Martyr

My friend Adrienne and I have had many heated conversations over the years that I have known her. We met back in 1979 (yikes) in school and have been in close contact since then, She is a colorful" person and in her defense has been through and is going through allot in her life. As a result today she is a troubled person at times and has a few demons that she is living with.
I usually yield to her on most points because years of knowing her tells me that there is no changing her mind on what she believes and she really does live for conflict. Until yesterday.
She was making a point about language and appearance and whether or not it makes a difference in how one is perceived. As usual she went on a rant, and I did my dishes, surf the internet and used the bathroom while she went on. But, something snapped, I stopped being the martyr and argued back.
It felt great! It must have been a sentence or something that slipped into my conscienceness, that made no sense to me. We were back and forth (I was totally right of course). I think it caught her off guard and actually made her pause for a second. I smelled blood and argued like I haven't in years. We both stayed on topic for the most part and it went on a while. Her phone battery actually ran out and that ended the argument.

So this morning, after I'm sure there was some as she puts it "partying" I get an e-mail:
We have been friends for years, but last night was out-of-control. There most be some underlying stuff going on between us and I think that it is best that we part friends now before anything else happens.

My point was and still is (so that you can hear it) is that how you or I live is our business. How we speak, interact, choose to love, hate is an individual thing and I don't like intolerance because it feels like being strangled. Whether you agree or disagree is irrelevant. There are more pressing issues like my mother's cancer and my sister's operation.

I am not your enemy nor always incapable of respecting a difference of opinion, but I am tired of listening to people talk about certain communities without really knowing what they are about. As you said not everything is black and white neither is "Hip Hop." I may not always like what I hear, but so what, no one does and being "articulate" and "educated" doesn't work for everybody.

What makes you happy or succeed, I respect and I would hope that you could do the same without it becoming WWIII.

My mother was hysterical and instead of apologizing you were still "caught up" in the moment. It was out-of control and it doesn't make any sense. Something is wrong and I need to move on.

I'll always care about you.


Take care of yourself and thank you for being there.

My response:

If there is "underlying things going on between us" they are things that are your issue. I find it ironic that a disagreement on a given issue you feel is a friendship breaker. I if that is your wish then so be it. The intolerance that you speak is your issue you have when you say that it makes you feel like you are being strangled an intolerance that you have on my view. The fact that you say that i makes you feel like you are being strangled speaks volumes to your intolerance of my point of view. Trying to take the higher ground I give you that In bubble people can do what they want. And money a fame give you a bubble that become visible to others. Most of us however do not have that visible bubble and have to live in the real world, they have to function in a world that interacts with others which conventional norms. If you choose not to participate in these norms don't blame mainstream society for not bending to fit you. That is my point. Whether I agree or disagree with the way you speak Is not the issue, the issue is that there is a way to speak and act in the mainstream and if you don't or wont adhere to that there will be consequences.

I am sorry that your mother was upset by our argument last night and I of all people am aware of the stress that you have been under. And you are right it really doesn't make any sense.

She is absolutely right there are underlying issues, if by having a disagreement and not being a martyr I have somehow crossed a line then so be it. The lesson to be learned I guess is that holding your tongue might not always be the best thing. I wonder if 10 years ago I instead of doing my dishes listened to her and responded to a rant what the have been the outcome?


No sex for Michael count: 33 days

Mundane

Willfully mundane however. Probably since I started working at the Magic Kingdom I have been eagerly waiting for the summer break. The days just dragged. I just wanted to not go there for a whole month. What could be better than that? I was fixated on June 24. I never really stopped to think what I would do. Just not going would be enough. Which kind of speaks volumes on how I live. Planning is not a problem for me, its detail planning, that’s the mystery. My mind just doesn’t work that way.

