January 28, 2009 by Stonk.

THE STORY OF SCOTT
by Stonk (Steven)

I wrote this story roughly 7 years ago, as I was sleepless one
midnight cocooned in a straight marriage with house, wife, kids,
mortgage, dogs, the whole shootin’ gallery. I came out a few months
earlier, and the Atomic Wars just began. My mind reflected on Scott,
a guy that I met in my teens. He was courageous enough to tell me
his story, and I related uncomfortably to his life and experience.

Since I wrote that story on my first computer, many computers and
many crashed hard drives later I lost the original draft, so I am now
re writing it from memory. It is important to me to do so, for in it
I tell of experiences that I also went through, and more importantly,
of the feelings I went through then and also go through now. The
difference between when I was a teenager, when I wrote the story and
now, is, as a teen, I couldn’t understand or accept the phenomenon of
Scott or I. When I first wrote it I could understand, but I still
couldn’t accept. Now I understand and I am glad, grateful and proud
to say that I am gay.

***************************************************************

Scott was always different from the other guys. As far back as he
could remember, he always had a crush on one guy or another. To him,
it was the most natural thing in the world, yet it troubled him
because it didn’t fit in with what was expected of him by others. He
knew well the brands society put on such feelings and behaviors:
sissy, fairy queer, fag, etc., and he never considered himself one of
them, and he NEVER said a word about it to others. Quite often he
would become close friends with one of his boy friends, too close
than society allowed, to which their horrified parents warned them
about Scott, and the friendships quickly dissolved. In Scott’s
teens, he became quite sexually active with his friends, and he lived
in the schizophrenic twilight of wanting a girl to love and be loved
by, the shy electronics nut who isolated away from an alcoholic
family with his electronics and his boyfriend at the current time.
Scott had the courage to tell me about when he first fell in love.
It happened to him when he turned 16. It was not an unusual story,
for everyone goes through it sometime in their lives, I included, but
what struck me was that the object of his first love was a guy, and
it flooded my soul with memories of when I first fell in love. In a
nutshell, here is his story.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In my teenage years, one of my favorite hang-outs was the garbage
dump, located a half of a mile behind our new suburban house on the
outskirts of the small railroad town of Pocatello, Idaho. Each day
after school, after delivering the newspaper around the neighborhood
doing my paper route I would hike to the dump and dig through the
stinking piles of garbage to “mine” and discover all kinds of
discarded electronic parts, radios, televisions and such treasures.
I would haul them home, clean them up, take them apart and add these
parts to a ever expanding maze of goodies that crowded space in my
bedroom. My stepmother called me a pack-rat, and my father was
always too drunk to comprehend how much I loved all my “electronic
crap.”

One fine spring day when I was 16, I was at the dump, pulling
treasure out of the offending piles. However that day I was not
alone. Another guy, slightly younger than I was garbage digging
also. We both were working in the same pile, when, behold! Two
telephones winked at us from beneath the banana peels and coffee
grounds! In a mad dash we went for those phones and as we did it we
both tried to push the other away as we fought for those phones! I
snatched the blue one, he got the pink one. We both wanted both the
telephones for ourselves. I patiently told him that I needed both
phones to experiment with. He told me that if I allowed him to keep
his phone he would give me a small transistor radio that he pulled
from he garbage earlier, I agreed. At the time I was thinking that
if I only had the courage, and be like “other guys,” I could simply
beat the hell out of him and make off with all the booty! Yet Terry
was cute and he evoked in me that nameless feeling I often had but
never dared to investigate or accept. He had an Elvis look, and he
had that million-dollar-smile that filled my soul with romance and
erotica. Sheepishly I took my phone, said good bye to Terry, and
hiked back to my home to dismantle, discover, and test and tinker
with my new midnight blue telephone with the lighted dial.

A week later I was delivering newspapers on my bicycle on Spaulding
Avenue. Terry came out of one of the houses there and told me that
if I really wanted it, I could have his telephone. He also told me
that he had so much electronic stuff in his basement for me to look
at and asked me if I was interested in it. NATURALLY! We went into
his basement and a virtual treasure-trove of goodies was there.
Televisions, TV test equipment galore! He watched me closely as I
got my greedy hands and screwdriver on all the stuff I could. He
seemed to stare at me intently, and each time I caught his eyes, he
would flash to me that old familiar million-dollar-smile I knew so
well, the one that made me blush like a schoolgirl, the one that
awoke feelings in my heart that I was ashamed of. I couldn’t tell
him that I was fighting a desire to be by his side, hold him, kiss
him, make love to him. Yet I could tell by his eyes that he was
reading my thoughts and feelings. I blushed when I asked him if I
could have that picture tube tester there. He went to ask his father
about it, his father said yes. So I left and went home with my new
tester, and I felt swell about my new test equipment and my latest
new friend.

