Occasional Jots and Tittles

The birthday’s over (43, in case anyone’s wondering) and it was nice, mostly quiet. As usual, there was a considerable clusterfuck about birthday meal(s)–it wouldn’t be my birthday without one. In this case, I was supposed to have a seafood lunch with my parents on Monday when I got in at the airport, but they had to skedaddle back home for a funeral, so that was postponed. Jonathan was going to take me to dinner on my actual birthday (Wednesday), but he had to swap his Wednesday off for Thursday.

So… the parents decided to take me out on Wednesday night instead, and Jonathan was going to take me to lunch today. Then his work called right at noon, and insisted he come in to drop something off right then–which took up basically the entire lunch period at all the places we’d talked about going. So post-birthday lunch today was Subway. Meatball Mariana. Yay.

Last night’s dinner, however, was at Fleming’s, a prissy steakhouse chain. I will say right off the top, the food was excellent, and the service was generally very good. A few things I’d have pointed out to the waitress about reaching across people’s dinner plates to reach the inside glasses, but still nothing to really complain about.

But still. $185 for three people? with no wine or liquor bill? in Baton Rouge? I’m aghast. It’s true, we ate well, the food was good, I even had enough left over to bring home for a quick lunch later, but… I’ve eaten food almost as good, and pretty much as well served, for more like $25 a head. That final 5% of food quality improvement shouldn’t have more than doubled the cost. And for $185, again, the waitress’s sleeve shouldn’t be dragging across a plate to reach another person’s glass.
Of course, I suppose we were paying for the prissy atmosphere. I keep using that word, because I can’t think of a better one. Fleming’s obviously aims to be a cut (okay, two cuts) above the noisy, active, “bar-centric” sort of Outback/Lone Star/Longhorn steak house. No peanut shells on the floor, for one thing. Tablecloths. You know the drill. But there are so many hard surfaces (dark wood walls, hard floors in some spots), and with the kitchen not completely and thoroughly closed away, there’s still a very perceptible level of background noise. If I’m paying $60 a plate for dinner, I expect enough quiet that I can hear a harpist playing across the room (which, of course, there wasn’t).

I’m going to start back the Top 10 list with a list of Top 10 restaurants I like, here in Baton Rouge or in New Orleans. I’ll probably follow it up with a Top 10 list of places to avoid (with reasons, in case they’re things you don’t mind).

I feel like a Code Monkey sometimes, when I’m helping someone on a website that needs to interact with a database and/or process transactions of some sort. I spent four days (and I mean LOONNNNNNG days) being a Code Monkey in Florida last week, getting home yesterday afternoon.

The term is often used insultingly, but I don’t see it that way. It’s always a good feeling to sit there and crank out a snippet of code in two or three minutes to insert in a page that completely changes the page structure dynamically, then watch the faces of the page designers–who can design really cool-looking pages (NOT my specialty), but just with static links in them. I love doing things that amaze others, even when they aren’t really amazing at all.

Otherwise, the trip was fun, and I got to do some birding at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge. Picked up several lifers, and definitely plan to go back. On the downside, apparently last week there was a huge major grounding of migrants here at home, and I could have picked up just as many probably here. C’est la vie. I’ll post more about the birds on a separate post tonight or tomorrow.

For the first time in nearly two years, I’m off to the Lake Douglas Ranch, sort of a mini-home away from home for me in Christmas, Florida. The ranch, owned and run by my best friends, is located on a former citrus grove and still has a section of citrus trees producing oranges and grapefruits.

I used to visit the ranch (and its predecessor, which was some miles to the west) a few times a year. However, with Jonathan’s move down a year and a half ago, vacation time has been harder to set up, and so I’ve missed visiting. I plan to do some birding there and nearby and may even go slumming at a theme park.

I’ll try to take pictures to post here in the blog if I get inspired. I may also just sit reading on the deck for a good part of the time.

