AMENDMENT 1 CAN SUCK IT

Well, here we are a day after the vote that now makes North Carolina a state that legalized discrimination and bigotry. Wow, if there was ever a time to move to a state that makes sense, it is now. How stupid can people in this state be. All anyone heard was gay marriage, and as a homosexual (side note by the way) I think we get hung up too much on the word "marriage". Here are my thoughts on the matter, and, yes, I know these are my thoughts, but it would be helpful if gays could get over themselves for 5 minutes and think really hard about what we are fighting for. My solution for this situation is quite simple. Keep Marriage for the religious ZELOTS - if your church (which is so far from true christianity) doesn't want to marry me because i am gay, you have the right...good. But everyone, let me repeat EVERYONE that gets married needs to go to city hall and get a civil union's license - presto! we get the same protections that everyone else gets and they can protect marriage...again, i say keep your religion out of my politics and i will keep my politics out of your religion. so WELCOME TO NORTH CAROLINA - HOME OF BIGOTS, BIGOTRY and RELIGIOUS ZELOTRY...Please come again

Well here it is the end of February...and what can I say? I am at a crossroads and a blockage of some type. I seem unable to write, well I don't know if it is an inability to write or if it is just an unwanted attachment to failure that I am going through right now. I feel very out of place where I am currently at in my life...very not living, but dreaming in this nightmare life. I have high hopes for 2012 and I am just hoping that my hopes are not too high that they cannot be reached. It's an early crisis - and I hope that it is similar with all artists, i mean, i can't be the only one that sometimes stumbles and freezes from fear. I am going to paste my current poetry here so you can read it...feel free to comment, let me know what you think...hopefully it will give me information on what the pulse of my writing is...do i think i am good, but really, i am a bag of dicks? do i continue on this path of thorns and roses or do i give in and change plans before it is too late, too far down the line? so to the one or two of you that may read my blog, let me know Thanks and I certainly appreciate it, more than you can know...


                                     FOLLOWING THROUGH

Sentenced, while poverty awaits me at my front door--
this wistful oblivion where we await the destruction of dominance,
I am the center of my revolution, spinning wildly out of control,
dangerously close to inhalation

waiting, watching, big brother has been born,
the KGB of the NSA listening to every breath we take - and everyone loves an encore
they sit, monkey see - monkey do, but don't bother with the repetition
and confined resolution that freedom is not free

free market enterprise, corporate demise - and who will buy the country today
will it be the power brokers, sitting like dynasties high in their glass
or will it be the religious with their pious stance - and everyone listens to the evangelical
devil - give us your money we'l' give you redemption
while we wait for this trickle down protection

America, this land of mounting garbage and disaster, the hopeful future of the hereafter
and we all stand in bread lines waiting for disease
we sit in corners waiting covered with fleas - small pox and provisions
passed out to the poor while that one percent smiles, sitting in thrones
we ninety-nine out of one hundred and one,
one for the money, one for the gun

follow through is not our strong point, but light the path
finally unite...let brother and sister, union and non
let gay, straight, everyone...demand the civil liberties protected by law
demand our release from the concentration camp walls
of companies like Enron and Halaberton and Lehman brothers
let's burn down the gates and remove the doubt
Americans still have some dreams to dream

we will finally be free

Don’t confuse this skim-milk white skin bag with truth

These ice-blue eyes, like funeral marching toward the pall

And it’s become time to recognize my whitewashed future

Past it’s expiration date…

And Iroquois mother, swaddle the smallpox description

And in my heart, I’m African – I’m on hunger strike during another

Somalia drought…I am Asian, in my rice-patty home sewing and

Manufacturing for the sinful skin-bags that I am confused for

I am discrimination…felt with fever, 106 and rising…I am Isis on my

Way through the river Styx and I know we’ll hold hands again

Mirror glaze and watch your skin turn gray, your eyes, and the palest blue that death could deliver and see you’re hated by the jihadist. I am the burkah that is refused

For photograph while you, you are the new anti-immigration law

Laid out, giving these American Idiots a right to impregnate the second amendment

And abort what it really means…

I am hope in Baghdad, where hope is lost…while you still smell like

Bombs and arsenal that fell from the skies…

You take shape as the destroyed infrastructures that, so far,

Connects nothing but hate to hate while we recognize

And pray for the dead that left

I am revelation while you live in the past

And I know being hated…my skin, may be as milk-white and white washed

As the upper echelon that fed you with its poison

With its intentions and miscalculations…but inside

I am filled with the colors of the rainbow…the red orange yellow green blue violet that

