pair.

when i found ric-- when i find a guy. my heart jumps.

it’s small, but it’s there. it’s a feeling. a rush of blood. the excitement of something new; someone who actually catches my interest. its not often someone will catch my attention. i’m not a man hung up on looks, status, or any other conventional symptom of “mate.”

it needs to be an immediate feeling; a rush, a connection, an Energy-- perks up my eyes, sound becomes clearer, touch hot, skin flushed. it’s a small hit of a wonderful drug.

I don’t like bars, pride events, huge gatherings; I'm too sensitive. the rush of feeling and thoughts streaming out from a bar is enough to keep me from going inside. walking into a gay bar is even worse-- suffocating with smells, bass, attitude. and the crowds are not usually of people who i would consider dating material; as in austin, i don’t find shaved college kids “attractive.”

this can make life a little difficult.

it’s hard to meet a guy. i don’t feel like i’m picky, nor do i feel like i’m asking for a lot. and in actuality, i don’t even know that i want a boyfriend ever again, or a relationship for that matter.

but sometimes, just sometimes, it gets lonely.

i don’t sit around in a robe eating buckets of ice cream, but i do have moments where i’ll catch myself staring at the wall, and realize i’m feeling it.

for as independent and self assured as i am, in a house that’s not even big, a room can seem cavernous, a couch desolate, a bed torturous.

i don’t sit around cutting myself, nor is this an every day thing. it’s a fleeting thought, notion, feeling, that’s gone as soon as it pops into my head.

i own a home. i have two wonderful dogs. a career. great friends. incredible family. i am a happy person.

i’m just bothered; persistently nagged at by this feeling of wanting someone to get me the way i get other people.

i “get” people. i’m the one coworkers auto-gravitate to with life problems. family comes to me rather than my parents to work out issues. friends and loved ones seek me out for my thoughts on matters.

just once. just once. i want to be on the receiving end of that.

i want to know someone- a man- romantically, who “gets” me the way i “get” other people. because that never happens. bri, she gets me, but even then, not all of the time (99%). it would be nice to have a guy get me even a quarter (25%) of the way she does.

but even then, it seems to be asking a lot.

ric was great. he understood me in the way that he “understood” what buttons to push and how to talk to me to make me think he got me and understood how i worked. but in the end, manipulation isn’t a substitute for a genuine understanding of a person, that’s just knowing the mechanics without understand the principles behind them.

i was so unhappy with him because as much as i reasoned his manipulations off as “understanding,” no matter how hard i tried to convince myself of it, emotionally, i knew it was nothing more than manipulations.

i know i’m not an easy act to follow around. i’m logical, but emotional, pragmatic but goofy, spiritual but not religious, a fighter but a pacifist. all these odd combinations that i know when most guys take a look at get them confused. “how can you be this way, but act that way,” or “believe this, but act that.”

that’s just the way i am. it’s the way i’ve always been. it maddens people because i’m not easily categorized. and i get that; why do you want to keep people around that you have no idea what they are capable.

i have a small group of friends. they tend to be people that have similar stories or styles of communication to mine. but even then, i know there are times when i’ll say something that most people look at me with a look of complete bewilderment. i don’t feel bad when they do, i just get discouraged.

so i keep myself measured, i rarely let anyone see all of me. there are two people in this world that i could say with complete assurance that i know have seen the “real” me; i was in the womb of one, and the other is my best friend.

but going around being only “part-me” isn’t easy. i take sabbaticals-- reprises during the year to ground myself and recharge. i spend so much time being emotionally open and available to people, that i take time to turn inward to renew my stores of Energy.

it’s hard not to wonder, “what would it be like.” what would it be like to have that level of report with someone, that I’m attracted to in *that* way-- cause i can’t honestly say i’ve had the occasion to to know what it’s like.

to be in a choreographed dance of life-- day in and day out, complementing each other in form and function, reflecting light.

to understand as well as be understood.

