Being OK With Being Single Makes for Good Dating

As I began this year I made the decision that I would venture back into the dating world. I'd dropped out sometime back and wasn't really dating material for the previous couple of years. When you speak unintelligibly and tend to nod off for 20+ hours a day, people aren't necessarily interested in dating you. I also felt that I hadn't wanted to risk the possibility of hurt that comes with making yourself vulnerable to a another human being. But last January I'd been sober for 6 months and felt like I was in a good place to open myself up to the possibility of meeting new guys and seeing what the world of potential relationships had to offer. I was very content with my singleness and was of a mind that if I didn't meet anyone that I clicked with enough to get in a relationship it would be ok; I was OK with just me and that, I felt, was the perfect place to come from. If one must have another person to make themselves happy then they are approaching the world of relationships from a needy, insecure place. Luckily, I felt very secure.

So I put myself on the market. I met Jamison online in January and we had our first date over dinner within a week. Taller and leaner than myself, Jamison had red, curly hair, a vivacious personality and a snow white smile. He came to my apartment and we went out for pizza. Jamison was intelligent, witty and very funny. I recall that I was very nervous and quite unsure of myself. In spite of that, I seemed to have made a good impression on him and he certainly did on me. We were off to the races!

Jamison and I dated for about 4 months and it was a wonderful time. He's a true romantic and was fully engaged emotionally. I loved every minute of it. But sometimes you begin to realize that you make better friends than lovers and I think he and I both began to flash on this in April. So we had an emotional conversation and decided to end our relationship as boyfriends. But we began a relationship as friends and Jamison has become such a dear, valued confidante to me that I have no regrets whatsoever that I took that chance back in January. The return on that investment has been huge.

The next Gallant Knight to enter my world was Fernando. It seems that Fernando and I had had a rendezvous about a year earlier which I don't recall. At all. It seems I met Fernando during a hazy time which has few memories for me. Benzodiazapines will have that affect. I seem to have made an impression on him however as he was insistent via emails and IM's that we reconnect. So we did. Looking at pictures he sent me he was a handsome, smiling, height/weight proportionate guy. The person that showed up at my door was handsome and smiling but the height/weight proportionate description no longer applied to the tune of about 30 pounds. We went to dinner and the conversation was about as exciting as watching grass grow. On top of our vapid conversation, Fernando mentioned several times how unhappy he was that he couldn't seem to find a boyfriend. I'm sure the fact that he was uninteresting, overweight and needy had nothing to do with that. I arrived home with a huge sigh of relief and mentally crossed him off the potentials list.

Applicant number 3 came in the form of a 5 foot 4 inch, sculpted, muscular, Latino, champion gymnast (he'd been to and won US national competitions) we'll call Joe. I'd chatted on line with Joe for over 2 years and we ran into each other again one night via the magic of high speed cable internet service. Joe showed up at my door a few nights later and suffice to say that we began a torrid series of encounters that lasted a couple of months. Although flighty and often unreliable, Joe impressed me with his passion and he holds the memorable spot as the only guy that has ever done a nude handstand and then walked across the floor on those same hands in my presence. I was impressed. Very impressed.

Joe claimed he suffered from ADD which seemed to explain his inability to complete a thought and his tendency to change plans on a moments notice. He could be very warm, tender and emotionally intimate. He could also be completely unreliable. What I came to discover as the real reason for his flightiness was that Joe, like far too many gay men, was a meth addict struggling not to be one. Our brief, incandescent fling ended when Joe stood me up in San Antonio. That very day I deleted his number and email.

I ended the last third of the year seeing John. John was born in Monterrey, Mexico but raised in the Texas panhandle. 22 years my junior, he was affectionate and very self directed. We had begun seeing one another in September but stopped after two months when he couldn't abide the fact that Jamison and I were still friends. When I advised him that my friendship with Jamison was non-negotiable he advised that we should go our separate ways. I semi-reluctantly agreed but within 24 hours began to receive numerous irrational and unfriendly text and voice messages. I decided I'd been blessed with having dodged a bullet and went on with life.