Shines with my pride

I am my own distinction, and can never be lumped with the

Blinding whiteness that witnesses its pain and segmented distortion

So I say, become African, become Asian, become raga know your strength Iroquois mother

And cover yourself with your pride

PIRATE RADIO: REBIRTH OF DISSENT

It’s my hands,

            Soaking in the after-birth of a rebellion

 – My eyes, stained and greased closed by the mutilation of the fat cat bankers – and the sum of greed –

            Yeah, this is it, the fuel,

The grit and hunger of a generation sickened by the rejoice of destruction and annihilation of civility—

The fat cats and their cat-scratch fever

                                                            This is the rebirth of revolution, Spilling its mutilated guts and cum and piss and bile into the baby-bucket –                                                 -mixing its cocktail and feeding the hunger from above.

This is the ninth reincarnation of Nigger, moving from color to corporate boardrooms –

Where sick white old men tie down art and freedom of expression – the right to believe and every right granted to stop the mutilations - to rape the ass of progress            --

                                                Leaving the body broken and bloody, dropped from the top of the tower of babble onto the impostor “son of man”—

This is every stream of consciousness – the LSD soaked brain of Mr. Leary mixed in the veins of Mr. Burroughs – it’s cultural diversity, driven mad by the Rothschild’s and the Vanderbilt’s – it’s corporate slavery of the human soul—

Every dream, every new-aged belief in equality laid out before the beast with its nine heads of rank religious dogma that clogs the pores – the dumbfounded equality that lies in money that no longer lies in the hand of men- capitalization of venomous destruction has become this cyclical axiom on which we spin—

And this is now my America – Captain of shit,

                         Rebirth of vulgarity from childhood crime,                                                                        a youth revolt renamed criminal larceny and latent prints that left the mark

 Of the striker matches we passed out fighting for the last piece of land that a drunken and belligerent uncle Sam said he was taking as punishment for the war he lost

To build their new multi-complex shop-aholic outlet center

For fat beast women – like milking cows in their factory farms—

And new sperm sack children – cast out by the millions

Occupying nature like the new Hitler youth

                                                            So sip my cocktail. Taste the pool-fresh beginning of a new baby batter army  - That’s spewing forth on their new mission

TO TARE THIS SHIT APART – leave no stones unturned in America the new Anarchy of the anarchy – not some lawless descent into the destitution or disease plagued out and delivered by the blasphemous whores that occupy Washington

But an altogether new approach to the action of life

                                   

                        The reclaiming of words over used and caused to sour

Like ART— 

Like LOVE—

Like UNITY –

                        And the end of this man-fed vision of AMERICAN DREAMS –

Yes, come one come all –to the new TV this fall and see what they want you to see

So, Rise up, freaks and monsters and people on the fringe of a “civilized society” rise up “extremists” and start the caged fights, start the underground fight clubs, the midnight drive-bys and let’s see who stands strong – will it be the left or the onward Christian soldiers that have the balls to take on this fight – we’ll feed the fence sitting politicians to the new national zoo in which we’ll store the ignorant (and the people with no clue)

            SO NOW Make it known where we stand—Make sure that they know

And fully understand—

THIS NO LONGER IS THEIR WORLD,

 It belongs to those willing to shut up and become active and take what’s rightfully theirs

NO longer the daydreamers—

No longer the wishers—

No longer those who stand in the way—

Make way for progression (and for Christ’s sake the 21 century rebellion)

            For god’s sake it’s time we began

K. Foerman

At the Pick and Peel - update 3/24/2012

OK, for the two or three people here who do read this, I just had to get some stuff out of my head. These characters have been kind of just chewing at my optic nerve giving me quite a headache...so I thought that I may breathe a little pre-life into them and just get it out...where it's gong? I don't know but please feel free to write any comments that you may have...thanks  I have expanded the original story and added some new elements and have started writing again trying to finish up chapter three and get to chapter four before I drop dead...

THANK GOD FOR THE BREEDERS -- IT MAKES ME CREATIVE...THANKS BREEDERS (Not straight breeders, but KIM AND KELLEY DEAL BREEDERS) Ta!


