Hey gang!  I re-wrote this little ditty, adding even more “interesting” “Tidbits” from my memory of the times with those freaks!  Just to show that people will believe anything!  I think I believe I will jump into my truck to get another can of Copenhagen :)  Stonk

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Bear with me gang.   I wrote this little tragedy back in ‘95, after I came out and ducked back into the closet for a while.  I long lost the original draft, due to many crashed hard drives, yet I insist on writing it again from memory.  It is important for me to do so as a political statement against Born Again Fundamentalists, Neo-Con Death Cult Conservatives, and the so called “Ex-Gay Movement.”

It was back in 1995.  I cannoned myself out of the closet back in 1994.  My carefully constructed “chosen straight” world collapsed beneath my feet.  The atom bomb dropped on the soon to be ex wife and all the immediate family except for my sister.  (My sister could tell all along I was gay.)   At the time, losing it all and the emotional turmoil for me was devastating and I went suicidal.  Before I came out, I holed up in a Conservative Southern Baptist congregation. Back then I was first to shout accolades with the pastor when he railed against gays.  Now the tables were turned against me, and the Bibles rained down on my head!   I spent my days walking the streets and staring straight down to the cracks in the sidewalk out of shame.  I spent my time muttering to myself: “I am NOT “one of them,” DAMN IT!

In panic and desperation, I turned to the Portland Fellowship of Exodus International in my endeavors to finally rid myself of that gay “boogieman” that I ran from all my life.  Once again I wanted to be straight and act straight and get my life in line to the now recognized propaganda that I was steeped in since birth.

I went to the Portland Fellowship and I talked to a leather faced former Leatherman who was the leader of that program at the time.  He had me fill out a long questionnaire concerning my past.  It had a plethora of personal questions, to which very few had any thing to do with being gay.

These questions concerned themselves with my religious history, my religious experience in “unauthorized” “cults,” my relationship with my parents and siblings, and whether I liked sports.  Of course, mother was not forgotten.  Was she domineering?  Being a former Mormon, that was a red flag to them.  So was my involvement in the past with a Hare Krsnas.  In the past I had myself baptized many times in diverse Christian churches to hide away.   I could have wrung all the baptismal waters from my hair and fill a car radiator from all the times I had been “dunked.”  Now I recognize that Exodus used the “shotgun approach” in their questionnaire.  They were searching for answers that set off flags to them why the “devil” entered me in the form of a fag. Shoot enough pellets, and some of them are bound to hit the target. It kind of reminds me nowadays of the “Personality Tests” that the Scientologists use to harvest “Fresh Meat.”

Anyway, I attended their little classes once a week, with the prayers and support of the church I belonged to.  They gave me an armload of books such as the study book: “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness,” “The Broken Image,” and “A Christian’s View of Homosexuality.”  I felt like the “Queer in the Kitchen” at home in front of my “straight” family as I studied that literature.  In the books I learned all the outdated 19^th Century theories and the “modern” theories about the social and cultural reasons for homosexuality.  The top conservative fundamental “scholars” Elizabeth Moberly, Joseph Nicolosi, Lon Mabon, Scott Lively, Richard Cohen and Jerry Falwell’s basic message to me was that my homosexuality was ALL DAD’S FAULT!  For if my father had taught me the “proper” “Manly” ways of being a “real man among men,” then I would not have this “cannibal compulsion” to “eat” the qualities that other men had and I didn’t think or realize that I had.  Hmmmm, “cannibal compulsion” to “eat” other men! :)  I like that

Each week I attended their meetings.  Quite a splattering of human flotsam and jetsam there, all made that way by their religious guilt.  Gentle-Giant Triple-Queens, twinks, “former” hustlers, grand”mothers” and prissy bible toters.  As we listened to our group (grope) leader drone on and on about it all being Adam and Eve’s fault and Dad’s fault, I spent hours and hours examining a chromed clasp buckle attached to a cushion anchor on that old couch.  As others made passes at each other and cruised each other surreptitiously, I was fantasizing of stealing that buckle to make a belt holster for my Walkman. :)  On Sundays when I went to church with the family, I just inwardly groaned on the farce I was playing.  Inwardly I was telling myself: “Give it up, you idiot!” But I continued to play their game outwardly, hoping for change.