Stuart was my first and, so far only, date of myspace origin (yes, I finally developed a page) entering the parade at the end of October. He found me through a mutual friends myspace page and the friend communicated that Stuart thought I was cute. After viewing his pics I responded the feeling was mutual. We ended up going out for several meals and one night of movie watching at my place. Stuart was an ICU nurse, very goal oriented and extremely focused on his profession. Speaking for myself, although he was attractive, employed, extremely intelligent, had runner's buns you could bounce a half dollar off of and shimmering eyes, the spark wasn't there and you just can't fake that. I suspect he felt the same way. The calls ended at Thanksgiving.

At the beginning of December I began to hear from John again via emails to my myspace page. His messages were introspective and indicated that he regretted his decision to end what we had going. I finally agreed to meet him on December 5th and I knew when I saw his smile that there was something about him that stirred a passion in my heart. I didn't listen to the little voice in my head that said this might not work. Funny how the heart overrules the mind sometimes.

We made it 20 days before John broke a promise (not the first) and as we tried to work through my hurt feelings and his surly reaction to them, it became apparent to me that I should have listened to that voice. I ended that second attempt feeling love for John and being pleased with myself that I had been a gentleman. I was also warmed by the fact that despite my deep feelings for this guy, I wasn't knocked off center for very long when my hopes that we could develop a relationship were dashed.

I head into 2007 having learned a lot from these experiences. I'm solid in what I value in a potential partner, confident that I have something to offer in a relationship, and reminded that others find attractive qualities in me.

I'm also content with just sleeping with myself :)~

W is Just Plain Stupid

I wish I'd written this......but I didn't:


12.08.2006
The Incredibly, Unbelievably, Stupendously, Incurious George Bush (29 comments )
by Cenk Uygur

Never has there been a public official more unequipped to be President of the United States of America than George W. Bush. The man is simply not up to the job. Even if he really wanted to be or cared to be an effective president, he ... could ... not ... do ... it.

He can't do it on a boat, he can't do it with a (pet) goat. He can't do it in the Green Zone, he can't do it back at home. This man cannot be a good president, Sam-I-Am.

He flat out does not have the intellectual capacity to carry out the requirements of the job. This is not some mean-spirited speculation as to the level of his intelligence. The facts are in. There is nothing left to speculate on. And today we have yet another example of his sheer inability to form a cognitive thought.

Lawrence Eagleburger is a Republican. He was the Secretary of State under George H.W. Bush and was a prominent figure in the Reagan administration. He is a party stalwart and one of the bastions of the Republican establishment. This man obviously wants George W. Bush to succeed. When he met with President Bush, along with all of the members of the Iraq Study Group, he said that after they presented their findings - Bush asked no questions.

Eagleburger remarked, "I don't recall, seriously, that he asked any questions."

Stop. Think about that for a second. There are 79 recommendations made by the group. They took nine months and talked to everyone involved about the situation in Iraq. They have interesting, sometimes controversial positions, some of which Bush theoretically agrees and disagrees with - and he asked absolutely no questions. Not one.

That is beyond unbelievable. You would have to be stupendously stupid, mentally stultified and intellectually inoperative not to be able to come up with one question to this group who has presented the most important report of your presidency to you.

No one can be that callous. Forget his legacy, there are people dying on the ground every day. Even if you don't care at all about your own presidency and you don't care about the thousands of Iraqis dying every month, you have to care about the American servicemen and women you sent in to die in Iraq. You'd have to be inhuman not to care about that. No one could be callous enough to receive incredibly important recommendations on how to rescue this mission and not ask a single question.

