the late twenties, early thirties are a kind of rite of passage that we have to go through to learn to focus and deal with the world of humans...REAL humans, with all their complex and conflicting thoughts and emotions...not idealized humans who are either bold heroes or total fuck ups.

In retrospect, I think 30 is a year that causes a lot of unnecessary stress to people, particularly gay men. It certainly caused some stress to me, particularly since I would be turning 30 after the 20th century drew to a close and the 21st century opened its gates.

So I was looking at my life, and seeing that I still had not really "secured" anything for myself, nothing to show, other than stories and nothing in the works, no brilliant plots incubating and ready to hatch.

I was feeling like a failure.

As an aside, the billionaire Steve Forbes once posed an interesting question: What is it that distinguishes achievers and successes, from the rest? He went through the list of the usual things one might imagine: wealth, a good family, networking contacts, etcetera. He found too many exceptions to all of those to see any truth to them. His answer was this: the difference is in how the individual perceives and deals with failure. To those who truly succeed, really accomplish what they want and make their lives happy, failure is just a lesson to be learned and stepping stone. It isn't the end. And it isn't something that ruins your life. And, I think to Forbes, nobody IS a failure. But people do fail at things sometimes. Failing is a result, not a personality trait.

I would not learn this until a few years later though. I was feeling like I was a failure, like my life had no meaning or value. And I was finally letting my mother's harping about schooling get to me. I decided that, when 2000 came, I needed to so something. SOMETHING! ANYTHING that would break this pattern of dead end jobs and non-accomplishment.

It is important to understand that the rationality here came from some pretty negative emotions, fed by bad advice from my mother. And not to say she's a bad person. She was born into a different generation, one that hailed colleges as "the gateway to success" and she could not really perceive anyone being a REAL success without going and getting that education. And she didn't know any better. So she advised me according to what she knew best. And unfortunately, it was the wrong advice.

She told me about this place called the Business Computer Training Institute: BCTI, which she learned about on TV. Looking back on that whole ugly affair, I can say this: NEVER pursue and education through some school that advertises on TV. There is a reason why they have to. They are either crappy and substandard, or downright scams.

I decided to check this place out. I met with a "career counselor" or whatever they called them...a recruiter. I asked all the wrong questions. Wrong question, in a situation like this, are "yes" or "no" questions. You see, when you ask someone who wants you to sign up these kinds of questions, the answer will ALWAYS be "YES!" So I got all those yeses and it sure looked good to me. The main boo-boo here was that I wanted to pursue my own business as a freelance artist and I needed information on copyrights, licensing, drawing up contracts. But I didn't think about any of those details. I just asked the vague, general questions and I got YES YES YES! all the way.

And I was feeling desperate. I wanted to break out of this failure. I wanted to DO something. Something REAL! So I signed up. I was even relieved to see that all I had to do was sign contracts and THEY handled all the financial aid shit FOR ME! How about that?

In addition to this, I was also baited by my mother offering to buy me a computer if I went through this and graduated. Nearly everyone I knew had a computer and was connected so I felt like I was really falling behind in the world.

The most important thing about this mess is that the entire "degree" you earn takes seven and a half months. If you drop out before three months, you will only owe half the student loans, but once you go over that three month mark, you will owe the entire amount, regardless of if you drop out.

It was a little after the three month mark that I started to inquire more specifically about the things I wanted to learn, and I discovered that this school basically just gave skills to become a receptionist or data entry person. You learned MS Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Access, a program called Peachtree, which I understand nobody uses anymore, and you learn how to create resumes and dress for business and you learn a little bit about how to answer interview questions...within the context of the jobs you were training for.

NONE of the shit I wanted to learn was being offered. Nothing. And if I dropped out, I would STILL have to pay the entire student loan, which was nearly $7,000...more with the interest added.

And I wouldn't get that computer until I graduated.

So, there I was, realizing I'd been had and having to stick to this fucked up commitment that I knew would take me nowhere. I had no interest in an office job of any kind.

First I was pissed. Then I fell down into despair.

And that was when it started.

The weird thing about this tale is that I never did crystal meth or even coke. I did, of all things, MUSHROOM TEA. For some reason, mushrooms made me really horny. So I started buying magic mushrooms and making tea, drinking it, and then going to the baths. I got fucked. A LOT.

And many of these men fucked me without condoms. And I didn't care. I never asked. I never even thought about it. I just wanted to be high and get fucked. Because it was the only thing I could think of to take my mind off of the fact that, in my desperation, I had made this seriously stupid career move that would cost me so much money. For the record, I wouldn't mind paying three times that much...IF I'm getting the education I want. But to pay that much for something totally useless and dead-ended. It was so depressing.

I tried talking to my mother about it, how I felt and all she could do was give me lame advice about office jobs being "a stepping stone". To what? Another office job? She didn't get it. She just...didn't...get it.

And I hated being there. I hated most of the staff. I went through the motions. And then, when the weekend came, I went back to the baths again to get high on mushroom tea and get my ass fucked by...almost whoever wanted it. Some of the really nastiest, ugliest men were turned away. But I let in plenty of men that I would otherwise just not want to have sex with.

There is also something else involved here: I had also given up on a love life. I wanted one. But I saw myself as totally dysfunctional and therefore condemned to solitude. I didn't see that I had any choice in the matter. This was fate. And since I didn't think a mate was "in the cards", so to speak, I decided I'd rather be a slut than an ascetic. So I may not be able to enjoy a loving, passionate kiss. At least at the baths I can still get some dick. At home, all I get is my right hand...well, left hand, actually. I use my left hand for that.

So this is where we get into that "why?"

Much of it makes sense when you feel like your life is cursed and you have no future and that you're just a broken, dysfunctional creature and that you have no control over anything. This is what leads to these kinds of decisions.

This...and drugs. Crystal meth in particular causes men to become single-mindedly fixated on sex and nothing but sex, no matter WHAT his self worth is outside of it. I say this because I've seen guys who are or were NOT in this state of desperation that I describe STILL go down...just because of the meth. That drug literally does drive you insane. Crazy. Irrational. All thoughts rewired according to obsessions and compulsions.

As I said, I never did crystal. But I went that same route because I felt like my life was just...worthless.

Near my graduation, I did get this boyfriend named Roy, who had HIV and, although we did use condoms (fancy that! I bareback with strangers but when I meet a guy I know and he tells me he has HIV, I insist on condoms. This is called "Wanting to FEEL safe, rather than BE safe" and many HIV- men live by this irrational notion. I see it all the time. It's also about...just not wanting to deal with the reality of the disease. One wants to have "innocent sex". So...no condoms, no inquiries, no discussion. You just...get down and start fucking. And it "feels natural and innocent" and you feel like you're outside that realm of reality.)

There was ONE particular incident when I was sucking Roy's dick and he pulled out and came on my face and right in my eye. I felt it burn. And as soon as I felt that salty burn in my eye, I thought of his HIV and wondered if I'd just been infected.

That may have been it. Or maybe not. I really don't know.

It doesn't really matter though.

At this point, I'm not going to go into all the nightmare of what happened after I was diagnosed. I've written about that before and to write AGAIN feels like opening up an old wound that doesn't need to be opened. But the significant point is that I started going through my tarot deck, and my books on Qabalah and chaos magick and astrology and...it all seemed frivolous and superficial. It had nothing to do with LIVING. With REAL LIFE. I now had a fucking DISEASE and I just could NOT go on playing games with cards and symbols like some idiot who thinks he can ride a bike without wheels, if only he wills it hard enough.

So this was the major change in direction. I realized I'd never really put any thought into ethics, or personal development. I'd just danced around in this "let's pretend" world of magick and mysticism.

At the same time, I still felt some deep yearning for a connection to something greater. I felt that void in my soul and I wanted to fill it. I started looking more towards Zen Buddhism and that seemed to offer comfort.

And Roscoe was there. He was the pillar of strength that I could lean on for most of that year (2001). He either called me or stopped by to visit every single day for at least the first three months. I cried with him. He offered me comforting advice. One thing I remembered he said, that helped me get through all that shame and pain was:

"Nobody in their right mind would place themselves in danger like that."

The emphasis there is in their right mind. Again, going back to crystal meth and a descent into despair and futility...this is NOT a right state of mind. This is madness. This is some of the worst emotion, worse than fear, I think, -totally consuming one's rationality. People don't self destruct because it just seems like something interesting to do. They do it because their minds are...for lack of a better phrase, "possessed by a demon".

One of the things I despise about the philosopher Ayn Rand is her assertion that logic and reason are the tools to override emotion and dictate sound choices. That is absolutely incorrect. Quite the opposite. Logic and reason DEPEND upon a calm mind in order to function and those tools are utterly useless when the mind is flooded with a strong emotion. In fact, that emotion USES logic and reason to justify itself. When someone is angry...intensely, furious...ENRAGED...every fact of existence somehow "proves" the correctness of that emotion. When someone is in love, every fact of existence "proves" the truth of it. This is one of the reasons why logic is NOT a suitable tool for determining truth or in determining alignment or setting goals. Logic is ONLY an organizing tool. We tend to think of logic and intuition as being equals, because of that whole right side and left side of the brain thing. But, in my experience, intuitions and passions are actually the deeper and more potent part of the human mind and logic merely arranges the phenomenon according to those passions.

I'm going to skip over the time I spent traveling, after having left San Francisco, partly because I've already written quite a bit about that before (I can just repost some of it). I might merely state that during that year and a half, I "met" Nuit in New Mexico and engaged in several nights of adoration of her, and then I "met" the Baron Samedi at the Voodoo Museum in New Orleans. Those are, perhaps, the most significant spiritual/magickal experiences of that time period.