a part of a pair.

difficulty

we met 4 years ago, it was a one night stand and he came to me. it was in my apartment that first night that i knew "god this is the guy" and the sex that night.... was amazing (and from someone that by 23 when we had met had had enough experience to know when it was amazing). we tapped into something in each other that i had never had with any of the dozens upon dozens (ok lets be honest, hundreds) of those before, and i the same for him. but he was just out of a bad relationship, one that affected ours profoundly, and after that night, we had no contact.

we met up twice more over 8 months. each time, only to disappear again.

then that night. i walked into rainbow cattle company, and there as i stood alongside my friends, i glanced over my shoulder to the left, and as i whipped back, he caught my eye. my heart... stopped. i stared forward, intent on my nonchalance, remembered that i had to breathe, and let out an audible gasp.

"shit."

santiago turns to me and in hushed concern, asks, "what?"

"ric. shit."
"daddy ric?"
"yea. shit."
"where?"
"2 o'clock. shit"
"he smiled at me."
"shit."

and when i saw those eyes, the ones i couldn't look into that first night we met cause i was so humbled that this incredibly handsome man was in my home, and that smile, the one i would only end up missing now, from that moment on, we were inseparable.

and the good times. they were good. they were amazing. we were laughter, smiles... we were what each other were waiting for. he was my dream, come to life. walking, breathing, flesh. his skin, the pelt of fur resting rightly on his torso, those eyes, his lips, the taste of him in the morning, the feel of him in my mouth, at night- security. like no other.

and lets not kid. the sex, i had had sex. lots of it. i was ACTIVE before we met. and he knew, affected him? "no, of course not." but behind that look, doubt.

but our sex... our lovemaking... our fucking... all of it.... epic. we brought out the primal in each other. it was with him, in those intimate moments, that i became, more, a person i had never encountered before. the preening, breeding horse hidden, i opened myself to things i never thought of, but had always wanted, fantasies to reality. what more could one want?

to erase the 1% of bad times.

because despite the peaks of those mountains, there for are the valleys.

in those moments when it was so dark, what could we do. we fought for it. we yelled for it. we cried for it. we held each other through it. we tried everything to keep it together, because to each of us, the threat of loss.... the threat of loss can maim. keep hearts, senses, touch, minds-- at bay, till you're unsure what it is you're doing exactly.

where do all of these tiny scars left behind lead us? how do you rebuild trust, etched at over time, by the stupid, by the words unbridled and hurled in anger, by the guilt, by the fear, by the love.

stalemate. we'd danced our dance, a dark bacchanal. though back together, a functioning unit, beneath- red eyes.

both of us, exhausted, our armor heavy, and inside, tender and bruised, we were quick to snap. but was that it? what if it was more. what if all i'd been feeling for so long, and all he'd claimed to have accepted, what if that was all trying to tell us something.

and so, a month after our anniversary, and days before he turned 48, i ended our relationship.

i had to let him go. we had stopped growing. there are three of us in a relationship, him, me, us. none were growing. we had stopped, complacent and comfortable in the sun and the moon, we had just....stopped. and though the motions kept at it, inside, i knew something had to change. you weren't happy. i wasn't happy.

"so then, that's our dream, to be happy."
"to being happy."

do you remember?

you will never read this. anger like ours blinds.

i pray for you quietly in the moments- still- where a glance becomes a memory, and i remember your voice. i remember your smell. i remember our love.

happy birthday rickie, i love you and miss you so much it kills.