                                        CHAPTER 1



   You know that your mind is riddled with disease and deification when the only thing that occupies the space is your own death. It's not a riddle, people, in general, are built to self destruct. Could you just imagine the population pool of spittle if we weren't.  It would be like left-over gravy, still gooey, but not quite liquid. This mass puddle of sticky, gooey and stifling dissent. Wow, what a dream land that would be.
   You, as well, would probably sit spinning your mind into death if you followed and flowed at the ever-exciting Pick and Peel company. That's right, the Pick and Peel...where fat women with over-sized shoes waddle through the bargain basement of existence only to come out the other side with absolutely nothing - and still feel less about themselves than they did before coming into this Hoboken-gristly lit dungeon of last seasons last seasons clothes. I, me, yes the bald guy with the wire rimmed glasses slouching over a glass top cabinet, will be your host here in hell...and you see it's hell as well. Standing at the top of the long descended staircase, you feel like you've left the earthly plane and have moved on...into nicotine stained walls, flickering death of faulty florescent lights overhead, sagging, dusty acoustical tile, pee-stained and hanging from a fake drop ceiling that covers all the shit-lines from other places above. Screeching and gurgling from the century-old copper piping and a smell of some musty mold drenched loose fittings. That welcomes me everyday at six o'clock in the morning as I prepare myself for another exciting and dramatic day.
   It, of course, wasn't always like this, nor was I...just like the Pick and Peel, time has not been very kind to me, either. I moved to New York fresh from college with a definite "can do" attitude. I was going to be the next big thing...the next Dan Rather or, at the least, the Next Ricki Lake...instead, I became the next redundancy in a city filled with cliches and redundancies. They call me Tom, and at this point, and by point, I mean ten years of customer service, six years of which spent in the worn out pit of the Pick and Peel,  I wouldn't care if they called my son-of-a-bitch...I gave up caring for lent, and as a Jew, let me tell you, that's something hard to do.
   I don't really understand what it is with those Catholics, but they come in here by the bus-load. I always try the same joke on the husbands, as they stand chagrined and miserable with tiny sweat beads forming over their trembling ninety year old lips...."So what's the difference between a Jewish mother and a Catholic mother?"...and here I wait, hoping at this point that their is still life left in them, hoping that I don't need to usher down yet another EMS group to Carry the flagellated body of some six-hundred pound pud out of my basement of wonder, and with my famous luck (which, of course we will get to) be reported on in the next Opus Day weekly or something.
   Usually, the Pud just looks, lopsided sometimes, almost like a slinky-neck bobble head of Moses giving a handy to John...and here's where I hit them...Right here between their too-close eyes and the assault of "fuck-yous" that I know are behind them..."A moustache...that's the only difference...a moustache."
   Some Puds and Puddles even (that would be the fat women looking for salvation...it's hard to tell them that Chanel doesn't carry her signature black evening gown in a size 32, but I don't live to break the hearts of the beasts...give a slight chuckle, some gaff - and pretend insult, and I want to shout..."an insult is that size 12 foot stuffed into that size 9 Jimmy Choo..."but I can't...I am here to serve the customer. These demons of bargains that hunt me down like rabid rats escaped from some animal testing breeding plant on the lower south side of Chicago.
   And don't get me wrong...I'm not letting Jew's off any easier...Actually, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Baptists, Episcopals, Lutherans...blah blah blah...they all get the hammer with me. Me and god, we made an arrangement about 30 years ago....leave me the fuck alone and I won't usher in the anti-Christ and the ending to all his creation. It seemed very fair to me, of course, anything not Pick and Peel seems fair.
       Do you know why it's called the Pick and Peel? No, seriously, it's been here since dust...and with some sincerity, I may be accurate. I always thought it was because after the clients try on the clothes, they are so disgruntle and dismayed, we have to end up peeling the dresses like a fine Grecian grape. Once, I put a sign on the door - "Sorry, no sizes over 18" and go friggin' figure, some fatty called the ACLU and tried to sue. My boss, well, the toupee wearing blob that owns the Pick and Peel, called  right away and said I was a fattist.  I agree - OK, I am a fattist - it happens.