You know why he didn't ask anything? Because he's stupid. He is afraid that he is going to ask a dumb question, or it's possible that he doesn't even have the capacity to formulate one in his tiny, little mind. So, instead he sits there like a bump on a log. The ISG members must have been at a loss for what to do. I can't imagine any of them anticipated that there would be no interaction with the president. That he would just sit there with a dumb look on his face and not make one comment or have one question.

That might explain some of their harsh comments about the president afterward. Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson intimidated that Bush is so stubborn that he stinks of it. The dude is clearly aggravated.

Later Bush actually bragged about reading the report. He said that most reports don't get read by anyone in Washington, but that he went through the trouble of reading this one. Would you like cracker, Mr. President?

Bush often brags about doing the simplest things related to his job, like meeting with the commanders. He is often fond of saying that he has met with his commanders and his advisers. Of course!!! That's what you're supposed to do. Everyone, except you apparently, already knew that. That is the beginning of the job, not the end.

If this was just one incident, you could rightfully say I might be blowing it out of proportion, but this is part of a very clear pattern in most of the important moments in George Bush's presidency.

Remember the famous meeting before Hurricane Katrina where federal officials warned that the levees might not hold. His response? Not one question.

Remember what Paul O'Neill, the former Treasury Secretary, said about him during their first one-on-one meeting. After O'Neill spoke for an hour about all of the important budgetary and domestic issues in the country, he turned to the president. His response? Not one question.

Remember when he received the Presidential Daily Briefing warning "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." His response? Not one question. But in this case, to rub salt into the wounds, he added to the CIA official giving the dire warnings, "All right. You've covered your ass, now."
Wow.

His contempt for and ignorance of the necessities of the job are stunning. At first when Michael Moore made a big deal about how President Bush read "My Pet Goat" for seven minutes after he was told the nation was under attack, I thought he was being a bit unfair. I thought at the time that Bush was thinking about what to do and didn't want to freak out the kids by rushing out of the room. But now the weight of experience leads me to realize that it was no such thing. The tiny wheels inside that vacuous mind were turning and churning, and in the end he had nothing to show for it. Zip. He had no idea what to do.

He didn't ask Andy Card who attacked us? What hit the buildings? What precautions we should take? What actions and reactions we should engage in immediately? How do we go about defending ourselves? What's happening on the ground in New York? When he was told we were under attack on 9/11, what was his response?

Not one question.

The N Word

Discussion about the use of the "N" word has been very much in the media lately after Michael Richards ("Kramer's") public disintegration into spewing that word and reminding a black audience member at The Laugh Factory of the good old days of lynchings. If you've seen the video of his racist tirade, you know that it wasn't an attempt at politically incorrect humor but rather was the verbalization of some deep seated feelings about African Americans. The way it hit the media confirms that no one took it as an attempt at humor.

The timing of all this came just a few days after I'd watched the movie Crash, a rather deep film about everyday race relations in LA. The movie really made me think about the racism that's buried deep down in most people's hearts. I tend to run around thinking of myself as a very progressive, non-racist, live and let live individual. Watching that movie made me realize that even those of us with the best of intentions harbor some stereotypical view of people of different races that certainly could be seen as racist.

The N word has long given me a tinge of nausea. I wrote once about Richard Pryor teaching me to use the word and then teaching me why it should never be used. One of my favorite columnists, Leonard Pitts, has written a wonderful column discussing how the word has always been ugly and that there simply is no rationalization for it's use under any circumstances, by people of any color. It makes no difference if it's spelled with an "er" or an "a" at the end, the word simply carries the history and the connotations that a few hundred years of usage during lynchings, beatings, legal discrimination, voting suppression have given it.

Now that some high level black entertainers, leaders and politicians are finally saying enough, maybe we'll start to hear it less and less in the lexicon of today's rap/gangsta oriented youth. It's well past time. The word is simply a word of hate. Hatred by a an non-African American person towards someone who is or the ingrained, self-hatred many African Americans often feel subconsciously. The word cant be cleansed or made ok. It just aint possible.