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I moved to Seattle in late 1998...November, I think, after having visited for six months and then moving on. Mark Hunter offered me his living room floor to stay. This was a mixed blessing. While it did, indeed, give me the foothold I needed to become stable in Seattle, I was also somewhat at his mercy and he was one of those Alpha Males who enjoy my presence as long as I acquiesce to them and who, while talking empty talk about encouraging me to evolve and develop, actually block it by their own actions. Hunter had a lot of similarities to Jordan. Differences: Hunter, having a black belt in Jujitsu, was a more physically powerful person and did not have a drinking problem (although I suspect he did have a coke problem at one point). Jordan is more honest about his bisexuality. I say MORE honest. That doesn't mean totally honest. Jordan admitted to "tendencies". Hunter was, for the entire time I knew him, totally in the closet. Hunter was also more conniving than Jordan. Nevertheless, both of these men were tall and had strong personalities and a lot of presence. Both had some understanding of themselves as an Alpha and seemed to think everyone was supposed to bow down to them. Both bullied people around occasionally and were easily threatened and irritated by anyone who didn't want to put up with their bullying. Both of these guys treated ME like the girlfriend they wished they'd had, even though neither would have sex with me. Both had major control issues. And I think I had both of them in my life because I was very attracted to a "dominant big brother" type of guy and so I attracted them.

This is important to emphasize because I am no longer interested in this dynamic and am focusing on a different kind of male friendship.

Soon after I got set up in Seattle, I started checking out the various bathhouses. On one occasion, I went to Club Z. I checked into a room, went up to my room and undressed, put on my towel and headed back down to the shower area to get all wet and clean for some play. On my way there, I saw an older black man sitting on the bench and undressing at the lockers. He was of the large, beefy muscle type of body. Our eyes met and I could tell he was into me since he watched me walk into the showers. I think I gave him a smile and I thought, "Yeah! He looks like fun!" Despite the obvious, wolfish lust, he also had kind, loving eyes. I remember that.

I took my shower and went back up to my room and hung out with the door open. I saw a couple other guys I was interested in...both of them black, by the way. But I was kind of having this "first glance, first chance" mentality. That is, I saw this beefy man first and so I was more interested in getting fucked by him.

He showed up in my doorway and asked politely if I wanted some company. I smiled and invited him in and we got going. It was a FANTASTIC fuck!! We both came twice. Cumming twice is very rare for me. He had a big cock and the BIGGEST balls I have ever seen on a man. It is like holding a softball in your hand. I am not exaggerating. They are HUGE! He also had that natural talent for sex that most black men have. I don't know how to describe it but...they go for what they want without inhibition. And with tops in particular, they take control of the sex, having it their way, but with plenty of seduction...not like a boor, although they can be that aggressive mandingo if you make it clear that you want that. I really don't meet very many white men who can fuck like this, who can seduce and control and make it all happen so naturally and confidently. It's one of the reasons I love having sex with black men.

In fact, while I'm on that subject, I'll mention that I also like the fact that they are aggressive in cruising, yet usually respectful. They let you know they like you and if you aren't into it, they back off and cruise someone else. They DO NOT STAND for mixed signals. Their attitude about sex is very much "Either shit or get off the pot." Stop wasting time and make up your mind. Latinos are similar in approach, but with more variation. White men tend to play way too many games, due to uptight Euro attitudes about sex and various insecurities. Asians are aggressive but in a disrespectful way. They look at you and grin like God has commanded that you will be theirs. A lot of inappropriate grabbing and groping and they don't take no for an answer unless you damned near scream it at them to the point of embarrassing them. They kiss sloppily and have no sense of artfulness about the movements of sex. And yes, most of them do have small dicks. I generally don't get into an Asian unless he's thin and pretty and has a nice ass and I want to fuck it. Asians do make good bottoms.

Of course, dumpy, old trolls who are desperate for anything are the main exception to all these patterns, regardless of their race.

After it was done and we were satiated, we got to know each other. His name was Roscoe. I seem to recall that after he left my room, I just got dressed and left. Got what I wanted. Didn't need to get anymore.

I saw him a couple more times at Club Z and we fucked again and it was always great. Then one time I saw him and we got mixed signals. I thought he was done with me and wanting someone else. He apparently thought I was done with him. Then we saw each other again and were interested again and so fucked again.

I didn't see him for a few months, until one day I was walking up Pike street in a pair of leather shorts and he was leaning against his car, smoking. I stopped and talked, then we got into his car, drove to the Arboretum and had sex again. This time we exchanged phone numbers and became fuckbuddies officially.


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In my last year of San Francisco, I had bought this really cool, ceramic Darth Vader mug, because Darth Vader was my all time favorite villain (and still is). I think I kept that mug with me on my travels and still had it in Seattle.

When I moved out of Hunter's apartment and into a rooming house, right smack in the middle of UW's frat boy neighborhood, the room I rented had a couple of shelves. This was the kind where you had long metal strips going vertically, with slots in them, and you positioned these thin metal arms into the slots according to where you wanted them, and then laid a board across the arms. Not the most stable sort of shelves but...they did okay. I took off the bottom shelf and made the top one into a fool's altar.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, well, you probably know what an altar is: a flat surface set aside as a space to be considered sacred or spiritual and you put objects that have specific spiritual value to you upon it. A fool's altar is the exact opposite: you set aside a space that you put all kinds of things that have no particular value at all, except that they're fun or pretty. Fool's altars typically have a lot of toys or action figures on them, as well as Mardi Gras beads, or various trinkets and baubles. My friend Purple Mark is interesting in that his entire apartment is one great big fool's altar. Toys and curiosities everywhere!!

I never put the Darth Vader mug on the fool's altar, but at one point in my life, I had it sitting on a drawing table just below it.

My mother had gotten a letter from my father, commanding her to command me to write to him and communicate. She wrote back saying, "I can tell him whatever you want but he's his own person and he'll do as he pleases."

I was getting tired of my dad using the same old tactic every two or three years to get in touch with me: bullying or manipulating. Never any sentiment of love or of just wanting to know how his son was doing. Always the righteous preacher demanding what was due to him. The last time I had rebuked him, he went straight to my grandparents (on my MOTHER'S side...these are HIS ex-inlaws by some 15 years) and told them I was gay. He did this knowing they were fanatical Baptists. He did this knowing it would piss me off. He did NOT stop to think that, at this point in time, my grandparents were VERY old and, being told that their only grandson was homosexual...hurt them. They had no fire to get angry or righteous or even fearful. It just broke their hearts and made them cry. I consider that an act of cruelty. He had no business visiting his ex-inlaws just to poison them with news about something they had no control over and make them sad like that.

So this was a point where I was just fulminating with hate for this man. I actually HAD been trying to let my feelings go...because that was the "right" thing to do, or so it seemed imposed upon me.

I "settled" it. Once and for all. I just sat on my bed and decided, there was no way around it. I hated him and I would never stop hating him. He was a man to be hated. No way around it. That's just the way it was. Sometimes life just works out that way.

I felt no joy in this. To the contrary, it was grim and ugly and I felt cursed. Why oh why couldn't I have had a decent father? A man with some sense, some love and compassion, not this...this THING. This horrid, powertripping shithead. And he wasn't even very smart. No, truthfully, my dad is rather stupid. Ignorant bigot. Uses God to justify every nasty thing he does. Dishonest and irresponsible. I had to be stuck with this lousy piece of garbage for a father. It just seemed so unfair and pissed me off so much. All I could do was resign myself to the situation. I hated him. That was it. Nothing more could be said, except God help him if I ever saw him in person cuz I would assault him and probably kill him, I was so full of rage.

I decided to shift my attention to something else, since dwelling on the situation didn't do any good. The fool's altar had gotten dusty, which meant it had gone too long without any attention. So I decided I would clear everything off, dust the shelf and then set it up again, with different positions. That's what makes fool's altars fun...rearranging.

I made a mistake. I should have removed items from each side, moving towards the middle. Instead, without thinking, I just started taking all the items off of one side. This shelf was just a board sitting on those two thin, metal arms. It became imbalanced. The weight of the toys at the other end caused the board to flip up like a see-saw, the toys all slid down on to the floor and the board itself tumbled down...right on top of my Darth Vader mug...and smashed it to pieces.

For some reason, that mug was the only thing that mattered. I loved that mug. I got my early morning coffee in that mug. I would get up, carry it with me to my favorite coffeehouse and have it filled up. I invented Oreo cookie "cereal" in that mug.

I had always known that the name "Darth Vader" was Norse for "dark father" but it wasn't until then that I made a connection between destroying the mug and my hate for my own father. Still, even making that connection, I wasn't entirely sure what it meant...only that there was some relationship that I didn't understand. I was overwhelmed with grief, because I had smashed my mug but also because...there was something going on here that I didn't understand.


----------------


I answered a personal ad in The Stranger. This guy wanted to dominate a bottom, fuck him really rough and he had a big dick and decent stats. We met. He was this short, Jewish man with a mustache, named Marv.

We had sex twice. First time, he tied me up and it was fun. Second time was not so fun.

But the important thing about Marv was a conversation I had. He had done the Body Electric workshop, which is basically aimed at helping people to become more intimate. It was originally designed specifically for gay men, but then they expanded it for men in general, and then they opened up mixed gender workshops, for straights and bisexuals, and I think now they even have women's workshops.

Marv was an older man who had only come out of the closet a few years prior to our meeting, after having divorced his wife and realizing he was gay. He was telling me about how sad the scene of gay men made him, with so much hate and judgment, so much dysfunction.

He told me something that hit me so hard, so deep into my soul, and he said it so casually, so unaware of my own situation, that I still find myself in some disbelief.

"If you don't forgive your same sex parent for whatever they've done to you, and whatever they are, it will cripple your relations with others of the same sex for the rest of your life."

I don't know if he even noticed how raw I was in that instant, but I asked how one does that. How does one forgive like that?

"Forgiveness just means you release yourself, and them, from your anger. You don't have to tell them you forgive them. That may not even be appropriate. You just have to let the anger go in your own heart."

