A Queer and Meaningless Bark

Will & Grace (W&G) is, for the most part, a funny show. It's also a good looking show which, for me, helps its re-watchability. I mainly tune into W&G reruns when I want something gay and fun to watch, so the New York conspicuously sophisticated interiors add to the fluffy escapism. Many jokes on W&G seem racy even years after they originally aired. The heavy use of "fag" and "queer" for humorous effect now seems a bit shocking as both words have begun to get the n-word treatment in TV shows and on the radio.  W&G's frankness about gay male sexuality is still surprising. Gay males on TV and in mainstream films still largely seem to be well behaved neuters who are only interested in a monogamous relationship. There are plenty of field playing straight guys on TV and in the movies but any gay guy character you'll see will probably be respectable sexually.  But despite W&G's still edgy take on the gays it also presen...

I'm living once again in the county where I grew up, a rural area where not much has changed during the three decades I was gone. My personal stories, what I often call ghosts, are all over the place waiting to be revisited. I have a fairly good memory, if I had to I could recall most of the important details of my youth. But I rarely think about my youth as I'm not all that fond of my life or me before age 20.  I'm fortunate to have the ability to not think about the parts of the past I'd rather forget. But it's harder to mentally look the other way when I'm actually at the scene of a particular memory. I drove past the scene of a memory I'm mostly fine with early today; a long dormant gravel pit that hasn't noticeably changed in the 40 years I've been aware of it. The only reason I even noticed the gravel pit is that it was the last place I'd fooled around with or even saw Nate, my high school friends-with-benefits. It was the ...

When I was younger I was worried I'd become one of those older guys who was only attracted to younger gals and guys. Sure, love (and lust) knows no age, and there are younger guys and gals into older guys,* but the older guy in those cases often seems sad and even pathetic. I'm now just over the half century mark and happily I'm mostly attracted to guys in a sensible range of my age. I find the younger models attractive, but in a way I find Michelangelo's David attractive...I like looking at it but I don't need to touch it. My age related problem is music and partying.  I like a lot of music that seems too young for me. Most of this is college aged indie artists, some EDM, and definitely chill. It's fine if I'm just listening to recorded music. Its not so fine if I want friends my age to give the music a listen as they generally won't. It seems most folks my age have music preferences that were set in concrete sometime around high school or ...

With one possible exception, I've never had anyone show romantic interest in me. I've also never really had anyone show social interest in me beyond party invites and the occasional casual dinner get together. I hadn't noticed that I'm apparently not friend material until a few years ago when the lives of most my actual friends became consumed with marriage and kids. All but one of my friends live in other western states. I used to call them all fairly regularly but over the years they had less and less time to talk on the phone. I continued writing letters and sending postcards. I also texted regularly, texts I figured were humorous or comments on the news. Most my friends rarely respond to the texts. I have quite a few acquaintances and Facebook friends, almost all of them are related to a couple hobbies I have. There are occasional parties and I always have a great time talking with my acquaintances, they're generally smart people with a wide range of in...

Recently I actually had a guy, a friend of an acquaintance,  apparently show interest in me. To the best of my knowledge it was only the second time in my life that anyone has ever shown interest in me. (The other time was a brief encounter with a guy at a bar, so brief it doesn't count for much.)  I was at a party and I caught the name of a guy the host, N eil , was talking to. The guy was Sam and I'd read a couple short essays he'd written which N eil had posted on Facebook. Mainly because I'm interested in the creative output of others I said to Sam “Oh, you're the guy whose writing is funny.”  “I'm just funny when I write?” Sam asked, “But not in person?” “I don't know if you're funny in person,” I replied, “I haven't heard you say much.” “Now I'm under pressure,” Sam replied. At that point N eil actually introduced us and I said I'd read the essays N eil had posted. “I'm funny when I write,” Sam said said to N...

Most people seem to think a lot about romantic love, or at least they think a lot about it until they get it. Then they seem to only think about it when it isn't satisfactory.  I thought about romantic love to the point that I realized I could live a happy life without it.  That doesn't mean I'm dismissive of romantic love. I like a good romantic comedy or story arc. I like well written love songs and poems. I like the more clever portrayals of love in ads. Essentially, I enjoy a lot of the lovey-dovey things which people who don't care for mainstream culture are supposed to loathe. In my defense, I tend to like more unusual or better written love stories. But then I also like Ross and Rachel, Monica and Chandler, Niles and Daphne, and Jules and Grayson. As wi all the run of the mill saps and suckers, what I most like about love story-lines is that false golden moment of love. The meet cute, the moment when characters realize the other is the one, the procl...

I grew up in a very rural area in a small town, Newton, which has a population of just under 600 people. It's in a rural agricultural area, a part of the state where there's a lot of distance between houses and a lot of winding gravel roads.  Most of the other towns in that area are also really small, under 700 people. They're towns with people but few or no stores. Business is done in a couple “large” towns in the county, one of which, Mason, has a major university. Depending where you live you might have to drive an hour to buy groceries. A few years ago when I went back for the first of several long visits I discovered that being in the country made me horny. Almost all I could think about was sex.  After a bit of thought I concluded the source of this horniness was mixed. The main reason was that I'd had a fair amount of sex with other guys while growing up. It wasn't non-stop, but I apparently had more sex than the average queer teen in the late ...