I can look forward to an event; a perfect example is a trip I took to Amsterdam a few years back. For me the satisfaction came in deciding to go. It was a big deal, go to Amsterdam by myself. The planning was done. Forget the fact that I hadn’t gotten a hotel, thought about what I was going to do when I got there, save for the trip, come on now. All I knew is that I had the plane ticket and I was going. I just let the trip happen to me. I had a terrific time despite myself and lack of planning.

So now I’m on summer break the first one I’ve had since the 80’s and I am very happy to let it happen to me. I’ll be bored, watch days on end of primetime in the day time, smoke way to many cigarettes, look at a lot of porn in the web. By the last week or so I will start to think that I have wasted the break and in a flurry try to fit in all the things I wish I had done but just couldn’t get off the couch to do it. Then back to the Kingdom, but I’ll have Christmas break to look forward too.

No sex for Michael count: 31 days

Mob part 2

IMG_0511, originally uploaded by mtaylor718.

umm need I say more

Music

Finishing unpacking today (almost 4 months after the move) I saved my records for last. Not a sentimental desicion but because I wanted to alphabetize them, I was thinking about music and how it can trigger memories. Every handful of vinyl I pulled out of a box reminded me of a time or night or person. With the records they mostly brought to mind college. Many a drunken night in Athens Ohio at O'hooleys Progessive Dance Night, (Gay Night) in the late 80's. I was the DJ of sorts. I would mix tapes and provide them to the owner on an almost weekly basis. A few times I carted my turntables and mixer down and spun live. It was all part of the master plan to some day own my own club.

The songs were at the time, life for me and my friends. Book Love "Boy" or New Order "Blue Monday" would whip the dance floor into a frenzy. In retrospect, that was my 15 minutes of fame, and it lasted for about three years. Everybody new that "cool a-sexual black guy from New York"and his cooler friend Dana (are they boyfriend/girlfriend, I heard he/she was gay/lesbian bi...they have a cool apt....did you get invited to their party/afterhours) . Music stayed with me when I moved to Chicago. No more tapes made but still a collector, I could name that dance tune in 5 seconds or less and probably owned it in some form or another. For a while there we would play follow that DJ and you would know where I was at any given night by where Teri Bristol was spinning that night. I remembered being in D.C. for the March on Washington truthfully I can't remember why we were marching but I do remember parting my ass off in New York and then in DC hanging out in Dupont Circle and overhearing a sweet little lady from somewhere in the south on the payphone telling someone back home "there are homosexuals everywhere... but they're all so sweet" and going into Tracks (sneaking in the back, paying the security $10 instead of the $15 and waiting in line) looking up at the DJ booth and seeing Terri, I caught her I and she played The Wee Papa Girl Rappers "Heat it Up" just for me (in my mind anyway). Adult friends replaced the college ones (I here pianos Elise, et al). As the years past going out and dancing was replaced with going out and drinking and looking for one night stands. Music still stayed with me but mixing went away until about a few years ago when, a one night stand actually, turned me on to DJ Trackor mixing software. Beat mix your mp3's right on your computer...the dream is alive!

Mob

Or The Gay Pride Parade pick your city.
When all is said and done, I almost always have a good time and leave feeling energize (read as desensitized) and ready to face the summer.

Its the run up to gay pride is the strange thing. It usually starts around the first time you see an ad for the DJ of the minute spinning at the club/bar of the minute. Then there is pride month on the movie channels (that's when they show Longtime Companion, And the Band Played On and the like) . That's when I question whether or not I'll go to the mob scene. Years gone by the answer was aways YES. How there was no doubt that I would, after all it was my duty as a... well you can drink in the streets, and try and look up boys shorts as they go by on the floats. The run up to the parade was filled with who's apartment were you going to start drinking at, and what was the drink of choice (raspberry Fool ). Where were we going to stand to get the best view, close to bathrooms, and to a bar or 7-11 and for that matter what was the drink to carry with you, my favorite was the vodka and slurpee year.
Now the excitement is almost non existent, I haven't been for a few years now to the actual parade, I went a couple of years ago and sat in a bar in the window and watched the parade go by but that was kind of sad like fast forwarding 20 years (the bar was the North End) and one year I went with a friend after the parade looking for the drunk and the willing or as I like to put it catch a slow one from the heard, again fast forward 20 years.
But this is a new year, new city, and new me? and I have a new attitude damn it!
Well not really, but I'll go.
I hope baggy shorts are in again this year.