We parted ways and I went home. I thought long and hard about what was going on. I thought about that mug. I started crying so hard. The only other time I've cried that hard was when I got HIV (which was later).

I didn't want to spend the rest of my life hating gay men. I wanted love and intimacy and romance and good sex that developed and got better and better as we got to know each other.

I realized I HAD to forgive my father...for all of it. I say "realized." Yes...REALIZED. This was a deep realization. Marv was absolutely correct. I had to forgive for the sake of my own sanity and happiness. If I did not forgive my father, I would not forgive other gay men for being the flawed human beings they are and I would be forever judgmental, cynical, emotionally crippled and ultimately miserable.

It didn't happen all at once. I had to go back and read some parts from my Robert Anton Wilson books, about how we interpret reality. But I can say...and some do not believe me but...eh...whatever, I got through this in about a week or maybe two. It is amazing what you can do when you realize how important it is that you do it.


---------------


A couple weeks later, I was at SunCoast Video, browsing around. That store typically has all kinds of collectibles, in addition to actual videos and DVDs.


I saw a Darth Vader mug in a box. Exactly like the one I had smashed...except this mug was SILVER.

I bought it and gushed about how great it was to have found it.

The guy behind the counter told me that THAT was the last one of those mugs and that it had been accidentally pushed so far back, it had actually FALLEN down behind the stock shelf and had stayed there for a couple years, totally unnoticed and collected dust...until they recently had been clearing stuff out and cleaning the stock room and found it wedged back there. All their other mugs had long since been sold during a re-release of the trilogy with the digital make-over.

I walked out of that store in a trance state. I held that box so close to me, like a precious jewel. I understood the connection. And I really did make peace with all of that anger.


And something else happened too. Roscoe became more important in my life after that. No longer just a fuckbuddy. I seem to recall he was in the middle of breaking up with his partner, since they no longer had sex and were like strangers to each other and that was difficult because they had cars and the house in both of their names so breaking up was a long, drawn out affair. I think that got finalized about the same time (although I may be wrong). This was around late 1999.

Roscoe is now my best friend and nobody knows me better than he does. He's totally accepted me for what I am, faults and all. He was there for me when I tested HIV+. And, besides a friend, he has been a spiritual mentor and...yes, a father figure. The kind of father I always wanted. Loving and wise, understanding, yet not enabling. He asks me hard questions. He confronts me. He calls me on my bullshit. But he also knows how to be honest WITH empathy. Other people claim to "tell the truth." He knows better than that. He knows we are all interpreting and that NONE of us knows THE truth objectively. So he speaks HIS truth and reminds me to speak mine.

And, of course he has his flaws too. There have been a couple occasions where he said something I thought was just downright stupid, or gave advice I flat out didn't agree with. But he's been right more often than wrong, helpful more often than hindrance.

And he's black. A big black man with a deep voice. He could impersonate Darth Vader easily. I am sort of left bewildered at how the synchronicity unraveled.

I still haven't seen my viological (um...I think I'll keep that Freudian typo) father and I don't think I ever will. I don't trust him to behave himself and not try to manipulate me. And I don't think that means my forgiveness is inauthentic. When someone behaves a certain way that hurts you, you let time heal the wounds, but you also learn the lesson. He lives in a different world than I do and our two realities are incompatible. I'm a little saddened by that.

But I created a character in Quimby House...a mighty lion, like Aslan from the Narnia series. He has qualities of Roscoe, who is a Leo, by the way. But the character's name is "Godfrey"...my family name, as passed on through my father's bloodline. My own father is a Cancer/Leo cusp, having been born on the 22nd of July. I also know more about him. I know he was treated poorly by his father and that part of why he wanted to have me back in his life, and convert me to a heterosexual, is because grandfather looks down upon him, thinks he's a failure, and he wants to show me off as an accomplishment. This is entirely consistent with my father's behavior: using one person as a tool to either hurt another or to gain some kind of leverage. He used me to hurt my mother after the divorce. He used my maternal grandparents to hurt me. But this is the way he was raised. This is the way that side of my family operates. They use and manipulate each other in an unending, vicious circle of power struggles. This is Southern Baptist religion and Texan blood we're talking about, and my grandfather despises black people. There's a lot of ugly, dirty secrets and silent hostilities embedded in that whole side of my family and I could not survive as I am within it. My dad married a black woman and sired a son to her after my mother divorced him. He did that mostly to spite my grandparents. I'm sure my grandfather cannot stand that one of his grandsons is a faggot and the other is half negro. I suppose it probably backfired on him later on, as he tried to win favor from them and was refused. With him not being very bright, I'm sure most, if not all of his chess moves checkmated him time and time again.

So...I feel no anger, just a touch of sadness. I can't be part of their world and they can't be part of mine. Their world is all about conformity, repression, humiliation, codependence and just downright gross hate and discontent. Each individual within that web is a confused human being, probably reacting to the others, rather than making willful choices. But the larger picture is that of tyranny and enslavement on the small scale. I just hope I'm not the only one who got away from it.

So I've given myself a new assignment:

Every week, I must do something good for someone else.

My best friend has had many talks with me about being self-involved and how that cripples spiritual development.

Fortunately, I've already gotten started on this. I'm sending two books that my mother wants to her. And I'm going to send a nice blank book to my Aunt Jane, along with my Dif Juz CD, which I suspect she will like.

Last week, I bought an oval shaped coffee table for my custodial crew at the Paramount. Prior to that, our table was a cupboard door set on top of two paint buckets.

A few weeks before that, I gave a large skeleton key to Zac. Actually, I think it was an old jailhouse key. I got it from this very eccentric old man I met out in New Mexico.

Roscoe left me a voicemail message, asking me about hypnosis. He wants to quit smoking. This is something he's been trying to do for years now. I'm wondering if he would be receptive to some sigil work.

Also, several weeks ago, I had applied for some volunteer work for the Orion Youth Center, one of a network of buildings that helps homeless kids. I have to attend an orientation first. They had two this month and I was unable to attend the first. I tried to make the second one but made a critical mistake in where the building actually was. Had I been a smart bird, I would have google-mapped it, but no, I was a dumb bird and marched into the U District thinking I had it all figured out and then wasted precious time walking round in circles until I was approaching 45 minutes late and STILL didn't find it and gave up. I'll attend the next one. I'm very excited to do this.

Of course, when I say doing something good for someone else, that doesn't just mean buying them things. I'd like to start cooking for people. I remember pimpdaddyk enjoyed cooking for people a lot...Um...fuck, just the mention of him...I really miss Ira. Anyone seen him lately and know what he's up to?

I'm trying to think of other things. Ideas are welcome!!!

Michael Moore has got a new movie coming out, called Capitalism: A Love Story. There will, of course, be the massive herds of noisy-heads, mistaking his sensationalist propaganda for "a documentary", -stampeding to the theaters to get all worked up with outrage over what they perceive capitalism to be, and then, as it sinks in, will fall back down into despair when they discover how powerless they are to change the corporate fascist system that they think is capitalist, and then go back to watching TV or play video games in the next round of desperate denial...and then start out all over again with yet another embrace of "progressive" or socialist ideas that they think are new and will be "for the people", not knowing all along that their actions just further enslave them.

I need to remind myself over and over that when people of this ilk talk about "capitalism", they mean something entirely different from what I mean. I use the word in a strict economic sense. What goes on at Burning Man is real capitalism: free trade, negotiated between actual people, with some sense of personal responsibility involved. But most of this country has subscribed to the senseless, hysterical idea that runs something along the lines of "big business exploiting everyone...profits over people..." some sort of sloganeering mumbo jumbo. Most people who gripe about capitalism, when asked for a specific, concrete definition of the word, cannot think of one that doesn't involve self contradictions.

When you use words without considering a clear, consistent meaning that can be applied to the concrete world, and NOT just an emotional abstraction...you end up with a bunch of noise in your head and then your life becomes more about reactive choices, rather than willful choices.

But...whatever man. The economy will collapse because money itself is nothing but a banking abstraction and no longer represents any solid standard by which to negotiate the value of resources and therefore create the stability that is needed for a healthy trade system. THAT stabilizing element has been replaced by the Federal Reserve's control over interest rates.

I just keeping hoping this system will collapse sooner than later, because the longer it takes, the more people will suffer and, without knowing who the real enemy is or what its weapons are, will eventually lash out in violence in all the wrong places. And then the authorities can send in the troops to mow them down and enforce martial law.

I've written about this before but I was suddenly remembering the three that gregstevenstx added, so they are the LAST THREE, making seven into ten:


Knowledge without experience

Wealth without work

Science without compassion

Pleasure without conscience

Commerce without respect

Policy without principle

Worship without sacrifice

Vision without effort

Honesty without empathy

Facts without meaning


Now...that last one...I'm thinking I might prefer "Facts without context".

Thoughts, anyone?

There is someone in this world who needs and deserves some recognition. His name is David Milici, although I fondly think of him as David Penguin, because penguins were his animal spirit guide. Here and now, I tell the tale:

When I moved to San Francisco in 1993, I thought that I would be welcomed into the abode of a certain Sean and Kristoff, temporarily until I got a job and could afford my own place. This was absolutely ASSURED to me when I was in Portland. But when I got off of the Green Tortoise bus in SF and called them, I got no answer. I left a message. I called again, several times at different times of day. No answer. I never heard from them again. There I was, in a new city, with my suitcases and nowhere to go.

I had met this guy named Zarrus in Southeast Portland and gotten in touch with him in SF, after he moved there. When I took my vacation there, we met up and he introduced me to his friend, David. David was, like me, a Cancer with a heavy Leo influence in his personality. In fact, it showed because he had long, red beard and a great mane of long, strawberry blonde hair (natural redhead but the California sun had bleached out some of his hair to that shade of blonde), so he looked rather lion-like. He also had this blue, velvet blazer that he wore often. He called it his "magic penguin jacket" and commented that whenever he wore it, he either got laid, or some other fortunate thing happened to him. I'll say now that I developed my own liking for blazers, particularly velvet ones, from him.