I try to assume good will on the part of everyone who contacts me online (well, except for the bots on gay.com and spam e-mail). But here’s a message I got tonight on Worldleathermen.com (first communication ever from this person):

HELLO YOU FUCKING SLAVE

TOTALLY DAMN GOOD FUCKING HOT PICS AND 

PROFILE AND YOU TOTALLY FUCKING LOOKED 

AND SOUND LIKE THE FUCKING LOW LIFE 

BOOTS==LEATHER AND RUBBER AND 

UNIFORMS SLAVEPIG I AM FUCKING LOOKING 

FOR HERE IN MY TOTALFULL 100% DUNGEON 

TO USED AND TORTURE AS I FUCKING SEE FIT

TOTAL 100% FULL HEAVY SADIST MASTER 

BUTCH

OK… I try not to be too hung up on language, although I’ve never in my life had occasion to use “fucking” six times in one message, and I’m not sure why he did either. Still, someone who writes this poorly should spend less time online and more time learning to spell and conjugate verbs. Not to mention develop his vocabulary so that he doesn’t think “totalfull” is a word. Jeez.
And given that I’m versatile, I try not to stress out when someone assumes I’m a bottom, or looking to bottom, even though my profile there does list me as 70% top.

But nowhere in there does it say I’m looking to be a slave to anyone, much less a “slavepig”, and if he thinks, from my relatively mild profile, that I’m what he’s looking for, then he’s a fucking moron. (And I managed to say it with only ONE “fucking” in the sentence.)

What drives this kind of person? Surely 98% of his messages must either be ignored or come back with “Hey, stupid, can’t you read?”. Are these people so unconcerned about what people think of them that they can continue to spew shit like this and not care about the results?

My friend Reddy recently had a posting in his blog asking for questions to answer for his ongoing “The Truth” series… where he answers a question, deep and personal though it may be, with the truth. This time the question was:

If you could change being gay…….would you? If not, was there a point in time when you started being OK with it, or have you always been OK with it?

An interesting, multi-part question. For me, the simple answer to the first part is “No”, and the simple answer to the second part is “not long after I figured it out”.

The more complex answer to the first part kind of builds on Reddy’s answer, that if that one part of his life changed, there would be cascading effects throughout. The biggest change, of course, would be that I’d have an entirely different set of friends, an entirely different set of hobbies, and an entirely different social life.

Many of you know that for several years, I competed in gay rodeos, wrestling steers and other assorted fun tasks. I didn’t start until my mid 30’s, by which time most straight rodeo competitors have long since hung up their hats and retired. But gay rodeo encourages contestants to continue (in part because the events have modified rules that are less strenuous than pro rodeo) into middle age and up. As a result, I met some of the closest friends I’ve got through a sport I would never have entered as a straight person.

Likewise with my leather & BDSM interests. Yeah, I know, there are straight kinky people out there. But by and large, they aren’t social and visible like gay men are. Most of the friends I have who aren’t rodeo friends are leather friends, and together the two groups form most of my social life.

Rodeo also reawakened my interest in travel. In the 1990’s, I took a few trips with family and friends, but I didn’t travel alone much. Driving more than an hour or so alone made me nervous, and flying wasn’t much better, since I didn’t like to rent a car on the other end. Rodeo’s full of folks who are happy to share rides to/from the airport, to the arenas, and even to book the same flight as you so you have someone to travel with. Eventually, travelling together gave me the confidence to travel alone, including a solo drive all the way to Wichita, Kansas one year to compete in rodeo finals.

I can’t imagine my life without the people who are in it today, as well as the ones whom I’ve lost over the years. If I were straight, I’d probably have long since married, settled down with a few kids, and like my sisters, I’d have no social life that doesn’t involve putting the kids into car safety seats and heading to McDonalds.

So no, I wouldn’t change being gay. The drawbacks are few and minor, and the things I’d lose would be irreplaceable.

As for when I was okay with it… well, I’m a basically logical person. Once I realized this was me, I ran through the options in my head. Even then, in 1979, I knew that there was no accepted means of “fixing” gay people, and that science was rapidly coming to a consensus that this was an inherent trait that could not be changed, whether it was genetic or environmental. It was like being left-handed; attempts to force a change almost always resulted in problems. So I decided that if it couldn’t be changed, it had to be accepted, and deal with it the best I could. So… I did. Kind of uneventful, I know. But that’s me.