(c. 10/17/2007)

i think i need to schedule a therapy appointment

and here's why....

the more i think about it, the more upset i get: 

should one's political beliefs, affect the relationship people have with each other. 

notice i say people and not family. i am just that kind of person that can see my family that way; yes, we are a family and i love and adore each and every member of my family to no end and would do anything for them, thick or thin. but. at a certain point, in the course of one's life, you come to have indelible values and rights to life, that you deem to be your self truths. and though you're family; we are all just people, and adults at that, because that's what people say to mean "individuals on their own doing their thing regardless of others," thank you therapy. 

so here's the thing. i was on the front page of the daily texan declaring how it was wrong of the government and anyone in this world to look down upon me and judge me less than because i am gay. i organized that entire event, i'm in a picture under a rainbow, and i talked about how difficult it is sometimes to just pretend its allright and live you're life, when you know you have to wait to have certain things given to you because of your sexual orientation. i have to wait- to be told i'm allowed to see a sick husband in the hospital, because though we've been together 20 some odd years, but aren't legally married, am not allowed to see him? that i can be released from my position in more than a dozen states in the US because of no other reason than my sexual orientation, and have no recourse whatsoever, because as in texas, it is not illegal to do so? that my family i have with my husband should not receive the same treatment from the IRS, the government and insurance agencies? 

at what point, do the people who believe that it is ok to segregate a segment of the population, including me, and reduce me to a "less than;" to label me not enough to deserve those rights, at what point, is it all right to say, "i'm fed up with it, and i'm not going to be just 'ok' with it anymore." 

and it aggravates me to no end. because what does that say in the end. what does denying that mean in the end to the person. in them, is the core belief, that it is wrong. that what i do, and who i am at a core level of existence in this world- is wrong. 

that is not ok. 

and i want to yell at them and scream about it and ask, ask what it is that disturbs them so much about it. about me and who i am. 

and no i am not saying that i am only gay. i am a man. a single man who works to provide for himself and his home, and his own family. for his kids, and in the while, providing and working towards a better life, not bothering anyone, and helping where i can. i am a man, who happens to be gay. 

what of it. 

how is it such a small aspect of who i am detracts and makes me a person who is not equal in the eyes of others; desperate and as hyperbolic as that sounds, rife with self loathing and self pity as some could take it-- it is anything but. it is growing up in this world, aware of being gay by the time i was 12, and knowing always, that no matter how happy i was and no matter how much i made for myself in this world, i would always be second class in America; where the minority and unenlightened- the unaware, the plain ignorant- are able to dictate what it is that is right for the majority, and deem it appropriate to treat me with disrespect, by holding these beliefs, and decide for me what i should have in my life, or deny outright, and/or instead provide me an alternative to satiate the distaste from being denied basic liberties. 

i worked for 2 years in college to make it a worse punishment to commit a vicious act on another person based on their race, gender, or sexuality. 

i had to work for that- work for it. it is impossible to convey the anger, the indignation, to think that there are those out there to think it is OK to commit a crime based on hate- OK to leave a gay man to die in the middle of rural wyoming, beaten and bloody- left to die, hung like a scarecrow on a desolate fence post. to drag a black man from a tow hitched to a pick-up down a dirt road in Texas- until he died from losing too much blood. he was alive the entire time- the entire three miles of the dragging- until a pot hole finally severed the head he had tried to keep up the full three miles. he lost his arm as well. and the three men that did it did it because they "hated" him for the color of his skin. 

it is simply not ok with me. it goes against everything i am and who i am in this world. 

perverse as it is, i want someone to just stand in front of me and look me in the eyes and tell me to my face, i don't think you should be able to get married, because you are gay. that entire sentence word for word. what that would accomplish or give me or prove, i could not tell you. but at some point; i want to at least believe that such ignorance really does exist, and i'm not just making it all up in my head. 

and as much as i know in my heart of hearts that everyone is allowed to believe in what they chose to believe in, and having studied religions and cultures i know what it is to accept that i believe what i believe, and others believe what they believe, and in those beliefs we actually have much in common. 