David liked me. He liked me a LOT. I liked him in the way one suddenly comes to like a wacky professor like Dr. Brown from Back to the Future. He liked me in a more sexual way. He developed a crush on me. And he gave me his phone number.

So when I found myself in SF again, only this time with no way back home and possibly stranded, I hesitantly called David and explained my situation and asked if I could stay with him for a while. He said "Sure!"

For a couple of months, I stayed in the main room of his flat and looked for a job. When I got my job (at a porno shop on Polk Street), he then told me that, although I could move out and get my own place, he would actually like me to stay with him. His was a two bedroom flat and he used the second room for his workshop, because he was an engineer and an inventor. He actually moved all his stuff out of the second bedroom and let me have it, and set up shop in the main room.

I stayed with him the entire time I lived in SF. When I left, he allowed me to keep some of my stuff at his place, until I figured out what city to roost in (which would be Seattle, after a year and a half of traveling), after which I could come down and get my stuff. I never could quite get my shit together to get my stuff so he eventually drove all the way up to Seattle and took it to me.

This was a time when many opportunities came and went because I was smoking pot so heavily, I couldn't be motivated to grab at them and make them happen. I was very depressed much of the time, and did not realize that much of it was self inflicted because of all that pot smoking.

The job at the porno shop became really weird, with too many hustlers and drug dealers coming in and out, against the rules, and threatening my life because I upheld them. I found out later that they did this because I was the only clerk upholding the rules. When I went off shift and another clerk came on, they came in and the other clerk looked the other way. So I was made to seem like some nasty bitch who was interfering with THEIR business, instead of an ordinary employee enforcing the rules of the shop. I started to stress out a lot and it was David who told me, "Why don't you just quit?" I babbled the old mumbo jumbo about one should never quit a job unless one had another one lined up. Conventional wisdom.

"Well...you ARE studying magick, aren't you?" he said.

"Um yeah but..."

"Well, it's your decision but it seems to me that you are too exhausted and stressed out to even look for another job while you have this one. There IS such a thing as wage slavery, you know."

I thought about this and while I did, he added, "I've done this, Simon. I can tell you, it's very terrifying. But it's also very liberating. I want you to know, it's okay with ME if you quit your job."

This meaning, he understood that I may go for some time without money for rent.

So I quit. They actually called me on the phone and left a voicemail message asking me to come in on the graveyard shift (when the hustling and drug dealing was at its worst and the whole neighborhood was the most dangerous) on my normal days off. I called them and told them I quit. Just like that. David was there watching me on the phone. He smiled and nodded as I hung up, and said, "Now, you're going to find out how I live."

Because, you see, he had his own one-man business, called Ironic Research Labs....IRL for short. He worked freelance. He had no set hours or wages. Every single month was a challenge to muster up funds to make his ends meet.

He essentially became a magickal mentor to me, during those years...particularly in the realm of "real life magick". Things like, not letting jobs and money tyrannize your life. Trusting the forces of the universe to support you in your decisions.

It wasn't always good between us. I had long hair, down to mid-back, when I met him and he was a long-haired guy who liked other long-haired guys. Yet, even after I cut my hair, it only partially broke the spell for him. He still had a crush on me and there was a constant sense of sexual tension between us because I was NOT attracted to him.

I don't want to go into every, single detail, but to sum it up, he took care of me far more than I deserved. I pretty much allowed it, took advantage of it, the way younger queer guys who know their sexual appeal can manipulate older queer guys who want them. Hell, I even stole pot from his stash when I was out. Although, whenever I got a new bag, I did always pinch off an equivalent amount and replaced it into his stash. He enabled me to be irresponsible because of his crush on me. And I was irresponsible. I went for months only paying half or a quarter of the agreed upon rent and even a few months not paying any at all (even though I managed money for pot). He only yelled at me once but boy, it sure was a blow up!! It DID give me the appropriate kick in the ass to get moving again and earn my keep though.

He gave a lot and I didn't give much back. That was so many years ago, that it would do no good now to wallow around in guilt, but I own up to that irresponsibility.

And now...let me tell you his wonderful contribution to the world we live in:

If you watch any old movies with claymation or puppet animation, you'll notice the movement is very jerky and disjointed. But then came a movie called The Nightmare Before Christmas, entirely puppet animation, and done with breathtaking smoothness, it really looks like just natural filming. And other Tim Burton movies since then have had that smooth quality.

This is because of a device that David Penguin made. He called it "ThingM"...short for "thing-a-ma-jig" because he couldn't quite figure out what to call it.

It's a little electronic box with a number pad on it that you hook up to a standard film camera and the box allows you to measure and control stop motion animation in a way that was never able to be done before. You can program the camera to regulate exposure, as well as how many frames go by and the device even commands the camera to rewind itself so you can do multiple exposures, thereby saving some time with splicing.

David originally sold this device to a few small studios, but then Tim Burton somehow found out about it when he was gearing up to do Nightmare. He ordered half a dozen, I think, and that gave David a solid footing as a freelance inventor and entrepreneur. Prior to that, he had been floundering around, barely keeping it together and constantly worrying that he might have to go back to working for a company.

Granted, we're now living in an age of Pixar CGI, but who doesn't still love Jack Skellington and the Oogey Boogey Man and the duck-billed mad scientist who could flip the top of his head open and scratch his brain?

The next time you watch The Nightmare Before Christmas, remember that a magick penguin helped give it that smooth, polished look that set a new standard for stop-motion animation.

And he was my friend, a better friend than I deserved.

Thirteen Choruses For the Divine Marquis
Robert Anton Wilson
from Coincidance - A Head Test


FIRST CHORUS

"You are afraid of the people unrestrained—how ridiculous!"
-- Sade1

I dreamed I called Rita Hayworth on the phone and asked her if she hears the babies of Hiroshima screaming in the night.
"No," she said, "I useta have kinda kooky problems like that but my analyst cleared them all up."
But — I insisted — after all, it was your picture that was painted on the Bomb. Not Harry Truman, or Einstein, or even Marilyn Monroe. You.
"Well, yeah, if you wanna look at it that way," she said. "But, Christ, they was sticking my picture on everything those days."
But, but — I shouted — don't you feel any sense of responsibility?
"Waita-minit, Mac," she said, "what are ya, some kinda nut? Nobody ever asked me nothing about it. They just went ahead and dropped it."
But, but, but — I screamed — all those people — 550,000 of them, according to one estimate I read — blown apart by a picture of you —
"Look, Clyde," she said firmly. "My analyst told me it don't do no good to brood over such things."

And the line went dead with a hollow click, like a coffin closing snugly on Dracula as the morning sun throws its white and ghastly nuclear radiations into the cool darkness of dream.


SECOND CHORUS


Why do the children scream
What are the heaps they fight over
those heaps with eyes and mouths
— Marat/Sade

And we, we Hiroshima-makers, are now finally, more than 150 years after his death, tentatively beginning to look at the unexpurgated de Sade.
I dreamed I called Dwight Eisenhower on the phone and asked him if de Sade should be banned.
"I don't know," he said. "I'll have to ask Postmaster General Summerfield. If he says it's a filthy book, then of course it should be banned. America must maintain its purity and its God-given heritage."
And I dreamed I called him back two nights later and he had consulted with Summerfield and the verdict was n.g. "Summerfield says dee Sayd was a pinko pervert."

And the phone went dead with a sudden dull click like the last sound Hemmingway heard when he put the gun to his head and said, ah, shit, now, not any other minute but this minute, right now.


THIRD CHORUS


. . . and as if I were a naughty little boy, the idea is to spank me into good behavior?
— Sade

Prof. B.F. Skinner of Harvard, ripe with years and wisdom, rich with degrees and honors, says that a world without punishment is operationally conceivable. That is, speaking as a scientific psychologist, Skinner does not know of any behavior that can't be increased or decreased without the use of punishment.

Desirable behavior (from your point of view, whatever your point of view is)? — reinforce it through a system of rewards. It will increase.

Undesirable behavior (again, from whatever your point of view is)? — no need to punish it; just reinforce incompatible behavior, again through a system of rewards. The incompatible behavior will increase, and the "undesirable" behavior will decrease.

Simple as a proof in geometry.

But there is something in mankind which profoundly resents Prof. Skinner and his rationalism and his technology and his simplicity. The name of that something is the name of the divine Marquis, Donatien Alphonse Francois de Sade.

I dreamed I called J. Edgar Hoover on the phone and asked him, hey, dig, man, what do you think of a world without punishment?
"(Get a tap on this line,)" he said away from the phone, "(I got a pinko bleeding heart here.)"
"I'll tell you, sir,"he said, "we are just a fact-finding agency; we don't draw any conclusions. But I Will Say This! There Is Only One Language the Godless Communists Understand And That Is The Language of Superior Power."
But, but — I cried — can you put the whole world over your lap and spank it?
"If the world had one ass, you can be sure we would," he said. "As it is, the spankings will have to be administered jointly and severally."

And the line went dead with an empty click, like a whip being pulled from its sheath and flicked, testingly, in the air.


FOURTH CHORUS


Marat
these cells of the inner self
are worse than the deepest stone dungeon
and as long as they are locked
all your revolution remains
only a prison mutiny
to be put down
by corrupted fellow prisoners
— Marat/Sade


Eventually we begin to realize that Sade has never been understood. He cried out for liberty, and we accuse him of being a forerunner of Hitler. He dreamed of a world without punishment, and we attribute brutality to him. He spoke for the spirit of love, and we project every viciousness onto him.

We are afraid of being seduced by him, we Hiroshima-makers.

He showed us our own face in a mirror and we have screamed for 150 years that it was his face.

Nothing could be more explicit than his actual words:

Laws should be "flexible," "mild" and "few'' (Sade, p. 310).

