Monday Moment Of Zen

Tell her Miss Tyra!

Alarm-Free Sunday

Good lord. I slept until just after 1:00. Actually I did a time check around 11:30 and then dozed and dreamed until after 1. It was heavenly and decadent and so not something I get to do too often. Nothing I did but simply from the vagaries of other people's schedule requests have left me with three days off. A nice long weekend to start the week. I would have planned a little trip but while I have some spending money, I still have bills,bills, bills to pay.

Today's agenda consists of a haircut, a tan and a visit to the gym and a Gay-A meeting. I have some photos I've been wanting to work on and I may scrub the kitchen floor.

That's my little life. I like it.

A Quiet Week

The calm before the storm I suspect. We have a few events at work but nothing major coming up. Home has become delightfully and predictably routine. I finished redecorating the living room except for a few minor details. I'll try to post pictures next week. Summer is over and the leaves have already begun to turn and fall in the local park.

The highlight of the week came Monday. We hosted the Fashion Week show for Nico & Adrian. They presented their Spring/Summer 2008 collection. Nico & Adrian is a boutique house here but they have a big gay and international following. With good reason. The show had male and female fashions/models. The women were mostly in dresses and full outfits. Most of the men were in skimpy bathing suits and tight open shirts. It was delightful. Also delightful were the designers themselves. As well as all of their assistants, stylists and make-up people. I am surprised and thrilled to report that they all couldn't have been sweeter or more together and professional. Although the show itself went up over an hour late, everyone connected with it was on time and a pleasure to work with. The fact that the night ended with me drooling over almost naked 22 year old boys with no body fat was just the icing on the cake.

Photo: Nico & Adrian, New York

Sell! Sell!

200,000. Wow. It's been years in the making, but from humble beginnings many good things come. Late yesterday afternoon we had visitor number 200,000 cross our threshold here at From The Ashes HQ. I know nothing about him or her except he/she was from the UK and didn't stay very long at all. I assume he was dissatisfied with what he found as he came to me via a search titled "party favor cum slut". And while I like to consider myself accommodating there are limits...

According to the stats I get, my little corner of the bloguverse gets read on six continents. And while the bulk of my readers are in fact from the US, we get visitors from at least 23 countries. Hello Malaysia! Of course, it's also true that I get a lot of visitors from the oddest searches in words and images, but I attribute that to my wondrously perv ... er, diverse interests. To wit:

"eminen nude"
"tied up and fucked"
"fat fuck" (The NUMBER ONE search!)
"soccer pee"
"robbie williams armpit"
"nude blood"
"dragged naked"
"weird boob"
"well hung canadian men" (as if!)
"shaved pubic hair designs"

and the ever-popular
"flying cumshot"

My readers are freaks, y'all! But you're my freaks and you are loved.

Seriously, I started this blog almost as a lifeline. I had been diagnosed with HIV. I was depressed, suffering from serious panic disorder, in need of some therapy. I now know I was alcoholic. I felt lost and completely alone. With nowhere else to turn I launched myself into this new form of expression without a clue as to what it would lead to. I decided very early on that if this idea was going to work or be worth doing, that I would have to try my best to remain brutally honest and unflinchingly unafraid of the consequences. As it turns out, it became like a trail of bread crumbs out of a very dark forest. In some ways, I think this blog may have saved my life.

Today (at least) I am sober. I have been faithfully and successfully treating my HIV and my overall health is amazing. My mental health, well ... I guess that depends on who you ask. But I certainly don't feel as crazy. Along the way, my reasons for writing have evolved. I decided that I would try to concentrate on informing people about HIV treatment and issues whenever I could, hopefully without being strident or preachy. I tried to make sure that I kept a good accounting of what I experienced through diagnosis and treatment. My hope was that sometime someone who was just beginning that journey would come here and find some useful information and not be as scared. I also wanted to reflect that while being HIV+ was a big part of my life, I also maintained many other interests, distractions and obsessions. I love weird news, outrageous behavior, snarky sarcasm, and true New York stories. Whenever possible, I tried to share that with you.

All is not perfect, if such a thing is even possible. I've recently discovered I have a lot of work to do on my journey of sobriety. Let's just say I'm seriously stumbling over some of the 12 Steps. I've made some great strides on the road to self-acceptance, but discovering who I am, where I came from, and where to go from here seems endless. And that's good, I think. I'm a single gay man with HIV that left 40 officially in the dust. My prospects of ever finding a man to share my life with grow exponentially dimmer with each passing month. I am almost as socially retarded as I was when I started this. I am 20 short years away from retirement and as it stands now I'm looking forward to a twilight of Social Security and dinners of cat food.

In short, while I have toyed with the notion that it might be time to end this chronicle, all indications are that there's still some tragic ore to be mined from the cave I've dug for my life. When all is said and done, I feel I haven't said or done it all yet.

In other words: I'm not finished. We still have some roads to travel. I'd be pleased if we could still go down some of them together.

You comin'? ...

Monday Moment Of Zen (NSFW)

Courtesy of the fabulous Alexyss K. Tylor. "I likes to suck dicks."

Labor Day Weekend In Pictures

My beloved niece at the M&M store.

(photo deleted by request)
Central Park playground


Yankee Stadium. Bronx, NY

(photo deleted by request)
Central Park, NYC.

Stuyvesant Park. My niece and Jet.