 

but. when those beliefs conflict on such a basic level with my own, i cannot but pause and take stock of what that means to me, and the relationship i have with people who debate with themselves and in the end choose those beliefs. 

and so, at the end of the day, and the over-neurotic dialogue in my head, i'm left in in an uncomfortable position; at what point is it just not ok to be placid and act like it's completely acceptable to believe in and want those kind of beliefs deciding what i can and can't do with my life. 

so endeth the tonight's perturbing mind fuck and consuming thoughts. good night. 

writings and connections

i was never a great student.

i wasn’t honor roll, or recognized, or even a nerd. i was just there. usually b’s and c’s with an occasional ‘a’ thrown in for good measure. it was never about me not being able to grasp or do the material; it was more so that i just didn’t care. there was nothing that they could put in a book and make me read that i couldn’t learn quicker than the rate at which they were teaching it.
i just wasn’t a school person. period.

so i joined groups; lots of them. anything and everything, as long as it was creative and didn’t involve any kind of homogenized, regurgitated, force-fed verbal diarrhea, slapdash cookery coming from the spout of a teacher who didn’t want to be there any more than i did. band, orchestra, prose, writing, poetry - anything that i could be creative in and express myself; i was there. anything to get away from the daily round up and slaughter.

i loved english. HATED reading, unless it was of complete interest to me. i could care less for anything british, i'll say that. all crap. once you've read the language and know it, it all becomes pretentious.

what did catch my interest?

lois duncan. she had a series of books. all dealing in the paranormal. not ghosts and goblins, but of people gifted with abilities. people with prescient and telekinetic abilities- all kinds, and always centered around a female character as the lead, who was either a strong dynamic individual or became one. i remember in the 7th grade i finished two dozen or so of them in a month; the teachers were amazed, the parents thought i was on drugs, and i, i sat in my room devouring them and just idling at the thought of being special.

more so, i was surprised, i could sit still for more than 30 minutes. another one i read repeatedly was a book of tales, lore, and legends in and around mexico and the area where i grew up in south texas. like "la llorona," the woman in white who walked along cliffs crying out for the baby she gave up thinking her husband was cheating on her. of the dark man who prayed on innocent women, coaxing them to dance on the dirt floors of the old haciendas and ballrooms of south texas, and how they would spin and spin even when the music stopped, till in all the dust, they disappeared and the woman was never seen again.

over and over and over...

and i was good at writing. i loved it. i soaked up words everywhere. i remember the thrill of learning modicum, phoneme and sesquipedalian. and when the spelling list would come out every week, i'd always go to the last in the list, just so i was the first to learn the long complicated words. i loved it.

i read books i didn't understand at all. just to come across words to learn. i was never a dictionary guy, but i understood just by reading it what the words meant and my vocabulary grew fast.
i fell madly in love with words and language. the more lyrical, the more poignant, the more driven in character and stamina the words were, the more i loved them.

i won contests for my writing. i remember winning my mom a gift pack from dillards when i was in 3rd grade for mother's day from a letter we wrote in school. she still has and wears the "love" earrings she won, and i'm pretty sure she has the letter that won along with everything in that gift pack, wrapping, boxes and all.

i won poetry contests in middle school, and free form writing uil events, the prose and improv events as well.

and even with all the accolades i was a very quiet, keep to myself, not a lot of friends loner guy who just never got the people around him. how they could live with being "just adequate," but to fit in, and how desperate i was to just not be looked at, i did anything i could to be what they would consider normal. i didn't answer every question the teacher asked. i slacked off on purpose to not be a nerd. i never looked at boys and did everything i could to not pay them more attention than the girls.

and of course, i only had girlfriends.

i was painfully aware of what i wanted to be and act like, but i did just the opposite. where i grew up, it was latino guys, the kind that work the fields and were either a cholo or gangster. all of em where of some derivative, and in a place like the valley, where it's 99% mexican and a 10 minute walk to mexico, the air of heightened machismo and the energy of do proper and act proper or else stifled; i just didn't want to endure more than i put myself through. hypercritical and creative, i tore myself knew ones all the time. i could not help but live by how others perceived me. i couldn't. not when walking down the hallways someone ALWAYS got shoved for being different, or picked on for some reason or another.