   Not only a fattist, an anti-religonist, an anti-republican, an anti- conservative and probably anti-family/anti-kid at this point...Don't look at me like I just killed your puppy...you work retail for a short season and try to keep some decorum of cleanliness while thirty kids run around snotting on all the items...and even here, even in the Pick and Peel, the items had class, maybe ten, twelve years ago. Look, it's what, 2012 - and we stock a micro-poly blend we call plush - now not to date the store but that micro-poly blend was a great high of fashion maybe 25 years ago...along with tight-rolled jeans, Nagal bright neon's...and think, people buy this shit.
    I used to say that I could revolutionize fashion with the clothes at the Pick and Peel. Hell last year, one designer did a runway show that looked like bag ladies that hang around out back and smoke hand rolled beanies and a little crack now and then...they had the nerve to call it post-apocalyptic...I called it dumpster ready couture.
   That;s how it is, really - last decades trash is this decades new look - inspired by some shellacked Botox beauties that can never be real.
   I know it's Three O'clock. It sounds like a herd of wild wildebeests running down the stairs. You see, here at the Pick and Peel three o'clock madness is a 20 minute sale that takes an additional percentage off the garbage that we need to move because moths are starting to eat at the seems and if it doesn't move quick, people will start to notice the faint smell of formaldehyde either from the moth-balls or from the old ladies with blue hair that just died in the dressing room...and no, I am not kidding. I know it happened again,  you can smell it. A cross between formaldehyde and feces - it's a beautiful bouquet we call "J'adore morte" - it's the cousin fragrance to Dior -
   "Sera, call 9-11 again, please...we've got an issue, AGAIN."
   "Seriously, Tom, I don;t want to clean that up again..."
   "Just call the damn squad."
      Misery LOVES company, Sera and I must be star-crossed lovers. She sits, well, really props herself up at the register, swooping purple (today's colour) hair from in front of her left eye. "The pierced Goddess," that's the nic-name that I gave her on her third day at the Peel. From what I can count, she's at twenty, and that's all above the clothes. She keeps promising (well, really threatening) to show them all to me, and she swearers she has twenty more. Some in places I never could even imagine that anyone would pierce...let's just say imagination or not, I'm not going there...
   Really, Manny, the toupee douche that owns this schmuck of retail hired Sera last year to be my savior, my assistant. Don't get me wrong - I certainly love her as much as one can, say, as much as one loves shingles or some other herpes infection of the soft tissue.
   She came damaged, OK, and maybe that's my personal opinion...well, for chrissake I'm telling the damn story, so she came damaged! I do love her, we get along like Lavern and Shirley except with both of us being gay and defiantly bitter, we don't co-habitate well. OK she's a man hating dyke that loves me for some reason, and I'm a washed out fag that has nothing better to do with myself than watch old fat women die trying on micro-poly blends...how could we not love each other? Together, we've stormed the Bastille and have taken Ms. Antoinette to her chop-job.
   "...Yeah, that's right Pick and Peel - you dick, 102 N 96th street...come to the loading dock fucking moron...what, you think you can carry that fat bitch up the three floors...." and to me she says.."make sure you put an out of order sign on that stall Tom, I don;t want to have some other lady die 'cause she missed some one of a kind thirty year old Vivian Westwood gown that is now ripped at the seem by the dead lady...we dealt with that two years ago...no I wasn't talking to you,..could you just come now...before it leaks...thanks."
   I stand back amazed at my life. Really, this is my life - this slice of rich pie. Here I stand a little over plump (in gay terms, I should be sold to the Inuits for Whale oil) prematurely bald, wire-rimmed glasses, king of my domain...the Pick and Peel, with some dead husky in the dressing room ripping the seems out of a one of kind Vivian Westwood gown...Sera was right about that. How lucky could one man get? Seriously, I have to ask myself what kind of karmic mutilation did I preform in a former life...dear Krishna, dear Jesus, dear Mohammad, dear Santa for chrissake...Calgon - whoever, whatever...take me away...