We must "get rid forever of the atrocity of capital punishment" (Sade, p. 310).

Women must be equal with men: "Must the diviner half of humankind be laden with irons by the other? Ah, break those irons, Nature wills it" (Sade, p. 322).

Property should cease to be monopolized by a few (Sade, p. 313-314).

The present system of property-and-power rests on"submission of the people . . . due to . . . violence and the frequent use of torture" (Sade, p. 11).

He gave up his post as magistrate rather than administer capital punishment — "They wanted me to commit an inhumane act. I have never wanted to" (Sade, p. 29).

His principles are, as he says, quite correctly, not those that lead to tyranny but "principles to whose expression and realization the infamous despotism of tyrants has been opposed for uncounted centuries" (Sade, p.311).

Even against the clergy, he maintains a solidly libertarian position: "I do not, however, propose either massacres or expulsions. Such dreadful things have no place in the enlightened mind. No, do not assassinate at all, do not expel at all.... Let us reserve the employment of force for the idols; ridicule alone will suffice for those who serve them" (Sade, p. 306).

But these words are ignored. Because he committed one crime — the crime of reporting accurately the secret day-dreams and longings of the psyche of men and women in this civilization, men and women reared in the crucible of authority-and-submission, discipline-and-punishment — he has been portrayed as the endorser of these extremities.

More truly than Flaubert said"Je suis Bovary," Sade could have said (did say, for those who read between the lines), "Je suis Justine." It is his voice that cries out continually in Justine's speeches, "Oh, monsters, is remorse and dead in you?" Just as it is his voice, undeniably, in the"Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man" which says simply, "Reason, sir — yes, our reason alone should warn us that harm done our fellows can never bring happiness to us . . . and you need neither god nor religion to subscribe to [it]" (Sade, p. 174).

I dreamed I called Jesus Christ on the phone and asked him, say, Man, did you really forgive them for they knew not what they did?
"Verily, verily, I say unto you," he replied, "I made my position on authority-and-submission as clear as I could: 'You know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among you.' — Matt. 20:25. 'Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation.' — Matt. 12:25. 'If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' — Matt.15:14. 'For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them upon men's shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.' — Matt. 23:4. They be blind leaders of the blind, baby, and mechanical laws of punishment-and-conditioning lead them in little grooves of robot-life."
But, but — I protested — is there anything outside conditioned behavior? Is there a real freedom, Man? Is there?
"Find the place where Sade and I agree," he said, "and there you will find the beginning of a definition of liberty."

And the line went dead with a sudden click like the sound of a bedroom door closing as a little boy is pushed outside.


FIFTH CHORUS


"They declaim against the passions without bothering to see that it is from their flame philosophy lights its torch. "
— Sade

The Castle, somebody pointed out, is a Sadean novel: Kafka's scene is a typical lair of Sadean monsters lying in wait for the innocent traveler. The Trial is even more Sadean I would argue, because the two thugs who haul Joseph K. off to an empty lot to slit his throat "like a dog" are, like Sade's images, revelations of the reality of our civilization. Capital punishment presented as a more nudely naked lunch than even Burroughs has fed us.

What happens to Joseph K., what happens to Justine, are very slight distortions2 of what happens to each man, each woman, in a society based on authority-and-submission.

What Sade saw — what Marat did not see — the hidden meaning of Peter Weiss's noisy and Sophoclean circus of a play — is that Man as we know him, Man in historical time, is entirely the product of punishment. That punishment defines his character, contours and structures his character, is his character. That sado-masochism is not a perversion, or a "way of life," but the meaning of our civilization.

Sade's drive for liberty — i.e., his attempt to understand himself — led him to the scene in the brothel in which he buggered and was buggered, whipped and was whipped. That scene, and the seven years imprisonment it cost him, has given his name to perversion, and yet one feels there has been a mistake somewhere, Sadeanism isn't Sadism, the two forces met head-on, but Sade was going in one direction and the true Sadist is going in the other.

Open any schlock newspaper and read the personal ads in which S-M people grope for each other: "Docile young man seeks woman experienced in discipline . . . " "Male, interested in leather and uniforms, seeks male of dominant disposition ... " "Interested in leather on women.... "

But this is not Sade's direction, my God, it is the direction of General Hershey and LBJ; it is the direction of our civilization; it is the essence of our civilization, dragged out into hideous visibility. Uniforms and discipline. "Kill for freedom, kill for peace, kill Vietnamese, kill, kill, kill!" The hallucinatory parental voice that says "You are homosexual" and "You must kill him." Uniforms and discipline. The blind leading the blind.

Albert Ellis is more general than Dr. Berne. According to Dr. Ellis, in a lecture at the N.Y. General Semantics Society, most neurotics — i.e., most civilized people — go around with a little internal voice saying "You are a no-good shit." ("You are homosexual," "You are a coward," and "You are a helpless neurotic" are only three variations on the main theme. The main theme is always "You are a no-good shit.")

Eric Frank Russell, the science-fiction writer, propounded a riddle once: "If everybody hates war, why do wars keep on happening?" Remember the S-M ads: "seeks discipline," "seeks uniforms," "seeks leather and rubber."

Authority-and-submission is the chief structural fact about feudal, capitalist and socialist society. Punishment-and-obedience is the defining gesture, as Stanislavsky would call it, of such societies. To illustrate it in one flash: Orwell's "boot stamping on the human face forever." And that is de Sade's theme, always.

I dreamed I called Fulton Sheen on the phone and asked him, I read in your column that "A child needs a pat on the back to encourage him — provided it is applied hard enough, low enough and often enough." You believe that crap, man?
"Without discipline," he intoned, "our whole civilization would fall into anarchy. 'I will chastize him with my rod,' says the Good Book."
But, but, man — I protested — you're supposed to be anti-sex. Don't you know some cats get their rocks off that way? Ain't you read about spanking orgies and people coming in their pants during it? Ain't you against anybody coming, ever, anywhere, anytime, in any way?
"Argggh!" he said, like the dying villain of a comic book, and I couldn't tell if he was having an orgasm or a heart attack.

The line went dead with a weird like a bomb-bay door opening to drop Rita Hayworth's picture. Gilda, the whore, beckoning from her golden bed . . . on little bronze heathens who didn't believe in Jesus.


SIXTH CHORUS


Marat
forget the rest
there's nothing else
beyond the body
— Marat/Sade

So: after 150 years, we are ready to look de Sade in the face, eyeball to eyeball. He comes on, always, like a Zen Master, shouting right into our ears: "Tyranny or Anarchy — you must choose. Answer now!"

He was the first one mad enough and sane enough to accept the given, the immutable, to start from man-in-history rather than from man-in-theory. Well, he says, I don't believe in the "noble savage," I even doubt that he is "inherently good," but taking him as he is I still say: Freedom. He deserves liberty because nobody else is good enough to take it away from him.

He looked into anarchy, he looked past the voluntarily organized anarchy of Proudhon and Tolstoy, he looked into chaos itself, and he said, yes, even that, I will accept even that, before I will bend the knee to any Authority that claims to own me.

I dreamed I called LBJ on the phone and I said, look, man, you're not taking my son for one of your damnfool wars.
"You are mistaken," he said smoothly. "That boy is not your son. He belongs to society and the State, and I am society and the State. I will take him anywhere I want, I will order him to do anything I care to have done, and I will shoot him if he disobeys."
But, but, man—I said—like, wow, man—do you think you own us?
"Read your law books, son," he chuckled. "Ownership is the right 'to use or abuse.'"

And the line went dead with a cold little click like an IBM machine punching a hole in a card somewhere in the vast and infinite halls of bureaucracy.


SEVENTH CHORUS


"Although the prodigious spectacle of folly we are facing here may be horrible, it is always interesting."
— Sade

I called the world up on the telephone and I implored them:

How much of you belongs to the Combine? If they can take your money in taxes and your sons in wars, how do you differ from the cow who is milked or the pig who is eaten? Do you breed for them like a stallion in a pasture? Is the get of your loins theirs to dispose of? Even a no-good shit afraid that Daddy will come and slice it off has some rights, doesn't he? Or does he? Is there any sacrifice you will not make? Is there any discipline you will not accept? Is there any order you will not obey? Is there any shit you will not eat?

Who got the Indian Sign on you? How did it start? At age 12, worrying that J. Edgar Hoover was watching you jack off through his Washington telescope? Was it the bogey-man they scared you with? "Don't make dirty-dirty in your pants or ogres will come and eat you"? Circumcision the most cruel and inhuman attack on the genital accepted by your doctors; why? Schedule feeding that fucked up the minds of a generation; why? Is that how they get the soldiers for their wars? The whip-and-belt boys, the uniform-and-discipline boys, the Pentagon boys, all one big happy spanking-orgy?

And the operator said,'I'm sorry, sir. The world is not answering the phone anymore. It's watching television."

And the line went dead with a loud and unearthly click like the sound of a boy pulling his zipper up when he hears Father's footstep in the hall.


EIGHTH CHORUS


A mad animal
Man's a mad animal
I'm a thousand years old and in my time
I've helped commit a million murders
— Marat/Sade

Rita Hayworth's picture on the Bomb.

What do we really want from them? What drove Garbo into hiding, Monroe into suicide, Lamaar into shoplifting, what struck Harlow down and sent Garland into the booze bottle?

And what happens in a Playboy Club? Have you stood there, like me, vodka-and-tonic in hand, looking down a bunny's cleavage and thinking suddenly of Lon Chaney as the Wolf-Man: "Even a man who is pure of heart / And says his prayers by night / Can turn to a wolf when the wolfbane blooms ? and the moon is full and bright.... " If you turned the fantasies of each person in the room onto the wall in LSD stereo what would it look like — a friendly little orgy, the Rape of the Sabine Women, or Mass Murder?

I dreamed I called a bunny on the phone and asked her, dig de Sade?
"But the most, darling," she cooed.
But, but — I asked — what do you really think of men?
"But, hon," she said innocently, "what do cattle think of butchers?"