No sex for Michael count: 27 days

Messy

As much as I try to be organized,I can be grossed out by apartment most of the time, I just can't help but live like a pig. Most of my mess is clutter, things like old mail, newspapers, etc. Then there are weirdo things like the broken standing hairdryer that I can't think of throwing away or the classroom sized bulletin board that came with the apartment, there is the plastic wrap that the movers used to wrap my bed with when I moved from Chicago (that is in a closet, and it keeps on pushing the door open).

The remainder of the mess is my laziness showing itself. At any given moment, there are at least 3 empty cigarette boxes on my coffee table, socks and change (I think its a Taylor family thing) on the floor. In the kitchen there is a pile of recycling, I haven't really figured out how that works yet, so I occasionally slip some of it in with my regular trash. And lets not forget the clothes... there are piles of clean and dirty clothes throughout the place, and something new for 2005 is the hanging clothing. Since I have a washing machine but no dryer I have to hang my laundry on hangers to dry. Actually not a big deal. The big deal is the hangers throughout the place with various things waiting to dry. Towels, underwear, as well as shirts and pants.


Just goes to show you there is no gay gene.




No sex for Michael count: 26 days

the Magic Kingdom...take 1

The Magic Kingdom Nursery School ( no connection with the mouse and I don't really know how we have gotten away with that) is actually a happy place for the kids. They are very well taken care of and learn quite a bit here.

Working here is a different animal. I am not a teacher never wanted to be a teacher and let the truth be known I really don't like kids all that much. But its a family business and out of some strange feeling of loyalty, and a desire to get out of Chicago and back to New York here I am... Office Manager of Magic Kingdom and Assitant Director and (get this teacher) at Arista Prep School. Except for the teaching part, I don't really know what that all means.

I'll set the scene; There is Des the lord of the kingdom and his lady Marc ( my brother in law and sister the owners) They live in this weird world as Dana aptly put, a Victorian fantasy where all others are below them. Example: Some of the teachers, actually bow when they go into their office.






No Sex for Michael Count: 25 Days (Thank God for Montreal)

Meat...

So a couple of weeks ago I decided that it was healthily living for me. It could have been because I passed out cold for no apparent reason in a hotel room in Montreal, or that as I quickly approach 40 so does my waist size. But anyway one of the things that I thought might be a good thing is to give up my new found diet of a slice and Pepsi for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

I head off to the Key Food, not the ghetto one by me but the Key Food Fresh in Park Slope and load up on "healthy" food. But what about meat? Next to booze and really good sex (and the sex has to be really good) meat is my favorite thing. I decide that I will give up starches, junk food, the usual bottle of wine a night if I can keep meat in my diet.

$120.00 later I unpack my grocery bags filled with steak, chicken, pork chops and bacon (food of the gods) and plan my weeks meals... happy road to health. Monday I'll grill a steak, Tuesday, Bake a chicken breast and so on... I can't wait until bed time so I can take out my frozen meat in preparation for the next days meal.

Here's the problem, I really love meat, but I hate handling raw meat. So the nicely defrosted meat doesn't get cooked that first day, "I'm really not that hungry" next day, "um I think it will keep one more day", the next day " oh thats kind of brown, I'll throw it away and defrost the ---, that I'll cook really".

Maybe

Maybe I'll post more than one entry (all the kids have a blog so I'll drink the Kool-aid too?)
Seems like a good idea and since I don't have insurance its the next best thing to therapy or welburtrin.