so i kept quite.

but not when it came to writing. that was my pride and joy, no one could take it away from me. i didn't care what they thought about that.

when put to writing for a school assignment, i looked up everything i could, learned whatever words i had to to make it sound how i knew in my head i would sound if i were the person i wanted to be.

how sad is that? but i was 12, what did i know?

i knew that it was mine. no matter what. but when it came to doing it on my own, to be creative in my own right, with no reason other than to create, nothing ever came.

i could sit and try to create something, but the harder i tried the more infelicitous and stifled it came out. everything awkward and gawky as i must of looked to others. and no matter how hard i tried, it just wouldn't come out ...right.

i graduated 127 out of 644. i would of been 56 if i hadn't failed a class (pre-calculus, the teacher and i hated each other). but i always got A's in english. and with all the activities and achievements i got into UT.

when i moved to austin was the first time i ever wrote something. something that was of me, but not from me.

one night, about a year of living on my own here in austin, having come out a bit more than my stilted coming out in the Valley (back home). i was being at least a considerable bit more myself.

fuck that, i later became the head of the oldest gay organization at UT. AND lectured at sex ed classes at different colleges, a panel member at various events, and even on the front page of the Daily Texan, the nations largest and highest circulated college daily newspaper, which i still have copies of. and i was proud of it too.

but back to being 19. i had just found out this puerto rican guy i'd been dating was actually involved with someone else. he was 25 at the time. and i was crushed (they broke up last year).

i sat outside one night, around 1 am. i just sat there. i had an empty spiral notebook and was on a bench on this elevated porch on the top of a hill. moon was full, the pool was below me and i just sat there and stared. i just sat there for about 2 hours. just sat there staring off and thinking. it was quiet, so unusually quiet. the normally busy streets across the complex were still, all you could hear was the bowing of the land to the wind that filled the night; light as it was, everything kept still; so very still. and i sat there being still with it.

i would quiet my mind for a bit, but then little spurts of thoughts and absolving of what was. really looking at it and examining it and letting it all go, and when i was done i would just sit, till something else came up in my mind that i felt i needed to do "something" with.

till i was finally done. how did i know? do you ever have that really deep nap where after you wake up, it seems like you’ve just had a weeks worth of sleep, your mind is completely clear, your vision feels sharper, your ears perk up just a bit more than usual; that feeling?

i opened up my notebook and started writing. about 14 pieces in all. the early works i’ve come to call them. and as i sat there, done writing, and strangely refreshed. i went inside and fell quick to sleep.

i had never slept better.

and that morning, drinking my coffee i reread what i wrote. and didn't recognize a word. i read them thinking "i wrote this? really?" and i read them and thought, "is that me?" i didn't remember a single word of what had been put down on that page.

i knew i wrote them, but i didn't really "think" them. it was my notebook, in the ink of that one pen that took me an hour to pick out (i'm incredibly picky when it comes to pens), my cursive, my odd e, and my odd melded shorthand. i sat there looking at them, and knew they had sort of just "come out." and all these distinct Beings, conjured of something i was feeling at the time, manifested on the page, and instinctively, i knew they were of me.

and that's how it goes for me. i can't really sit down and task myself to write something. it kinda just happens on its own.

i'll put my hands down into an old pair of jeans, or open up a book bag i haven't used in a while, or find a pocket on something long dumped in a silent corner, and often times i'll pull out random pieces of paper. each time a thought or a line. something that in my head had manifested in a quiet monologue watching cars pass as i sit idly in traffic.

sometimes trite little things, something that at the time surmounted enough interest in my mind that i thought it befitted a permanent life.

i still do in fact. pen. paper. pencil. sometimes none of the above. i have done more with the outside of styrofoam cups than most.

not so much for a period of time, and these days, it happens infrequently.

as of late though, i've had a lot more to think about. there have been slivers of substantial observations, but the need to write them down, is less.

perhaps something is brewing.