An “ex-gay” “poster boy” befriended me there, a certain Richard Weller.  Even the Willamette Week printed his sob story.  For being an ex-gay, he sure took a shining to me!  He took me out on dinner dates while praising the Lord that there were men like Bob Larson screaming on the Christian radio.  Through Weller, I even met Scott Lively!  PROOOOT!  I spent hours with Richard at the Clackamas County Fair in the Oregon Citizen’s Alliance booth, just embarrassed to death there while Richard played his sob story “former gay” tape over and over on a cheap tape recorder at that fair!  It became obvious to me that Richard had developed an “emotional attachment” to the OCA’s Scott Lively!  Something inside me kept screaming: “Why in the hell are you doing this!?”  Was keeping the wife, kids and middle class morality really worth me selling myself down the river like that?

Week after week at the Fellowship, they droned on and on.  Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve and if Dad showed me manly things in life, I would not have to deal with “homosexual behaviors.”  Since at the time, my father disowned me for being gay, the ex-gay rhetoric only fueled my hatred for my father.  For over six months I observed the men in the Fellowship and I took careful inventory of myself as well.  It was obvious to me that none of the men were changing. They were merely stifling their gayness and need for another man with the need for Jesus to “cure” them.  Rather than to accept and appreciate the love and romance of another man, they prayed for the love and romance of Jesus!  Not a man among them were changing.  Many broke free from that environment by bursting out of their closets.  There were rumors of some even committing suicide.  Yet it went on and on, on and on…”Adam and Eve, Adam and Eve…..!”  To me, the “H” word was becoming less of a problem, but to the others their homosexuality and their religious convictions were becoming more irreconcilable.  The group leader admitted that he still was not “over it,” but Jesus was providing him with a method to cope with it.  Yeah!  Sure!

Some of the hypocrisies I encountered were galling!  In the study book “Pursuing Sexual Wholeness” there was a chapter on “Preparation For Marriage.” (With a woman, of course.)  In that chapter’s  advice for dating women, it recommended a “ex-gay” not to resist the sexual advances of a woman! HUH?  The Fundamentalists will burst a blood vessel over an unmarried man and woman fornicating, yet Exodus was encouraging it between an “ex-gay” and a woman!  That proved to me that they were even willing to bend their own rules to “cure” that “damned queer!”

I grew cynical of their “literal” interpretation of “godswordthebible.”  They only chose Scripture and verses that supported their “Ex-Gay Agenda.”  I soon realized that they had a bigger “agenda” to pull off than what they were accusing the so called “gay agenda” of doing.  I started challenging them on their rhetoric, and I began to bring up little known obscure verses in that Bible that the pastors are too embarrassed about to mention in public.  Once there I got so disgusted with all their Bible manipulation that I quoted to them a Jim Morrison line: “Words got me the wound, and words will get me well, if you believe it,” and they all went: “HUH?!”  One evening, the facilitator remarked that perhaps he spoke too much about Adam and Eve’s fall, and I loudly groaned: “IT SHOWS!”  That man went into a tirade in front of me.  He shouted that I needed to be there, but he had enough of my disrespect and I had to shut up!  I then lost my cool.  I got up and I screamed at them that I hated their God!  I stormed out of that house, never to darken their doors again.

For several months afterward, I tried vigorously to be straight and to keep the marriage and family intact.   I sold my beloved antique radio collection.  I was back to muttering to myself:  “I am NOT ‘one of them,’ damn it!”  I was back to torturing the cat.   I was back to staring at the sidewalks, lest I be “tempted” by “sights” that might make me “relapse.”  I was back to kicking the dog!

Now I have come full circle!  It has now been twelve years since that fish and I got divorced.  I have now been in a stable monogamous gay relationship for five years.  My father and I have reconciled, and he loves my partner Edmundo like a son!  Now I love the reflection in the mirror!  Now, when a guy cruises me, I do not hide away in shame, but I relish in it and I pursue it!  Now I am myself and to me being gay is NO BIG DEAL!  Labels are for duds!  My attitudes have changed from the paranoid “No! It can’t be, it’s impossible, I will not let it be possible” to the confident “If you don’t like my lifestyle, then you don’t have to LIVE my lifestyle” to the cocky and brash “If you don’t like my lifestyle, then take your cock out of my ass!”  Nowadays, I consider all organized religion as a bunch of hooey!

So it looks like the Portland Fellowship Ex Gay Ministry “cured” me, after all!

(Ever see the movie: “A Clockwork Orange?”)

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

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

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.