A week later, Terry called me on the phone. He told me that his
father said I could have that old 14 inch screen red and white
portable television! FANTASTIC! I went to his house and we both
lugged that TV to my house.
We were both sitting on the couch in my basement tearing apart that
television, testing and polishing it’s tubes and parts, and sitting
side by side enjoying immensely the warmth of our bodies next to each
other. I told Terry that I needed to pee. I got up. He asked me if
it was allright if he could accompany me to the bathroom. At first I
was silent for I knew that was not “proper,” yet his request flooded
my mind with all the secret fantasies I had about him, all the
unfulfilled desires I had for him, and all the possibilities that
could ensue from such an invitation. I said “sure” and we entered
the bathroom together.

I went to the toilet and unzipped my pants to pee. He asked me if he
could look at my butt, I said yes and I dropped my trousers. AT
LAST! MY FANTASY WAS BECOMING A REALITY! He touched and studied my
bottom and he got hard, while I was trying to pee through my own
hardon. He then asked me if he could put his stiff dick in me, and I
replied to him “please do.” As he did it, MY GOD, it felt so good!
So nasty and delicious! I told him that it was not safe for us
to “do it” there in the bathroom, however I knew of some
underground “forts” that kids dug in the hills behind the house.
Secret forts that I used to stash electronic stuff in from the trip
from the dump to the house. So I grabbed a towel and a jar of
Vaseline and he and I headed for the hills.

We were in the fort all dark and neat. We spread the towel on the
earthen floor. above us was the roof made of plywood which was
covered with earth. I lay down on my tummy and he got on top of me
and he did me. It felt so good. I loved it with him inside me, at
last the guy that I drempt about was screwing me! He increased his
tempo and he came in me. Then he got on the towel and I did him
also. I got to the brink of cumming then I withdrew and came on the
towel. H asked me if I liked it, I replied that I LOVED it, however
I preferred him to do me. He asked me if I ever did that before, I
told him that I did, however it was four years ago on the rooftop of
a house. We spent a few hours in that fort talking to each other and
screwing each other. Then as it began to get dark outside, we got
dressed and crawled out of the fort. We dusted the dirt off our
clothes and returned to the house to reassemble and test the
television which now worked. Another successful repair job!

Since that time my feelings for Terry intensified with the memory of
the fort and what de did in it. He showed up at my door again a week
later and I gave him an electronic gift in return for that nice
Television in my room. I pulled off the wall in my shop an old car
radio I nailed there and gave it to him. Then we hiked to the fort
again to do our thing. From then, the trips to the fort began to be
a habit for us. Sometimes he didn’t want to “do it” in the fort,
sometimes I did not want to, but we always did it. And I could not
understand the powerful feelings I had for Terry. For I had fallen
deeply in love with him. And I had no one to tell about them to,
certainly not Terry. I did not want to scare him away from me with
my intensity. And something about the way he looked at me, the way
he talked to me, the way he touched me told me that he was struggling
also with similar issues.

Come summertime, Terry stopped coming over to my house. I called
him yet he would not answer the telephone. On my paper route I
knocked on his door, his mother answered, and Terry was hiding from
me from behind his mothers skirt, She told me that Terry can not see
me anymore. I looked at him and he looked scared. I left, feeling
resentful of him and his mother. Had he told her what we were
doing? I was jealous of her for taking him from me. In the meantime
I was enduring much emotional abuse at home from my father and
stepmother, my father was ashamed that I was not the ladies man and
stud that he and my brother were. I desperately wanted a woman in my
life to feel normal, and yet I fell in love with a guy! Although it
had been weeks since he and I last “did it” in the fort, I was angry
and jealous that I could no longer hold him or touch him. So once
more I cocooned myself in all my “electronic crap” and tore apart
that television and put it back together dozens of times getting it
shiny, inside and out.