on a visit to atlanta, a friend and mentor tasked me to reading "the art of the sword." i'd spent a great deal of time talking to him about what i had come to understand about the world; my truths. what i believed in spiritually, and what that meant for my life. how i had come to understand what had happened, in order to be who i was, and the trouble of that path.

there was a passage that talked about dis-ease. i found it interesting that this translation from a japanese text, centuries old, took to the distinction in writing the term as, dis-ease. i'd learned that when there is something not said or felt or owned or understood in ones psyche, chi, aural, or emotional plains, it manifests itself in the body as dis-ease. it is the state of the body not being at ease with itself; a blockage that allows for the manifestation of dis-ease.

as i read, it took time to understand the book's thought on dis-ease. i knew it resonated, that there was something there in the text that i understood to be true. but i had a difficult time ascertaining from the translation the observations about Art and Life the Sword Masters were trying to ensure got passed down to the artisans of the sword to come.

the difficulty of the passage is to blame for my inability to conjure it at the moment for a true explanation. but in it, the Master talked about being humble in the awareness of the gifts one possesses.

the Master, mindful of his skill, never fought for the sake of the fight; a resolution was not at the tip of the sword. he spoke that in the mind is a space, where one can come to understand themselves, in allowing the quiet to manifest. the Master was not a man of violence, most were Zen in their approach of the sword. they would requite stories of monks and Buddhist teachers.
a story tells of a master alone in a apple orchard, blossoms around, and him at the ground in quite repose, atop his bent legs, a lone apprentice standing behind him, attending his Master.

there in the hush, they had come to reflect. the Masters talked of dis-ease being the forcing of the sword; to be clumsy and unaware of the sword as a being, an extension of oneself, as if to treat it simply as an instrument, of final means, to final ends. the Masters believed, one was to be humble at the presence of the sword, to allow it to guide and pull and teach what it intends upon the student. in those teachings come balance, and awareness. and in the end, humility and peace. to completely be at peace, to "Seek the released mind [mencius]," was to achieve Greatness.

in achieving Greatness, Masters could end armies, and were given treasures and accolades by kings and governments; more often, they would seek recluse, done with the dirtiness of politics.
and it was said they could sense the enemy; sense the energy of the world around them, and from that pick up the enemy, before the enemy could strike. this was to be at One with the Spirit.

and in their walk back to the grounds of the master, the Master spoke to his student; asked if there was any sight of foe as he stood guard in the orchard. the student responded that he did not, but hesitated. the Master continued, and hoped that the student had devised a decisive, one strike blow capable of taking his Master. the student stood silent and stunned; a fleeting thought, he had wondered if he could engage his master there in the orchard, and his Master, picked up on the energy of a passing thought.

i understood the idea. i knew what they were talking about, i'd watched enough television and bared witness to enough pop culture to understand the peacefulness of the "masters" of film and screen. but this was a deeper understanding of it.

then, an awareness; i equated the art of the sword, to the art of writing, and i understood. reading the passage, the further i got into it, the more examples it began to give; last of which was writing.

my writing is far and few between. i am not someone who can sit down and write, that is not a particular talent. i was not blessed with that ability. i know many who are and i often sit in awe and admiration at what they are able to create. these testimonials of their own lives, their journey and experience. mine is a personal art that i use to mediate the needs and thoughts in this particular manifestation of Spirit.

i cannot will something into creation. it must be of its own nature; serving as an open channel, that i am to work and make ready. learning about myself, being in therapy, being aware of who i am and the Spirit inside of me and the purposes we are meant to complete here on this trip.

the more effort i exert in it's creation, the more harsh and stilted. but when i feel the mood, a good week and a good alignment of the stars, it will come out naturally, coinciding with how ever i feel at the moment, but without thinking of it or how it makes me feel, but just letting it "Be," and for lack of a better word, letting it "exist." in it's own space and it's own time, in the infinite loop of time.

