Tonight I am in a reflective mood.  I just written this draft and punched the wrong key and deleted ity all, so I start again!  Such is my life.

Tonight I reflect on the damages of homophobia.  Either self-inflicted homophobia pr homophobia inflicted bu a culture.I reflect pn myself and a close friend of mine in Pocatello.

When I was a kid, the rumor was that being “one of Them” meant you frequented Bernie’s Lounge in downtown Pocatello.   That was where “they” hung out.When I was a young child, I recall my mother driving through downtown, and I would stare at that huge neon cocktail glass above the stairs leading to the basement of the building where Bernie’s was.  Even then, I wanted to go inside there ad see the “queers.”  It was years later, when I was a jukebox technician that I actually entered Bernies to fix a jukebox.  I saw average men at the bar.  I saw twinks, preppies, bears and truck drivers.  None looked spectacular or “weird” to me.  Strike down the rumor that “queers” were “weird.”

Rumor also had it that “they” hung out and “cruised: at the upper level of Ross Park.  Rumor also had it that once in a while the football team of Pocatello High School cleared  the park of “them” using baseball bats.  How many times as a kid ad a teenager did I walk the upper level of Ross Park, looking for “them?”  Of course back then I could not understand or accept that at the time, I also was cruising Ross Park!

As a gay teen, I could always justify my antics, adventures and behaviors as just things “that boys do.”  Ad I did more than my share of them!  Until I fell in love with Terry Rogers.  Then was when all the propaganda of homophobia taught by the Mormon Church came crushing down upon my soul and spirit. the shame, guilt and horror that I felt when I admitted to myself that I was “one of them” was unbearable.  That was when I began to hang out with the toughest “hoods” in Pocatello.  I felt that I had to prove to everyone, including myself, that I was as tough as anyone and that I was not a “sissy.”  All those wasted years that I spent wasted on dope with that gang was so tragic.  When it could have all been avoided if I could have busted through my own homophobias and faced the truth.

Enough about me.  I now reflect on Jerry.  Jerry was my old college friend,  Jerry was openly gay.  Jerry came from a devout Catholic family.  Jerry was one of those that I always got wasted with.  I made several direct passes at Jerry, yet he and I were always too wasted to do anything about it.  I lost contact with Jerry when I “cleaned up my act” and went on an LDS mission to Norway.  That experience is something I prefer to keep in the past and not dwell on it, because even then and there, that gay Boogieman haunted me.

Meanwhile, Jerry burnt himself out on LSD, had a nervous breakdown and spent time in the mental hospital.  Years later, he told me that the causes of such were his internalized homophobias and self-hatreds. As so many deeply religious Catholics that are gay, he decided to go intothe Priesthood  He sought recompense from God for his natural, “unnatural” desires.  He thought that by living a “Joseph” celibate life he would gain forgiveness and lose his attraction and desires for men.  It didn’t work.

These days, I proudly sport several bumper stickers on the back window of my truck.  One is the rainbow gay triangle.  One is a bear’s paw.  One is the yellow equal sign on blue of the Human Rights Campaign.  Ny favorite is one that says: “Abstinence Makes The Church Grow Fondlers.”  When I see that one, I think of Jerry.

Nowadays Jerry is addicted to pornography of teenage boys.  Once in a while he gets “serviced” by teenagers.  He got kicked out of the Priesthood for molestation.   He is on welfare.  For recompense, he sits on my mother’s grave and prays penance for her soul.

For the past seven years, I have lived a boring “ordinary” life with my femboy legal partner, Edmundo.  Nothing special, just two domesticated gay men who love each other and take care of each other.  You know, mowing the lawn, shopping, eating movies.  And for fifteen years, I have been OUT!  No place for either internalized or externalized homophobia for me!  Seven years ago when I met Ed, I was ready for him in my life.  We live in Chehalis.  The neighbors do not talk about us.  They talk about the giant zucchinis that I grow in my garden and that I give to them.  I am perfectly satisfied and content in my choice of life and lifestyle.  Everyone who knows Ed worships him and it is my responsibility to keep my act together to keep him.  Which I accept because it does nothing but good for me.