And the line went dead with an abrupt click like a diaphragm falling from a purse onto a cold metal floor.


NINTH CHORUS


"My neighbors' passions frighten me infinitely less than do the law's injustices, for my neighbors' passions are contained by mine, whilst nothing checks the injustices of the law."
— Sade

A civilization based on authority-and-submission is a civilization without the means of self-correction. Effective communication flows only one way: from master-group to servile-group. Any cyberneticist knows that such a one-way communication channel lacks feedback and cannot behave "intelligently."

The epitome of authority-and-submission is the Army, and the control-and-communication network of the Army has every defect a cyberneticist's nightmare could conjure. Its typical patterns of behavior are immortalized in folklore as SNAFU (situation normal—all fucked-up), FUBAR (fucked-up beyond all redemption) and TARFU (Things are really fucked-up). In less extreme, but equally nosologic, form these are the typical conditions of any authoritarian group, be it a corporation, a nation, a family, or a whole civilization.

Proudhon was a great communication analyst, born 100 years too soon to be understood. His system of voluntary association (anarchy) is based on the simple communication principles that an authoritarian system means one-way communication, or stupidity, and a libertarian system means two-way communication, or rationality.

The essence of authority, as he saw, was Law — that is, fiat — that is, effective communication running one way only. The essence of a libertarian system, as he also saw, was Contract — that is, mutual agreement — that is, effective communication running both ways. ("Redundance of control" is the technical cybernetic phrase.)

Sade saw this, before Proudhon. "The rule of law is inferior to that of anarchy; the most obvious proof of what I assert is the fact that any government is obliged to plunge itself into anarchy whenever it aspires to remake its constitution. In order to abrogate its former laws, it is compelled to establish a revolutionary regime in which there is no law; this regime finally gives birth to new laws, but this second state is necessarily less pure than the first, since it derives from it" (Sade, p. 46).

The conflict, Marat/Sade (which should really be Marx/Sade, except that the ingenious Mr. Weiss was not quite ingenious enough to devise a historical conjunction between uncle Karl and the Marquis), is the conflict between anarchy and tyranny. Sade, not Marat or Marx, is the true revolutionary, for he aims at a world outside the crucible of punishment-and-submission, while they aim at a new world still within that crucible.

I dreamed I called Ignatz Mouse on the phone and asked, why do you always throw bricks at Krazy Kat?
But Krazy answered instead and said, "Little Dahlink . . . he's always faithful."

And the line went dead with a dreadful click like Captain Queeg rolling his little marbles together.


TENTH CHORUS


The guillotine saves them from endless boredom
Gaily they offer their heads as if for coronation
Is not that the pinnacle of perversion?
— Marat/Sade

Ralph Nader writes incredulously, in his study of automobile safety, Unsafe at Any Speed, "If one were to attempt to produce a pedestrian-injuring mechanism, the most theoretically efficient design would closely approach that of the front end of some present-day automobiles." Mr. Nader has never read Sade. He takes this as an oversight on Detroit's part.

I dreamed I called Batman on the phone and asked, any truth in those rumors about you and Robin?
"Our relationship is 100% platonic," he replied stiffly. "We sublimate. Why do you think we're always out looking for 'bad guys' that we can punish?"

And the line went dead with a quick click like handcuffs closing on a thin wrist forever.


ELEVENTH CHORUS


"If you are timid enough to stop with what is natural,
Nature will elude your grasp forever.'
— Sade

There is much sadism in popular culture these days, but little Sadeanism. One rare example of Sadeanism is the old movie, The Most Dangerous Game, and another is Ken Kesey's novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

The heroes of both of these works are trapped in situations where superior power seeks remorselessly to destroy them. Both heroes, pure Sadeanists, accept the situation at once — without complaining about its "immortality" or "injustice" — and set out systematically and cold-bloodedly to turn the tables.

This is the doctrine of the bandits in Justine — "Nature has caused us to be equals born, Therese; if fate is pleased to upset the primary scheme of things, it is for us to correct its caprices" (Sade, p. 481) — and the doctrine of Stirnerite anarchism. DeSade's proletarian heroes, like the glorious anarchist bandit, Ravechel, believe instinctively that "crime alone opens to us the door to life" (Sade, p. 482).

To anyone who doesn't like this doctrine, Sade's answer is blunt: "The callousness of the Rich legitimates the bad conduct of the Poor; let them open their purses to our needs.... We will be fools indeed to abstain from [crimes] when they can lessen the yoke wherewith their cruelty bears us down" (Sade, p. 481). This sounds horrible, it seems, only to those whose conscious or unconscious wish is to be oppressors. Sadean man merely refuses to be oppressed; he can only be killed, but never subjugated.

I dreamed I called Adolf Hitler on the phone and asked him, What was your gimmick?
"They believed it was wiser to obey anyone, even me, than to risk anarchy," he said with a ghoulish laugh.

And the line went dead with a sharp click like boot-heels snapped together.


TWELFTH CHORUS


I'm a mad animal
Prisons don't help
Chains don't help
I escape through all the walls
— Marat/Sade

B.F. Skinner envisions a world without punishment. Nobody is interested.

Guns are now available — they are used in Africa by game wardens — that will stun without killing. Armed with these, an army could capture a town without shedding one drop of blood. Have you heard of any government plotting to wage its future wars with these guns?

Punishment, discipline, obedience—these are the keys to such mysteries, and to the mystery of war itself, and to all oddities of behavior in Man and the other domestic animals. Sade saw it, and was banned for 150 years. He saw the genital fever, the need for embrace, dammed up at the center of man. Another reason he was banned.

The actors are going nuts playing in Marat/Sade. "There is not a single member of the cast who does not hate with a deep loathing every single performance he is required to do of this play," says lan Carmichael, who plays Marat. "It gets harder and harder," says Patrick Magee, who plays Sade. So far, the company has had one case of acute depression, one fit of "raving screaming" after the show, one actor who almost lost control on stage (Dick Schaap, N.Y. Herald Tribune, March 4, "Inmates of the Asylum").

I dreamed I called D.A.F. de Sade on the phone and asked him, "Jesus told me that he and you agree on at least one thing and it explains freedom. What is that one thing?"

"Quite simple," he replied, "don't be afraid of the Cross. The fear of death is the beginning of slavery."

And the line went dead with a triumphant click like a barred door falling open.

1 Quotations identified as Sade are from Marquis de Sade, Grove Press, 1965. Those identified as Marat/Sade are from The Persecution and Assassination of Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum at Charenton Under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade, by Peter Weiss, Athenium. 1965.

2 "Two of the commonest types of hallucinations are the obscene epithet and the deadly injunction. Both the accusation 'You are homosexual!' and the command 'You must kill them!' may be safely regarded as revived and not very much distorted memories of parental utterances." Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy, by Eric Berne, Grove, 1961 (italics added).

Thirteen Choruses for the Divine Marquis was originally published in The Realist.
Copyright: Robert Anton Wilson

I just went out to get my morning coffee, contemplating a bit of grumpiness at how easily politics takes me out of alignment. I got my coffee and decided to walk around a bit before coming back home. And I'm glad I did because I saw something wonderful.

An open window in an apartment complex. In that window, a good looking woman with long, black hair, wearing only a bra. She was rocking back and forth. I wondered, "Is she getting fucked or is she doing herself with a toy?"

As if in answer, I then saw a pair of hands reaching up and very lovingly pulling the bra off, and then cupping her breasts.

I stopped to watch a little more. The woman saw me watching. I smiled and saluted her. She smiled back and kept rocking back and forth on her mysterious lover. I kept walking, suddenly feeling much better.

It was beautiful to see.

And...I sort of realized that I have become, among other things, a knight in the Great War against Cynicism and Despair. I fight this battle internally and externally.

And it's a very strange war too, because it can't be fought through violence and determination, though those elements must be acknowledged. The true battle rather resembles a game of billiards* crossed with a Waltz dance. How many people truly understand this?







*I say billiards, rather than chess, because no matter how it's played, chess is always well ordered, whereas billiards contains elements of chaos and, to be played successfully, attention to angles and degrees must be factored and utilized

Now then, much of this goes back to my father, who was tall and slim and arrogant and bossy. I'm putting all this stuff together and realizing how much of the childhood stuff has molded my adult experiences.

And I think I'm tired of attracting tall, bossy Alpha Males. Their love has always been condescending and they don't let me grow and develop in my own way. I think it's time to start focusing my attraction on some other kind of male.

The only Alpha I have in my life right now, that I want to keep, is my gentle giant, Roscoe, who...how I attracted him, I'm not sure. But he's always helped me to grow, not held me down. All I can think is that, with my dad being a hollering preacher and my stepfather once a paranoid schizoid, I really had no good male role models in my childhood and I think that some part of me was crying out for a decent father figure.

And I got one. Roscoe is an amazing man. He's now almost 60. Big, black man. And his seemingly infinite wisdom has come from many hard lessons learned, many painful experiences. Nobody knows me better than he does and he accepts me totally and completely, knowing my flaws and shortcomings. I feel safe and confident when I'm with him. And we've even been honest about our relationship being that of adopted father and son, since he has no son and my biological father is a powertripping, religious nutcase.

Oddly enough, I was talking to my mother on the phone the other day and we got to rehashing the history of my upbringing, and I told her how interesting it was that, despite his raging hostility, I was MORE able to forgive my stepfather than my father. I always figured it was because, after understanding that he was a clinically diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic, and hearing how awful his life went after the divorce, up until he finally stepped in front of a moving van to kill himself, I could understand the horrible, horrible torment he went through, the demons in his mind.

But my mother said something that surprised me. She said, "That's not the only reason. Gary loved you very much and in the early years, before the sickness took effect, he was very tender and caring to you in a way your father NEVER was. He considered you HIS son, very sincerely."