it is, and will always be, what it is.

my influence? accept and embrace, and put onto it what i can, positive energy in the form of visualization, prayer; be in a state of benevolence and gratitude. be aware of the fact, that i am creating my own reality in the space of what i know to be my own personal truths. i am who i am, a being that is to be free of self-woven trappings, false egos and expectations of who i think i need to be, and just exist as who i am with no judgments of myself or others. to let go of any residual anger and jealousy that i unknowingly hold on to, and grow aware in the issues in my Spirit i continue to work on and resolve.

in forcing creation, it cannot manifest itself in it's entirety. thought prevents the channel of the Universe in the Spirit.

kai - jo - e // the three basic stages a Buddhist monk studies and works through on their path to enlightenment.

kai, is the observance of precepts set up for discipline.

jo, is the mental concentration for achieving a Zen state.

e, is the awakening to the wisdom of the lord Buddha.

"Rectifying oneself by being sincere inside- this is jo. Jo is evidenced by quietness. when there is quietness there is truthfulness. without truthfulness, there cannot possibly be jo.

when it manifests itself outwardly as action, it is called kai. Kai is not doing forbidden things. when something is forbidden, respect comes into being. without respect, there cannot possibly be any rule of conduct.

if you teach others, with an awareness of this, they will obey and follow you.

that is called, e. E is born of Brightness. Brightness is born of Wisdom. without Wisdom, there cannot possibly be E." - Chugan Engetsu

uh... oh... hi there...

so no news as of late, other than my HOUSE BEING BROKEN INTO! but that's for another time. at the moment, just discovered the following while surfing this morning... no duh that i'm a fan of heroes, and that i've known milo for years cause of gilmore girls, and i never found him attractive... but now...
BA-DOW! hi there...grrrwlllll.....

does this mean i can't vote hillary?

so, shit head it going out but i honestly haven't been paying attention to anything presidential. i pretty much figured, "i'm voting hillary, a lesbian president? wonderful!" but now, obama has actually made an "official statement" on his website regarding to gay pride month that is going on now for those not in the know. it reads:

"Obama Statement on Pride Month

"Pride Month is a reminder that while we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do.

"Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It's about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.

"It's time to turn the page on the bitterness and bigotry that fill so much of today's LGBT rights debate. The rights of all Americans should be protected -- whether it's at work or anyplace else.

"Don't Ask, Don't Tell" needs to be repealed because patriotism and a sense of duty should be the key tests for military service, not sexual orientation. Civil unions should give gay couples full rights. And those who commit hate crimes should be punished no matter whether those crimes are committed on account of race, religion, gender identity, or sexual orientation.

"This Pride Month, let's make our founding promise of equality a reality for every American."

Wow, i totally have a ragin' mad on for this guy now. woof papa, you can protect my rights anyday.

for da boys

seeing as how i left that depressing post on "don't ask don't tell" post up for so long, i thought i should atone, and instead do lighter fare.

in that vien, i have been taking a lot of pictures of the boys lately. for instance:

that would be miccah and me. he got way comfortable one night and got all spread eagle on me. he felt very pilsburryish to me so i poked him and made the "hoohoo" noise, he didn't wake up or even flinch. i love my big dumb jock. notice marly on the floor to the right. no matter what, he always must be by me. not afraid to admit either, but, he's my favorite. me and him, we just get each other.

marly realizing daddy wasn't on the bed anymore. miccah of course remains passed out. i've gotten into the really bad habit of letting them sleep on the bed with me. most of the time, it's fine, save for the fact that once they start sleeping, moving around on my own bed requires moving two 40 pound sacks of potatoes out of my friggin' way. the boys love riding around the car with the windows down. they politely switch windows every so often. this is marly. he will ride around for hours in this exact position. miccah on the other hand, will run back and forth barking his head off if he sees anything move anywhere near the car. alert the townspeople, dad's no longer in bed! aren't they just the handsomest boys.
oh mikey.