                                                               CHAPTER 2


   This is definitely my life, no escaping it this time. I am standing, staring into the dressing room while Burt and Ernie do their damnedest to lift Ms. New York onto the stretcher.
     "...Coroner says we gotta' wait 'till they can get the bus down..." Says Ernie, the shorter of the two disasters pretending to be life-saviors in sheep's clothing.
     "How long are we talking? I mean, no disrespect, gentlemen, but I have a store to run...we've already missed the three o'clock madness sale, and now it's getting close to dinner...and that's probably our busiest shopping hours." I'm starting to fidget with my shirt cuff, kind of shifting weight back and forth from foot to tired and worn out foot.
     "...I mean, I don't know...coroner said..."
     "..Yep, got that last time...Sera, call Manny, tell him we're closing down for the night..."
     "Are you kidding me, Tom, I'm not making that call..." and I can see her flip me off across the room. Great, death, mold, dissatisfaction and now, disgruntled employee moral - what a day.
    "For chrissake, Sera, Just call the man....I don't have time..." and as I'm getting ready to just blow, I see the body bags coming out and, for some sick reason, feel calmed. "Never mind Sera, the public servants have decided to work today..." and I swear as Ernie was talking to Mr. High-brow highball, Bert called me an asshole.
   Screaming across the room, like she was using a fog-horn to warn ships before becoming ground on the shoals, Sera says, "She didn't leak did she? Goddamn it, if she leaked, you two bastards are cleaning that room.."
   I'm starting to get a headache, a life ache really, I mean, it's one thing to not like one part of life, but to not like life...and there it goes again, my mind slipping quickly into the warmth of death.
   The coroner looks as if he's done, so I ask, "Any ideas what happened?"
     "Not yet, I'm assuming natural causes, but we'll look at a few things back at the morgue...did you know her..."
     I'm half-listening, something I perfected many many years ago....living with a mother never satisfied. "what...um...oh, no, I didn't know her, she must have come in for the three o'clock sale, really, I didn't even see her..."
     "So, you can't tell me anything about her, married? family? anything like that?"
     "Nope, just she must have known her fashion..." and he looks at me weird, you know, like I just put a hot cherry bomb in his hand and gave him a little kiss... "Well, she at least died in a Westwood...most women would be happy with that.."and already, I knew I was talking to the wrong person.
     "Hey, dip-shit faggy, Manny's on line one..."
    "You didn't call him did you?"
    "Jesus Christ, Tom, leave the poppers alone, you told me to call him and tell him that we were closing..."
    "Then I told you the public servants decided to work....for fucksake Sera...Manny," Now, this call, nothing but "yep, yep...OK, yep, OK, OK, yep..."you know the type. Talk just to talk...say the same things over and over and hopefully you'll answer differently just once so he can jump your shit for NOT listening...a real verbal sadist, if you ask me...I think he gets off on the one sided conversations.
    "Listen, Manny, we lost the three o'clock sale, but they're almost done in here so we'll be going again here in just a few...yep...no, no, she was old....yep...yep...should be, yeah, i mean, i guess on the six o'clock...hold on, I'll ask.." and I hold the phone away like I'm shielding some important computer file from the worlds most fortified magnet. "Owner wants to know if we'll be on the news...or did anyone call the news...does he need to?"
    And Burt, looking mortified, yet somehow perversely amused says "it was called in on the scanner, so they know...don't know if their coming, but they know."
     Now, talking back with Manny, the super douche, "He said it was called in on the scanner, so they know...yep, yep, OK, yep...yep...OK..."this literally could go on until eight unless you put your foot down, basically hanging up on the yoke. "OK Manny, I've got to get off of here...they need a signature or something (total lie, by the way), OK, yep...." and I can feel each Yep come out like fire from a dragon. If I could only melt the styraline and poly blends into a nice rich liquid mass, maybe they could be used as a fuel source and burn this baby to the ground.
     I catch a glimpse of Sera, swiveling in the chair by the register, head back....glittering from the metallic inserts in her body. I \would, if possible, switch with her for the shortest of time....just long enough to go get a diet coke and an Aterol or a Valium and  Stertara...something to burn the nerve ends dead so I could power through the rest of the night...this night, like so many before and possibly so many after.
   And I'm starting to notice people...not the suites, not the Coroner, not the EMT's...the people, the regulars, I guess. I'm noticing that no one is noticing the going ons...no one taking stock that some heffer just choked on life's big boner right in the same dressing room, that, in just short fashion, hopefully, they will be trying on their macrame swim suite. No one...like life is an invisible force that just comes and goes as it damn well pleases.
     "OK, Mr. Reichart, we will need you to sign this release so the guys can haul her off..." Like she's a piece of furniture on consignment...seriously, I know that I devalue life, and certainly couldn't be bothered to take notice of this woman (portly as she may have been in life) while she was living, but something doesn't sit quite right talking about the dead like they are bricker-brack at a second rate consignment store with optional clause.
     "OK, no problem..." that's all I got, can you believe that. All of this righteous indigency and all I have is "OK, no problem..." what the hell is wrong with me...with my life? What made me this self-loathing fagatron...yeah, I said it, it's like a fag robot just going through life. I'll get god damned T-shirts printed that say "Fuck off FAGATRON" and wear it every day - I don't care. I have the balls to do it...
   I'm looking over towards Sera, still spinning, still looking like a disco-ball the way the light hits her thousand pieces of metal as she spins. There are customers lined up to pay, but like usual, she doesn't care...I don't care...we really should change the name of the store from the Pick and Peel to the Go Fuck Yourself. I think it fits better - at least at this point. I stop dead-tracked. "Sera, please take care of the customers...I need to...to go get some air...or get a drink, or something."
     "Yeah, no problem Tom, I got this...go take 5 'cause when you get back I've gotta peace-out to take some meds...and by meds, I mean smoke some pot." That's just Sera...she doesn't care what people hear, what they say...she's got the biggest set of brass balls that I've ever seen, and I've T-bagged a few sets in my day.
     "OK, just give me a few...I really need to adjust my thinking for a few minutes...maybe just get some air and think a little better. I'm...I don't know, I feel like I may explode in short time..."
     And as I start walking up the long dingy, dirty, narrow flight of stairs from the seventh circle of hell to the light above, I start to feel lifted, lighter...yet somehow uneasy, as if someone or something is keeping close watch and eye on my every move...