I compare my life with Jerry’s.  Here I am gone middle aged, fat and sassy living the householder life with my dear one.  Jerry is addicted to teenage pornography on the computer and wastes his time sitting on gravestones.  I came out of the closet 20 years after Jerry did.  Yet through massive doses of therapy and hard work I overcame my self hatreds and homophobias.  While Jerry ruined his life bu hanging on to them.

What can we learn from that story?

the thing i found with myself lately, and it’ll ring true until my death. i favor myself over the games of other people of my gender in an intimate concept. there are many people who try too hard, people who lead you on, people who don’t even entirely listen (it shows later on, trust me)… their intentions should be made clear in the beginning. any “maybe” on the table, treat it like it doesn’t exist. “maybe” date? no… “maybe” entertain the idea of a civil union? yeah… when i see a ring, i’ll believe it.

There’s a whole world out there for everybody to enjoy, and there’s plenty of hot bitches to fuck, right? Well, don’t settle on your superficial standards, as high as they might really be. set your bar down a little lower, and you’ll notice your “options” increase a lot more and there will be people who you can meet eye to eye on anything with, and you aren’t shoving them out the door the next morning like “thanks, by the way, i gave you an STD” or something less evil-sounding.

I had the opportunity over the last couple of years to realize my levels of tolerance, what types of people press my buttons a lot. Everything. All I can tell you now is, after a couple of years growing up even more, is if you buy into “gay culture” rather than “male bonding” your options are the same as anywhere else, but, you become “guilty by association” in such a way… that if a round is fired from a handgun say 200 miles away, and someone points the finger, it could come back on you. I could set many an example of things to this.

I will only say it once though and here. Androphilia. There is a truth that rings to it. Don’t let it be the definition of an age-range… let it be the definition of you and your masculinity and your search for the true masculinity found in that Y-chromosome we are assigned. If this at least sounds reasonable to you and “the real you, that you never got to know”

I am not here to personally attack people for their choice. I am offering a glimpse to people who have been looking for themselves, have lost themselves, and want to find themselves. This is not a messiah communication. I march to the beat of my own drum now… and correctly. What i’ve offered… is me. Now you know.

oh… and yes, I’m back in some way shape or form again. in weird doses.

The catalyst for this latest diatribe is this bit of hooey in the news:

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/10/12/mormon-leaders-remarks-spark-outcry-on-same-sex-issues/?hpt=T2

Here’s my reply, addressed to a close gay friend in New York.