The whole fam damily. Coney Island, Broolyn NY

Odds & Ends

Jet woke me up at 9 am this morning. Not sure what he wanted besides attention. After I got up and made some coffee and set to checking e-mail and browsing porn sites he seemed satisfied and sacked out on the bed per usual. This would be fine except I didn't get to bed until 4 am and we have two events back to back tonight with less than 1/2 hour between them. It's a logistic nightmare. I will be sleep deprived and crabby.



On the plus side, I got a good jump on the day. I decided over the holiday weekend that I would make a point to use my free time a little better. I've been complaining that I have no time to make any Gay-A meetings, despite the fact that in this city, there's almost always a meeting somewhere. The truth is I'm a creature of habit, and I've fallen into a routine that didn't allow time for meetings. I'm feeling that I won't be one of those people that needs a meeting a day to stay sober, but I certainly see the value in maintenance, and I always come away from a meeting with a renewed sense of resolve. It's a great reminder for me of where I've come from, and what I'll be going back to if I start down that road again.



Also, while I am decidedly not a "Silver Daddy" I have become a Paunchy Uncle during the last year. I've been joking with people about being pregnant with twins, and taken to calling them Ben & Jerry. And while my new found obsession with ice cream is partly to blame, it's also true that I haven't been able to put together anything remotely resembling a workout routine. I knew the jig was up when people began to affectionately pat my belly. I laughed, but inside I wept like a sad, fat clown. OK not really, but I was a tad mortified. It's been decades since I had a belly to pat. Aside from the ice cream, my diet is actually fine. I've managed to stop it on the french fries, I quit munching on the warm bread, and I limit myself to a single slice of corn bread when I get a little hungry during a shift. Mostly I need to get my saggy white ass to the gym and on some cardio machines. Problem solved.



During the Labor Day Family Invasion we took some time to visit with my cousin and his wife, who live here in the city. I hardly ever see them unless someone comes to town. My cousin is only a year younger than me. He married late and then they took forever to have kids. I assumed they never would. Not only did they finally get around to it, they doubled up. Twins. A boy and a girl. While I'm not discounting my own potential fatherhood, I sometimes can't imagine raising children in this city. Let alone being well into your 40's with twin babies! My cousin looked happy, beat up and decidedly more "Silver Daddy" than the last time I saw him. If having kids ages you I may have to re- re- think this idea again. But the kids are pretty damn precious. Here's a nice shot of the boy. More to follow.



(photo deleted by request)

And in other news ... -via 365Gay.com

New York City police officers raided Mr. Black a popular East Village gay club on the weekend, arresting 32 people.

Seventeen employees and 15 customers were charged with the sale, use and possession of drugs.

A police spokesperson said the raid followed an undercover operation which found widespread drug dealing and use at the basement dance club. The spokesperson said the drug use was going on in full view.

Police seized 60 bags and vials of cocaine and a quantity of ecstasy pills

Following this weekend's raid NYPD said it is unlikely the club will reopen under the current owners and that the liquor license will likely be pulled.

Not that I take any smug satisfaction at other's misfortune. Not at all ... *snicker*

Dear god.

This was the e-mail invitation I received when I woke up Monday morning.

SILVER DADDY SUNDAY GRAND OPENING PARTY

THURSDAY
SEPTEMBER 9th
3pm - 9pm

at

UNCLE CHARLIE'S
139 East 45th Street, 2nd Fl. btwn. Lexington & 3rd Ave.

Uncle Charlie's opens today at 3PM (so you can still catch that nap)

Happy Hour Drink Prices from 3 - 9PM (Medicaid accepted)

This is the day to meet that special man (by special we mean without a swollen prostate)
as Uncle Charlie's hosts our weekly

SILVER DADDY SUNDAY PARTY


139 East 45th Street (2nd Floor)
Between 3rd and Lexington
Just a short walk(er) from Grand Central Terminal
Across from the NY Health & Racquet Club (where a defibrillator is always charged)


Somebody kill me.

Monday Moment Of Zen

Comes courtesy of the London Daily Mail. It seems powerful storms off the coast of New South Wales created a huge ocean disturbance. The storm apparently found itself parked over an area of ocean with the right mix of "salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions (ew) from seaweed". It whipped itself into a frothy mix that washed ashore and stretched over 30 miles out into the Pacific.

Hard Labor Day, Soft Drinks

It's early Saturday night and the family is safely winging it's way back to Buffalo. I emerged largely unscathed. And as I said halfway through the weekend, if this doesn't drive me to drink I'm officially "cured". It's not that I don't love my family, it's not even that I don't enjoy them. It's just that as an out gay man with HIV the relationships, already complicated, become a potential minefield. And many of my relatives are no less stubborn, opinionated, passive-aggressive and as passionate as I am. It can be a volatile and exhausting mix to deal with. In the past, I would cope with this jumble of emotions by numbing it with alcohol. That is not a viable option these days. And I promised myself I wouldn't "drink at" anyone when I simply couldn't or didn't want to deal with them or the emotions they stirred in me. And I'm no longer beating myself up with alcohol when my worst qualities rear up either. That leaves me, sober, dealing with the family, both in the past and in the now, on a level I hadn't in quite some time.

And it was OK.

I'm still processing.

But I feel pretty good.

I came away with stories and pictures. But before I bore you with sugary sweet anecdotes and shots of my very cute niece and ridiculously adorable twin 2nd cousins, here's a shot of a boy I ran across practicing something in the park that involved taking off his shirt and not an ounce of body fat. And for this, we are all thankful.