                               CHAPTER 3:

...And there it was, a guy...not just any guy, either. Not some normal wanna hang out, wanna grease up your feet and cause some kind of funky feeling between the two of you, but a real guy....you know when you can just tell. Here I am looking like I am ready to crack, tired, bored, life ached and ready for something new. Hell, at this point, a new flavor coffee may do the trick to make my life something more than the Pick n Peel and the personal hell that I've allowed it to become. He was just kind of standing at the top of the stairs, trying not to look, but you know he is looking anyway - and I know you know what I mean. One of those quick glances over the shoulder, but repeated, and when you do match eyes, you feel something...something like electricity, something staticy...and juicy, kind of like you just stepped in it, you know? I felt a little uneasy, a little excited and a little cautious at the same time...but he was definitely looking.
     As I got to the top of the stairs, kind of panting, hell I'm not in the best shape in my life, I looked directly at him. He actually smiled...seriously, he smiled, and really, I looked behind me like he had just smiled at someone else coming up the stairs from the dark dungeon of hell, but there was no one else, so he smiled at me. I looked shocked, I know that I did...no need in trying to talk myself into something that I didn't feel.
     Here was a man with all three Casablanca qualities...and what are those, you may ask, but if you do, obviously you don't know that many gays in the world...tall, dark and handsome.
     He definitely looked middle eastern, maybe Lebanese, Maybe Jordanian. He had short, dark hair, and beautiful green florescent eyes. He had to stand six feet tall, although to me, as I climbed out of the dust, dirt and hatred that I called my job, he looked to be the giant that jack climbed the bean stock after.
     I went to speak, to say hello, but my voice failed, and go figure, what a time to fail. Seriously, I can spend all day with puds and puddles, all day yelling at pierced Sera and I go to say hello to this TDH at the top of MY staircase to hell and all that comes out is a squeak.  Can you believe it a faggoty mousy squeak came out of my mouth.
     He looked me directly in the eyes and smiled. He spoke first, "Hello," he said in perfect English, "do you work down there?"
     "Um...if you mean, I mean, yeah, I'm chained to a rock quarry down there slaving away in my pile of really out of date clothes..."
     He gave me another smile, and god I could melt - seriously like the wicked witch of the west after someone drenched her in a puddle of water...well, I was in a puddle alright, just don't know if it's water or not...oh, come on...grow up, how would you see it...this hot man, just big tray of sex standing at the top of the stairs starters talking to me...I've got a corpse being tagged and bolted downstairs, I have an angry man-disliking lesbian almost screaming (and when I say screaming, I mean, I could almost make out what she was saying at the top of the rubble pile), and the sexiest guy I've ever laid eyes on is smiling at me like we've been the best lovers in history - OK, back off, I know I am putting way too much on this at this point, but again, my story, my rules.
     ...And then it happens..."Would you like to get a drink or something sometime?" Was that my voice??? Certainly not...all masculine and macho...nothing like my squeak earlier, and that's why I can't believe that I just said that...and I know that my face is red, my hands are shaking and I must have this scent that smells like mothballs and dirt...must smell nice. You know, though, how they say you can't smell yourself, but I feel like that's how I smell.
     "I...um...actually, I would like that...when and where?"
     OMG seriously, he said yes - just like that. I feel like he was holding back, like there was some hesitation to his yes, but I'll take it any way that I can get it...again, grow up, it's not how it sounds, sometimes, though, I just think words that may seem inappropriate, but really, think about it, it keeps things a little interesting. "Well, what about tomorrow night, say around eight o'clock...here, maybe at this...um well, what about at Shaboo's on West End? Does that work for you?"
     "Yes, that would be fine...I'm looking forward to it..."
     And what do you think I said...ready for this clunker? "I'm not a perv or anything like that..." Seriously, that's what I came up with to say...seriously! It's already too much that I hate my life, but now, I need to act like I am getting some chocolate chip cookies and Chris Hanson is getting ready to walk in and say..."don't fuck children..." And my mind is just wigging out and going all gooey like and I am thinking is it cookies or lemonade that I sound like? Did I just give this hot heaven chills and freak out the only chance that I have had for normalcy in the last three years?
     "Um....I hope not," he says in an all too assuring voice, and I know that he is already regretting the decision that he hesitantly made to go out for a drink after all.
     "Really, I don't even know why I said that. It's just been a hell of a day, I had a lady drop dead down there...I've got an assistant pin cushion that hates men and I'm just on the verge of a  nervous break here any minute...and that, I don't mean...but it's been a day." I don't want to recount everything, because I am going through it all in my head, and really, it's not that interesting...a three hundred year old woman just died...shit happens...and look how I can just slide right past death. I know that I will pay for my callous chalky thick skin that laughs openly at death...but I can't help the thinking that fills my misery.
     "My name is Lenny," he says...and I think isn't that a fucked up name for a middle eastern god of hotness, but I don't dare say anything after all the other weird things I have been saying since we spoke.
     "I'm Tom...and I've never really just walked to the top of the stairs to pick up a guy."
     "Well, why this time?"
     "Seriously, I don't know...maybe..."and I can't answer. I don't know what it was about this guy that made me just hot tamale in my skin, but it was there...and really, I don't even know why he would have said yes...approaching middle age white man (and being down in the pits, let me tell you saying white is an understatement...I feel like one of the vampires from all the big hit movies, I'm not going to put the name in here, but you get the idea.)
     "Well, I think I will be glad that you did. So I will see you here, tomorrow at eight, right?"
     "I'll be here, anyway, I work here, and I hope that you will as well..."
     "I'll be here, really, I am looking for it..." and with that, we said goodbye and I started going back downstairs to my dungeon to the welcoming screams of a pissed off lesbian and a fat pud that was spitting food particles from the local cafeteria where he had just eaten dinner at three o'clock. What a wonderful world it is.