She went down the list of things he helped me with: stop motion claymation shorts, the erector sets, help with homework, taking me out to see movies and even just talking and joking around. He didn't talk down to me but respected me in a way one doesn't often see adults do with children. She pointed out that Gary even had the balls to stand up to my father when my father was trying to manipulate me right there in front of them. "Don't you talk to him that way! He doesn't deserve that!" he would snap and my dad was genuinely bewildered. My stepfather wasn't home the day my father came to pick me up for a weekend visit and, when confronted with the fact that I didn't want to go to church with him, he said, "YOU ARE A WASTE OF MY TIME!" I remember how humiliating it was to have to leave the house and get into his big, green Ford truck after he'd said that to me. But when Gary found out, my mother had to do everything she could to keep him from driving to my dad's house and kicking his ass. I mean that literally. He wanted to punch him out and take me back home.

Odd, isn't it? In faerie tales, it's always the step-parent who is the villain. In my own life, the stepfather was actually the hero, before madness consumed his mind and he's dead now, so tormented that he couldn't bear to live any longer. He continued loving me and my mother, long after the divorce. Despite the emotional scars, I can't muster up a single flicker of anger towards him. He is totally forgiven and I often find myself hoping his soul found peace after the body perished.


So...as dangerous as this sounds, I think I want to focus on those early years of my stepfather, when he was kind and loving to me, and project that into what I want to attract.

The Law of Attraction: you get what your mind focuses on. Even if you don't think you want it, if you're thinking constantly about it, no matter how much you hate it, you're gonna attract more of it. And it continues especially if you're thinking these things as though they are facts of life that you cannot change, such as "When I go out to eat, people always fuck up my orders." or "Why am I always being accosted by assholes on the street?" Keep thinking that way and you'll just keep getting more of it. I've also learned that resignation to a problem, like saying "That's just the way it's meant to be." when you really don't want it to be, also sets the pattern. Only a serious, focused, disciplined attitude change will change the situation. This is pretty well in accord with the physics of synchronicity and Occult understanding of magick, so we can see why nobody can defy "The Amazing Randy" when he challenges people on their paranormal claims. His sarcastic, condescending and cynical mind ensures failure and attracts only the charlatans. Anyone with real talent and who actually desires to help will see him for the repulsive toad that he is and not be bothered with him.


The good news about this ugly story is that I'm finally waking up to MY part in the things that have happened to me for years and so I have no problem. The fact that I attract Alpha Male types is not even subconscious, I suppose. I am sexually submissive and I can remember being in my twenties and desiring a relationship with "an older brother type"...protective and dominant. And yet, I didn't like men who acted "so gay all the time" and wanted "straight acting" guys. Yes, I admit it, I used that ugly term.

There have also been other types of guys...not quite Alpha but very attractive, positive, dynamic, guys who would treat me well...but my self esteem didn't think I could actually get one or even deserved one. So guess what? I attracted guys like that who kept me at a distance and were emotionally unavailable. Llewynvolk was the first of those.

AND I attract, tall, bullying men who have some kind of affection for me but are too closeted to act on it and who therefore frustrate me sexually and tend to want to control me and like me as long as I agree with them on everything, but become aggressive and hostile when I disagree.

Mark Hunter was, perhaps, the first. Then there was Klayton. I wrote about these guys in one of my essays. Klayton had a friend named Dave, who I forgot to write about. Dave was like that too. Though actually, Dave courted me outright once and, even though we never had a more intimate sexual experience, we had regular sessions where I could suck his dick. I was rather proud to discover that I gave better head than any of his girlfriends and could even deepthroat his his dick which was pretty long and had a challenging upward curve to it. Dave was also the hottest of all these types of guys I've attracted too. Great body. Long, gaunt face and very deep, sexy voice. Later on, after we had parted way, I found out Dave had come out as full on bisexual.

Jordan is the latest in this line and I've known him for a few years, after meeting him once at a bus stop, during the time I worked at Slaveco. In those days, he was a slim, goodlooking guy with a cocky, happy-go-lucky attitude and I found him charming to be around and we hung out together a lot, got stoned, and I would either do some airbrushing or work on a shadowbox project while he assembled chain mail and some sci fi TV show would be playing, which we would both listen to, occasionally look up at, comment on, and then return to our projects. This, incidentally, is a major reason why I do want a relationship: having someone else around. Not necessarily the two of us glued to each other in constant cuddling. But just...having him around. It's comforting and peaceful.

Unlike Hunter, who remained closeted for as long as I knew him, Jordan actually admitted that he "had bisexual tendencies" and also admitted that he had a crush on me. When he visited, we did cuddle a bit on the couch and watched a movie or two together and went to sleep together but...actually, now that I come to think of it, that only happened three times. We never kissed and certainly never had sex. I wanted something like what I had with Dave. I was like, "Okay fine. I understand you like women too much to date me and so you don't want to lead me on to a nonexistent possibility of intimacy. But I'd just like to suck your dick."

Okay, I'll admit it. It's fun to suck off a straight guy. I like it.

There was a period of about a year, when Jordan stopped calling and wasn't returning my calls so I let it go and figured that was another friendship that would just drift away.

Then he suddenly dropped by in person, on my doorstep. He apologized profusely, confessed to being a self absorbed asshole and said he missed me. He also said he was having a lot of emotional problems. I had no problem forgiving him so the friendship renewed.

I should add that Aaron and Jordan have both fixed my computer a few times, although with Aaron, once it was fixed, something else was always fucked up. It is interesting to see how every techie I meet who has examined my computer has a huge, authoritative ego about his skill and insists that anyone else I've had look at my computer "was an idiot". Jordan thinks that about Aaron and Aaron thinks that about Jordan and they both think that about Spangler, who actually built my current computer. I suppose if I have Joel fix my computer next time, he'll think all three of the previous were idiots too.

I have a pot smoking habit, although I haven't been smoking since early July. Jordan smokes pot but his real habit is drinking. He's a total boozer and either shot or two of Jameson or a few beers every day is his norm. He has the rather surly, "call em as they see em" attitude that is typical of alcoholics. He also knows he's an alcoholic and doesn't really care. He likes his booze and don't take it away from him or you face having your head pounded into the floor and that's that!!

( long story about how I came to see Jordan in a different light )

It's flabbergasting! HE was the one who had encouraged me to see The Secret, which illustrates the Law of Attraction. He's a much more negative person, especially in the last two years, than I realized and, consequently, attracts a lot of negativity.

And likewise, he is just another of the kind I tend to attract. My submissive fantasies attract these dominant guys and my emotional ambivalence attracts their inability to really support and care and overall emotional availability.

The really weird thing is, Jordan told me he wanted, sometime, to come over and spend the night with me "without the girlfriend". Just...hang out? It is interesting to me that he causally rebuffed me when he was younger, slimmer and single and he could explore homosexuality...or not. Perhaps having the gay boy around kept up his ego, in light of no interesting women to date. But now that he has a woman in his life, and he's getting older, and he's got a belly and facing the real possibility of marriage and commitment...yet with the sex being less than he desires, and with him knowing that I'm submissive and like it rough. I can't help but think he will want to push for sex. One last shot before he gives up his old, carefree days of being a bachelor, free to do as he pleases. It's not that he doesn't want Tristan or the possibility of marriage. But sometimes people want things and then, when they come close to getting it, they are suddenly faced with the fact that certain sacrifices will have to be made and he may not be feeling entirely secure with what he'll have to give up, in order to have this happy marriage.

And even if he doesn't want sex, it still looks bad. So, I don't want to go there, but I'm trying to figure out how to navigate through this. I also kind of just want to phase him out, perhaps not entirely, but put more distance there, so I don't feel yoked and controlled by yet another big voiced Alpha Male.

Article on the front page of...was it the Seattle Times or the Post Intelligencer?...detailing the little faux pas of the Obama(nation) Administration trying to backpedal on the unsavory semantics concerning the health care package: ie socializing health care and including euthanasia for the elderly. Oops! Word got out about Mr. Ezekiel Emanual and his "communitarian" method of health care: let granny and the retards and the cerebral palsy or MS or MD or Parkinson's victims just suffer and die while the young and healthy get free medicine and doctors.

Oh, and here's another article from the LA Times detailing the backpedaling.

Noisy heads don't think things through so they ask for all kinds of things, without considering the costs. In this case, wanting a fantastic health care package delivered, making the "super rich" foot the bill through heavy taxation, and of course, it will all go round splendidly...all those with serious health problems will be attended to. All this WHILE the government is steeped in debt and had to borrow from China just to bail out the corporate interests from their own fuck ups and then labeled "economic recovery".

It would be one thing if we were fresh out of the Clinton era, with government operating on surplus. But to demand this kind of shit AFTER Bush spent us back down into debt, AFTER Obama borrowed from China, and especially with the knowledge that Medicare and Social Security are already suffering...didn't folks learn any math in grade school?



It doesn't work.



It's going to be a disaster.



Oh Hell, why am I even bothering to write about this? It's not like the people have any choice in the matter. The decisions will be made the Congress and the President. They will lipstick the pig all pretty and sweet and then obfuscate when our loved ones are dying and pushed away because the health care system we asked them to set up to "save" us actually just destroyed us. Same old bullshit.


By the way, the Patriot Act is still firmly in place and ain't being dismantled anytime soon. Dust the cobwebs out of your memory and remember how outraged you were when it was implemented, how draconian it was. It's still there.

And we never did find Osama Bin Laden.


And after chanting "We will never forget!" in regards to 9/11, the only people who remember are the New Yorkers, who get to look at the gaping hole that is Ground Zero, eight years later, with no serious construction in sight. Like I said before, it doesn't take eight years to construct a building.

Corporate fascism marches on while "the people" keep blaming capitalism.


Me? I just wanna get the Hell out of here.