A while later I was hiking on the hill behind the house. I was
walking on a gravel road when all of a sudden another hiked by me.
It was Terry. He was sad. I looked at him and he told me that he
could no longer play “ignorant” with me anymore. At the time I
thought he meant that he could no longer do the secret things with me
in the fort. I told him that it had been a month since we last
fucked, and if it was over, why did he decide to tell me this late in
the game that it was over? He just stared at me with sad eyes, then
he stared at the ground and walked away from me. I cried: “Terry,
come back, come back!” He continued to walk away from me. I wanted
to run after him and stop him. I wanted to look him in the eye and
tell him that I loved him. Yet I couldn’t, for at the time I was
myself struggling with my feelings, my love for Terry, and that
nightmare gut feeling that I was really one of those “God-Damned
QUEERS.”

During the rest of the summer, I tried desperately to put Terry out
of my mind and heart. I found a nice stash of straight pornography
at the dump and I masturbated to it. See, I was straight after all.
But why was my mind filled with thoughts of him? Why did I go and
do “circle jerks” with some of the guys in the local Boy Scout
troop? Why did I return to the church I grew up in, the same church
who’s Prophet said that the sin of homosexuality was next to murder
in their vernacular of sins, and a young man was better of DEAD than
to be a homosexual? Oh well I always had my electronics to fall back
on, and after all it was the first love of my life. So I remained
the eccentric teenager who never dated girls, never went out with
girls, couldn’t relate with girls, but desperately wanted a
girlfriend in my life to be normal.

That fall, I was watching my television when the doorbell rang. I
answered it and there stood Terry! My heart hit the carpet! The
therapy had not worked! He seemed deeply troubled, he asked me to
walk in the hills with him. At first I was reluctant. But I still
loved him. I felt tremendous guilt. I felt as if he came there to
ask me once again to do the Impardonable Sin with him. That feelig
was intermixed with the desire to plead with him to once again fuck
me. We walked that dusty road arm in arm, hand in hand. We embraced
each other and then we kissed. My first kiss. He told me that he
really missed me. I cried then and I told him that I missed him. We
walked by that old fort and reminisced. He was deeply grieving. He
then put his hand to my crotch, felt it, and he felt the huge hard on
I naturally had whenever I was with him. He remarked to me how much
I had “grown” down there. We walked to an old discarded railroad tie
and we sat together on it, arm in arm. We were desperately trying to
find WORDS! Words to say to each other, words to express to each
other. I asked him what was troubling him. He replied that his he
and his family were moving away to another town and that he could
never see me anymore. We were both crying. I said: “Terry, please
talk to me.” He just shook his head and started running away from
me. I ran after him screaming: TERRY! TERRY! He stopped about 150
meters from me. We stared at each other through the distance. It
seemed to me that a gulf divided him and I, and that the gulf was
widening by the minute. He walked further from me. I was just
standing there crying and screaming over and over again: “TERRY!”
Then he disappeared over a hill. I have never seen him since.

*****************************************************************

These days, I I have grown proud of myself and I feel grateful in the
knowledge and experience that I have the capacity to love and be
loved by another man. I often reflect on Scott’s story. For I also
had a similar experience in my youth of falling in love with a “love
that dare not say it’s name.” I also could not directly tell the guy
I loved to his face that I loved him and he couldn’t tell me the
same. Yet these days I shout it from the rooftops! These days I’m
not ashamed. These days I feel if anyone else cant accept it then it
is their problem, not mine. These days I let no other interfere with
my own happiness and joy! These days I receive joy intracting
directly and unashamedly with the one I can love, and who can love me
in return. love. These days I can take every opportunity to tell a
man that I love him when I find one that can reciprocate. For I
know I am a good man and deserve a good man in my life.

Steve

PS: Who is Scott? It should be obvious that he is me.

Stonk

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December 31, 2008 by p00ky.

To a Friend Whose Work Has Come to Nothing

Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honor bred, with one

Who were it proved he lies

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;

Bred to a harder thing

Than Triumph, turn away

And like a laughing string

Whereon mad fingers play

Amid a place of stone,

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.    

                                        w.b. yeats

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December 25, 2008 by p00ky.

in the depths of the worst financial disaster since the Great Depression, retail sales are reportedly off a devestating 2%. it costs nothing to stop the killing.

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December 15, 2008 by p00ky.

okay, another few beautiful inches of snow to hide the body parts, and within an hour of the snowfall, with less than an inch on the ground and no insidious freezing rain in the mix the freeways in greater portland were again littered with stranded cars and pissedoff drivers. 

Before the snow began an ODOT spokesperson informed the public that their proactive measures have been focused on the freeways and mair arterials with apologies that the sidestreets did not receive their attention…. Attention?  Does ODOT actually “DO” anything to mitigate the damages resulting from the first inch of snow on the roads?  Perhaps they pray? Think positive thoughts? 