                                           CHAPTER 4




     It wasn't until we walked into the Bistro on 42nd street that I could feel the opulence and the stares of people around us. Even the air itself seemed to cary a creme brûlée quality; caramelized decadence and divine interventions.
     We were seated close to the rear of the restaurant, and at first, i thought, who the hell...but then I realized that i couldn't be happier to have the silence for conversation.
     There were deliberate long pauses between us, an uncomfortable distance that matched the dark burgundy drapery that covered most of the walls and the black leather high backed chairs that we sat upon, fidgeting as often as necessary.
     "Well, this is a little awkward ," i said in shrill tone, and god i hated myself already for even opening my mouth.
     He just gave me a sly smile and said, "it's only awkward if we let it...i'll tell you something Tom," anne I know this sounds just stupid, but i thought he was going to get up and tell me, fuck it, i'm gone, but he said, "I like you...I've seen you several times standing near the top of the stairs, smoking, drinking coffee, talking to yourself..."
     "I do not talk to myself," I interrupted.
     "You do, sp you see. I have been watching you, I just haven't had the nerve to come and speak with you...until the other day, when you looked like things were falling apart for you.

OK, equality takes many forms...today, I am dealing with equality in a long-term relationship. It seems that honesty no longer can move a relationship into a productive path...well, one sided honesty. A relationship cannot be equal if one person is lying to another. There are things in life that can cause fear and in turn cause lying to cover the fear. I am defiantly not saying that I have an advantage because I have been the moral authority - by far! I lied about drug use for years - to everyone, including my partner of almost 9 years (our anniversary is December 1 - just around the corner). When I got off of drugs and started living an honest life, I asked the same of my partner. We had decided that it would be a fresh new start for both of us to rebuild a life that went off track...now, I am dealing with the idea that life didn't actually go off track, we did. I always think that it is important to be responsible for one's self...no one makes you feel or do or think or say anything...you do! Those are your choices. Of course, at the time, one may think that the situation is out of control because of the actions of another, but it never is. So anyone reading this blog please comment and let me know what you would do in a situation similar to this:  OK you know your partner is lying, he lied  directly to you - he is a recovering alcoholic, but goes out and drinks for two days - some stranger calls your phone VERY early in the morning to start asking all types of questions about your partner...YOU DO NOT KNOW THIS PERSON AT ALL - you send your partner texts, and again, this strange man answers your texts to your partner - he says he is passed out on his couch... you do love your partner,  very much - but where do you draw the line? That's the question posed and if anyone at all is reading this, I would very much appreciate answers to that question. Of course this is a real situation that I am faced with right now...and lucky for old Mr. Unknown wanna answer my texts that I didn't have a car, it would have been another example of when keeping it real goes wrong and I already know the inside of a correctional institute...I don't think I want to know another one...lol....