EDIT: Folks, I may sound scornful but I'm not trying to sneer at any of you who voted for this man. I got over that months ago. I tend to feel sorry for those who honestly thought he was the best choice and who apparently thought government could deliver "hope for change" when the only REAL hope for change must come from people themselves. What I'm trying to do is WARN you that things will get worse, not better and to brace yourself for it.

Last night my bubble popped.

I'm kind of back in a funk, though not a really dark depression like I was in mid-July.

It's like this: between the inspiring advice from spiritual friends, and that documentary I saw, I started getting WAY too excited and finding myself losing focus. I'm asking for so many things, wanting so many things, and even these memoirs about how my life has evolved have been so uplifting...it's like I suddenly turned into a firefly on crystal meth, just zooming all over the place (in my mind, at least) and now suddenly...the firefly has dropped to the ground, panting and heaving and just struggling to keep his light going, for fear of sinking back into darkness.

What I need now is some relaxation and focus. Put things in order. Some things need priority.

I found myself feeling re-invigorated to work with Qabala...only to discover that my copies of both the Sefer Yetzirah and Garden of Pomegranates are missing. I still have Mystical Qabala and Crowley's 777 book. I have to say though, that I care not to bother with Crowley's volume, because I already know that, just as he boobytraps much of his writings, so too did he deliberately mis-arrange many of the symbols to throw off the student who would not bother to do the work himself.

My mother is now studying Qabala and doing her typical Gemini thing: being all intellectually excited, while not internalizing it. With her, it's always "so fascinating" until she finds something else more fascinating. This has been an ongoing problem for me: I want to share what's going on in my life with her, and she wants to share what's going on in her life with me, but I want the deeper experience and she just wants to stuff her intellect with as much information as possible. I foresee an ugly impasse at some point: when she discovers tarot.

See, tarot is one of my strongest points in working with magick, as I've done extensive work with it, both divination and insight, and in ritual use. My mother introduced me to the Joseph Campbell lectures, which provided yet another linking point: the tarot images, dream archetypes and mythological expression. She's also a painter and inspired me to start painting. I thought, logically, that she would be interested when I took out my deck and asked her to look at it and have a discussion.

She looked at my deck and I could practically feel the deck burning from insult. "Not really," she said in a flat, totally uninterested voice. She seriously did NOT give a fuck, even if it was inspiring her son enough to consider designing his own deck.

It's another in a long series of her BS about wanting me to be a personal success, but then recoiling when I show her where my passions are and where I want to go. Always the same fucking thing and it makes me angry.

Well, she's my mother and has done much for me in other ways and I love her, so I'm not going to be excessively evil, but I can see a time when she will become interested in tarot and when she brings it up to me, she's gonna get a door slammed in her face. Go get your own deck. Go study it yourself. You waved my deck away like trash when I tried to interest you. You need to pull your head out of your ass and think about how much you hurt your son with that careless dismissal. Yes, I've been working with this for over a decade and I can offer a LOT. But on this particular occasion, I turn my back on you.

Anyway, I had suggested to her that she paint a picture of the Tree Otz Chiim and put everything she knows so far into it, then keep it somewhere in her house where she can look at it a lot and study it. Then, maybe next year, do another painting, a different one and see what she's learned from it since the first one. Unfortunately, the day after I emailed that idea to her, I had gotten a letter from her with some advice articles regarding the stock market and and she said she had lost interest in painting for a while and had gotten fired up to do some sewing. So she sent that letter before I sent the email and so I felt kind of down.

I got to thinking perhaps I should take my own advice and start doing paintings of the Tree. But this now brings me to a problem that really irritates me: working with acrylics, particularly for airbrushing. I have gone round and round and round, trying to figure out how to thin my paints down enough to not clog the airbrush but not so thin as to leave splatters and drip...AND that will keep fresh in the bottles. Acrylics dry so fast and if there's any air in the bottles, then the paint begins to separate and eventually dry up and I've just wasted a bunch of paint that I was hoping to preserve for future use.

There is a brand of water based ink that works extremely well with airbrush, but that requires going back to various types of paper, instead of canvas and I have to admit that I've grown very fond of using canvas...and acrylics, for that matter. Once I discovered how well I can actually do with acrylics, I became more enthusiastic to push forward. Having to abandon that makes me very grouchy.

I'm becoming impatient with Retrograde Zero. Last night I started working on the next installment and started to feel something wrong. The chapter takes things too fast in one aspect and not fast enough in another. I am wanting to wrap that story up, bring it all together and finish it, not just keep going on and on.

Also, I had asked the Webmaster at DN.com to start a message forum for spirituality, because I wanted to meet more gay men who have a spiritual devotion. He responded that he felt that was too restrictive and offered "Personal development/well being/spirituality" instead. I said that was fine. So he created it. And for about one week, maybe even less, it went well and I contributed.

I should have foreseen that sooner or later those fucking atheist/"rationalist" types would starting filing in and shitting all over things with their intellectualized nitpicking, invoking the name of "science" all over the place. These guys don't realize that they use science as a religion. When subjects regarding the Law of Attraction and creating reality through faith and visualization get brought up, they babble about "science" and what they really mean is plain, flat, dull Newtonian physics. So then, me being the more educated among the spiritual guys, I have to start discussing the details of quantum mechanics, and then the more recent theories concerning dark matter, and also some of what's been discovered with chaos math. Fuck, even superstring theory starts breaking down to the same thing the Hindus have understood: that this world is an illusion and we are actively involved in creating it and we can influence it, often in ways that do not make sense according to strict Newtonian physics.

I've had these kinds of discussions several times in my life and always, always, the so-called "rationalist" becomes impatient and starts trying to talk me down, interrupting me, literally BLOCKING OUT what I have to say. I want to hear questions but instead I get bold faced objections and denials and then obfuscations. Is this rational?

And Robert Anton Wilson devoted a whole fucking book to this problem with irrational rationalism. It's called The New Inquisition, for anyone who is interested.

I call these guys materialists. To me, that sums up "rationalism", "atheism", "humanism", "nihilism". Seems they don't like that word, or many of them don't anyway. Eh...fuck em. Sick of catering to their egos. The truth in magick and mysticism is in THE WORKS. Try it yourself. YOU make it work. Whatever tools you need, whatever dieties you devote yourself to, the point is that YOU are the nexus and if you decide according to "rational" Newtonian physics that it's a bunch of crap, then you create that gloomy, claustrophic little reality prison for yourself. There are some things you simply cannot think your way out of. You have to let go of what you think and put yourself into it. You have to stop this nonsense about being a passive observer and INVOLVE YOURSELF.

But see...I always get stupid arguments and it just makes me feel like I'm dealing with a vampire, some asshole who's way of creating reality is to suck the passion out of everyone else and dump his negativity on them. I'm just so sick and tired of dealing with that influence. Especially since, as I mentioned before in a previous post, the materialists have never been there for me when I was in despair and asked for help. Always, the ones who could give me real, practical help, were people of some kind of spiritual involvement.

So...seeing these toxic people march in on the new forum and dumping on us, I reacted and got pretty bitchy and...I'll admit it...I made an ass out of myself and probably did not "score for my team", as it were. I probably came off as a blind faith kind of person having a temper tantrum. Do they know that I've been at the opposite end, explaining things calmly and rationally to the materialist, and witnessing him becoming an attack dog, thus showing how he is NOT open-minded or rational, but stubborn and bigoted? No, they don't. And they certainly don't see that, at the root of it, is a deep-seated grudge against institutionalized Christianity (which is, admittedly, QUITE understandable) mingled with a bunch of control issues?

I had that same grudge against Christianity for so many years. I had to do a LOT of work to get over it. The main motivating factor for me was realizing that grinding the axe didn't do anything more than attract more of those people like flies on shit and caused me suffering through anguish and smoldering resentment and outright rage. It was MY problem. Nobody could solve it but me.

And now, irony of ironies, here I am harboring a grudge against materialists, just as they harbor their grudge against Christians. Fuck man, some people really want to be SO GODDAMNED DIFFICULT TO LOVE!!!

I think the lesson I need to learn here is to see the tar baby for what he is and NOT go touching. Stop throwing pearls before swine. Stop trying to coerce enlightenment. Cuz it don't work. I need to learn to let people have their thoughts and beliefs, even if they don't even think they're believing in anything. I need to offer help ONLY when it's asked for. And I need to focus more on living by example.

I also realized last night, after a prayer, and then two meditations, that I still don't really know myself very well. Here's what I mean:

On the one hand, I tend to see myself as a work in progress and I desire to make peace with my demons and not live in anger and become a better person. And part of that means acceptance of the world as it is, including materialist...oh, and those horribly misguided Marxists.

On the other hand, Nietzche once said, "Be careful of exorcising your demons. You may exorcise the best part of yourself." Nietzche, while having a vision of a better mankind, was not exactly spiritual. Yet his statement is backed up by the deeply spiritual Joseph Campbell, who stated in one of his lectures that he's seen people who come out of years of therapy having a personality like "a filleted fish". Just so happy and accepting and bland. I don't recall Crowley actually addressing this specifically but his overall behavior seems to support the idea. Even after having met his guiding spirit, he never stopped being snotty and elitist.

I understand a few things about myself as I am now: that I can be very judgmental, impatient, BITCHY, sanctimonious and even insecure. I do accept these things about myself. One flag I can wave in my favor is that I will NEVER EVER be so dishonest as to go around claiming to "tell it like it is" because I know nobody does that. Nobody is an expert on objective reality. The one who calls himself a "realist" is either the biggest fool or the biggest liar of them all!! No, I understand that I may call em as *I* see em...but that's only MY view. And I am only one creature amongst the many on this little planet.


But the question is, upon understanding these flaws, do I then strive to work on them and overcome them, as is consistent with my notion of development and becoming a better person? Or do I let them stand, and say, "This is me. Take it or leave it."


?????



In this matter, I am lost. I do not know myself. I do want to be a better person, but not at the cost of gutting my passions. I am totally confounded.