MY ANSWER

Dear Ray,
As no doubt you have seen in the news the uproar that a certain Boyd K. Packer caused in the city of Salt behind the Zion Curtain, no doubt you immediately thought of me when you heard the news.
When I heard the news and read it on cnn.com, be assured that the bile rose in my throat.  But then again I could expect no different rhetoric from “Elder” Packer.  I heard that rhetoric all my life, as no doubt you could construe from reading my charged editorials and postings on gayportlandblogspot.com.
I have always hated that man.  Even as a denying deeply closed teen- when I did that idiotic struggle, that pathetic struggle to fit in to that mindset.  It is not just that the LDS mindset demands it’s adherents to be sheeple, it isn’t merely that they constantly preach to their flock that when the General Authorities speak, the thinking has already been done, (so how dare you blasphemous infidel question their sacred scribbling.)  It isn’t that their massive money machine poured vast sums into California to defeat the marriage thing.  I understand their true logic in ways that few outside the institution can.  And furthermore I have an insight that even the faithful of that cult cannot and will not even contemplate.
The whole trip runs down to this:  The mere acknowledgement of our existence upsets the whole applecart of their doctrine!  ‘Tis cute and romantic Magical Thinking to consider God our “Heavenly Father.”  Tis the epitome of Walt Disney faith to consider Joseph Smith as the intercessor between humanity and Elohim, because, after all, Joseph Smith was the only man to be given all “the keys to the Kingdom.”  As a result, the main pillar of the LDS faith is that Families are Forever and that to obtain “Eternal Exaltation” you MUST be married in the LDS Temple with all the prerequisite Names Signs and Penalties so YOU (and your female wife) can bestow bodies to some of the millions of “Spirit Children” that Elohim and his wife(s) have created on the planet Kolob, just waiting to be hatched out by the “Daughters of Zion” fertilized by all those clean cut Mormon Return Missionaries.  ALL faithful Mormons must do that to gain their “Eternal Exaltation.”  And if you are “faithful to your Covenants and Testimonies,” YOU TOO can become a God on your own fucking planet after you die, to have many polygamous wives spouting forth billions of Spiritual Children to populate another inferior planet with good Brethren and Sisters of the ONLY TRUE FAITH, the ONLY TRUE CHURCH!!!  This is Mormonism in a nutshell.
When Packer (what a hell of a gay name for an Apostle!) spouts “why in the world would Heavenly Father create gays,” you must picture that statement in the light of Mormon Doctrine and their “plan of Salvation.”  How could Heavenly Father create Blacks?  (Until recently the “revelation” from “Church Authorities” was that Blacks were the Children of Cain and were forbidden to indulge in the LDS Church’s deepest darkest magical thinking in the Temple.)  As Gays, we cannot create (procreate) the six to ten children that the Church demands it’s faithful to produce, so to not only make more Mormons, but also to give physical bodies to the most elect, fortunate and “WORTHY” Spiritual Children on Kolob, just waiting to be blessed with a Mormon family and live happily ever after in Provo, Utah! (Happy Valley)
Speaking of the word “WORTHY,” I was shackled by that word and THEIR conception of what was “worthy” since I was a child!  Although I attempted several times to be “worthy” of the “blessings” of the “Priesthood,” I NEVER felt “worthy” enough!  What a hell of a millstone to hang around any gay Mormon teen’s neck, their definition and requirements of what is and is not “WORTHY!”  A gay teen is not “worthy” of “Heavenly Father’s” love, not “worthy” of the Priesthood, not “worthy” of a “Daughter of Zion” to procreate that huge family.  It took me years or therapy and courage to develop the SELF WORTH I have now, independent of some institution’s definition on what is and is not “worthy!”
Ray, this is the shit that they tried their damndest to brainwash me with ever since I was knee high!  Yet when I was knee-high I also read Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.  In that book, Huck gets holed up with two frauds and flim-flam men.  A town where the flim-flam men tried to work their crap became wise to them and then some other flim-flam men came to town and got in an argument with the first pair. Suddenly it dawned upon the crowd that “the whole bilin’ of ‘em were frauds!”  I have had my gut full of terror, guilt and horror from living as a closeted gay among them.  I am one of them-one of so many in that culture who attempted suicide to escape that guilt.  Yet I am one of the few who had the guts to throw the fucking baby out with the basket and recognize that ALL organized religions are frauds!
The 12 step programs have taught me that there is a world of difference between Spirituality and Religion.  When I was a teen, I was one of the few Mormon youth that didn’t play basketball. Even then I knew the reason why.  Even then I was attracted to all those cute guys in their basketball uniforms.  Rather to endure such “temptation” I hid away at home like some rodent.  Yet even the news that leaks out these days from Behind the Zion Curtain lets the world know that there are tens of thousands of gay Mormons even in their fucking citadel!  And we will no longer keep our mouths shut over the blatant hatred and discrimination disguised as the “Sacred Plan of Salvation” practiced by that Church!

I´m Knochi. I´m 37 years old. I was born and live here in Germany. So if you want to know more about me just only ask me on the IRC-Channel. Don´t be afraid of me. We germans do not bite anyone

 See ya on IRC!

take over the world through deception
you take the throne
taking a life, take it with strife
you feel the empty since inception
the exception
you are my slave, die in my grave

followers die, corporate lies, in a disguise, patriot eyes, see your demise, winning the prize, with blackened skies you say your goodbyes

feed the public fear, epidemic
consume it all
figure you will swallow the pill
watch through the t.v., visionary
you pray and hope
this is the end, you can’t pretend

and when the fire is extinguised by apocalypse
you will raise your handand you will murder them one by one
kill them all

quick with your actions, your consequence
destroy it all
never too late, blood on the slate
they got their rocks off, poisoned your brain
this is the truth
saying it twice isn’t precise

followers die, corporate lies, in a disguise, patriot eyes, see your demise, winning the prize, with blackened skies you say your goodbyes
followers die, corporate lies, in a disguise, patriot eyes, see your demise, winning the prize, with blackened skies you say your goodbyes

native-flute-in-e.mp3

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