So again, here is the question: HOW FAR DO YOU ALLOW THIS TO GO AND WHERE DO YOU DRAW THE LINE???

I am seriously looking for advise and anecdotes that others have been through...let me know your traumatic love stories and where they lead....

Thanks

a history on Senate bill 272

Welcome to North Carolina, currently the only Southern state that does NOT have a constitutional ban on Gay marriage. All that may change coming up with the May 8th 2012 ballot initiative.

     The North Carolina Constitution currently does not recognize a difference between any one person. Article one states ...

"Section 1.  The equality and rights of persons.

We hold it to be[u] self-evident that [b]all persons are created equal[/b][/u]l; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, the enjoyment of the fruits of their own labor, and the pursuit of happiness."

     There are other issues as well that will go along with the push for constitutional discrimination.  According to Professor Lavelle, the wording of the current senate bill 272 will abolish the domestic partner registry and eliminate same sex partner benefits that are currently available in seven municipalities in North Carolina, these include: the counties of Durham and Orange, the cities of Durham, Greensboro, Chapel Hill and Carrboro. If senate bill 272 passes, it will become illegal for these municipalities and counties to continue to offer these benefits.  But that's not all.  This will also have a serious impact on non-married heterosexual couples as well, and forbid them from entering into any public contracts that deal with partnership. Currently, the laws of North Carolina, when dealing with domestic violence, are set to protect both heterosexual and homosexual couples regardless of marriage, if this law takes effect, the effectiveness of these laws will be in question. The law itself had issues at the house level, where it did not allow for private companies to offer domestic partner benefits to their workers, and actually would have made it illegal for them to do so. In the senate bill, those words were changed so that it would not have an effect of private companies; however there are questions concerning the placement of the entire article on the ballot, or not placing the part that says it is not valid for private contracts.

     Besides the obvious issues raised by constitutionally adding discrimination, there are questions to be raised about property, parental rights and economical problems. If the law passes, since currently, North Carolina does not allow second parent adoptions (meaning that same sex couples cannot adopt a child of their partners) and contracts that are derived from the state for legal guardianship will then be null and void. If people make wills, again, a state supported contract, those wills will be null and void and property and faineances will be turned back to the state law which will then send them to the next of kin, not your partner of how ever many years. This constitutional change will have devastating effects on family law according to Ms. Sharron Thompson.

     In a televised debate between Wake County Rep. Paul Stam and Cumberland County Rep. Rick Glazier, Mr. Stam made comparisons between consensual adult gay marriage and the marriage of two three year olds or three-some marriages. Mr. Glazier said that, other than health related reasons the state should not be involved in consensual marriage between two consenting adults.

     North Carolina already has laws in effect making it illegal for two people of the same sex to marry, however, again, North Carolina is the only southern state that have avoided placing this ban in constitutional form. Honestly, there are many who feel that the constitution of North Carolina already grants the rights for Same-Sex couple marriage, the questions now are how far up the court ladders will this go.

     According to Senator Martin Nesbitt, Minority Leader, and this tactic is just being used to tread on minorities and "toss them in the bottom of the barrel" so to distract people from the real and current issues facing the state of North Carolina. He said this bill is bad for business, and many businesses have contacted him to state their disapprovement of Senate bill 272. Rep. Jean Farma-Butterfield said that it's just discrimination being placed into the constitution and that laws should never be used to repress people. Senator Doug Berger, on the open senate floor, when senate bill 272 came up for a vote compared the bill the Jewish Holocaust, linking the separating and discrimination against one group of people is no different than another, and, again Re. Marcus Brandon said the bill is just bad for business, and many businesses that are currently open to the idea of same sex benefits may move their business to other locations taking even more employment, that is so desperately needed, out of North Carolina.

    The bill passed both the house and senate (September 12, 2011) and is now headed for the primary ballot on May 8, 2012. If you currently are not registered, it is urged that you do register so that you can participate in the May 8th primary and vote to add this issue to the ballot or not.  Either way that you feel, you must look past the emotions, past the religious dogma and see that the state currently has a law on the books protecting marriage...do we need to constitutionalize discrimination now?