And no, sadly, it is not the hills that take the fall.  Believe it or not, folks, there ARE hills in Montana and Colorado and even in the midwest.  Duh.  And somehow…. just Somehow the half the country that gets regularly snowed upon somehow manages to get thru the winter without roads and schools and essentially the whole economy shutting down. 

How do they do it???  How do cities and states and regions of this country deal with snowfall that makes portland’s look like dandruff without skipping a beat and without local news reporters exploiting endlessly the chicken-little routine for which they were apparently trained?

Golly…. i do not know how they do it!  perhaps ODOT should admit they are generally fucked and…. take a fucking field trip.

As an aside, and because this is after all a gay blog, think if nothing else how a remedy to the portland folly would serve to silence the whining cretins in craig’slist m4m longing for someone, Anyone! to “mitten manly” (sorry Dylan) at their door and relieve them for even a second of the consciousness of their pathetic existence.

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December 14, 2008 by p00ky.

 Yes, it covers up the body parts!

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December 7, 2008 by p00ky.

the original video to A Long December generally sux, so i opted for this one instead. i have an affection for Counting Crows… at least they presented posibilities as a band in the wasteland.

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November 22, 2008 by p00ky.

jackson’s song came on the radio last week as i was arriving at work. i wept in the parking lot listening.

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September 20, 2008 by p00ky.

the Traveling Wilburys…. extant in memory of the blue juanita.

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July 25, 2008 by p00ky.

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ‘neath heated brow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

Half-wracked prejudice leaped forth
“Rip down all hate,” I screamed
Lies that life is black and white
Spoke from my skull. I dreamed
Romantic facts of musketeers
Foundationed deep, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

Girls’ faces formed the forward path
From phony jealousy
To memorizing politics
Of ancient history
Flung down by corpse evangelists
Unthought of, though, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

A self-ordained professor’s tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
“Equality,” I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

In a soldier’s stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I’d become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I’m younger than that now.

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July 18, 2008 by p00ky.

the announced closure of a number of starbuck’s “stores” prompted one portland channel to do a news brief on the event, from the perspective of an elderly woman recently moved to portland from west virginia.  in the piece the oft cited starbucks-corporate-wish was dredged up:  that the plastic place exists as the third world - the place between work and home.

she lamented near tears that the place was like family to her… that it was like Cheers, where everybody knew her name.

A little historical perspective, though sadly, as testimony to a fleeting memory, devoid of footnotes:  a nice essay exists somewhere out there by a source forgotten naming the pub as a kind of third world, precisely the reference mentioned in the news article and the mantra of starbuck’s corporate.  a place extant between the worlds of home and work.  a place, particularly in the british pubs, where people of all classes meet on a randomly regular basis to rub elbows and exchange stories and laughter and sometimes tears…. with tongues loosened a bit by a few pints served dutifully by the employees (who may also on occasion remind Bob that he might mind  his Ps and Qs lest the troubleandstrife put him in the dog house again).  the pub, in short, is truly a land unto itself, cultivated by the regulars and kept from the dangers of inbreeding by frequent visitors who are embraced and encouraged to share.

compare this dynamic and creative Other to the plastic isolating homogeneity offered thru the endless replication of starbucks where your day is fucking “made” by the recognition that the hired help remembers your name and how much cinnamon you like in your latte.  where you sit alone at a table sufficient to hold a laptop and a newspaper, and safely emerge grasping a corporate brand in a paper cup having bared your pathetic soul to absolutely nobody, and ready to face the world.

i contend that some independent coffee houses afford their patrons the experience of the “Other,” and recognize that the experience, whether pub or coffee house is largely dependent on the clientele.  I would sadly go so far as to admit that the very concept of the “Other” is relegated largely to memory, and further to drinking establishments distant from our shores.  that being said, at least the Potential exists for something more than a company mantra and logo.  if a clerk at starbucks calls me by name it holds as much meaning to me as the “have a nice day” at the bottom of a super-market receipt…. barring some deeper relationship:)  and the very fact that starbucks exists as portable pods littering the landscape, as examples of anti-humanity structures that serve the most superficial need of interaction, denies them any goddam right to proclaim themselves as the “other”…. and relegates those who find fulfillment there to the realm of the lemures (and lemurs) - the realm of the walking dead clutching a cup of severely over-priced joe to their starving breast.

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