Monkey see, monkey do

Family Blend is one of the best blogs. It always makes me smile and occasionally teary-eyed. The blogeurs (you know, like auteurs, bloggers with style!) are a couple of well-adjusted, handsome, loving gay men that cope with their lives (children, exes, Mormon families, friends) with honesty and humor. I seriously look up to these guys. They are what I want to someday be. I only wish that I had role models like this when I was coming to terms with my sexuality.

I know things would have been much easier knowing that there were gay mormons (ex and otherwise) in healthy, loving relationships. Of course the only role models I had were those "gay" mormons who lived by themselves and seemed lonely. You never knew if they were gay or not cause that isn't talked about and you never knew about the, as they call them now, "mixed-orientation" marriages. So once I realized that I would never be able to marry a woman honestly, I had the Sheri Dew lifestyle to look forward to. That really was it. No one else to see and emulate. I was scared shitless.

Of course I know better now. I've experienced how love shared with a man can make me feel whole and good and not dirty and unhappy(although being in your 30's when you realize it is a bit late in my estimation) . I just wish that I had been able to see that earlier. There is a tendency among the members of the Church to feel that they have a monopoly on happiness. The gospel is where TRUE happiness (whatever that means) is found and those people who don't have the gospel and look happy aren't TRULY happy. It's a condescending attitude that most people in any group have I guess. And as a true believer I shared this worldview.

My folks always say that they just want me to be happy. Which is not as simple as it sounds because from Mormon parents the subtext of happy is "living the gospel". There's the disconnect. For me to be happy is to live in a state which my family considers the opposite of happiness. And when it seems that I'm happy, well, I'm not TRULY happy in their eyes. Ah the joys of families.

I'm sure the Family Blend guys aren't supermen and I don't mean to put a pedestal under them. I'm having a good enough time reveling in their ordinariness. I just want to warn them. I'm watching you, rooting for you, hoping every joy in life for you, cause every time you win I win too.

Doesn't everyone think they're a poet?

So I decided to start posting some of my writings on my blog. Why, you ask? Why to stroke my ego you know. Anyway, here's a sample!

Brian

As the taste of you traces its waltz from the tip to back of my tongue
and the feel of you replays its chords and arpeggios under my fingers,
a bit of your breath has lodged itself in a moist, hidden corner of my lungs
settling down, seeping in
becoming a bit of me.

What if your kindness, your sweetness were as contagious as the rest of you?

You, being you, would throw wide your arms seeding the world with spark and fulgor.
No war in Sudan, no drunken famine lulling babes to rest, no love ever lost
for you would have become like the gods,
omnipotent, all loving, everything to everyone,
removed, unattainable, fiery death to behold.

But in their knowing way, the gods bound you in restraining flesh
jealous with their golden thrones, timid of your spark
retaining their position by shackling you to death.

lying back, i cradle my head and send a whispered prayer to those covetous gods
and thank them for their misguided wisdom.

Heav'nbound you are owned by all- but Earthbound you are bound to me.

i breathe deep and feel that spark of you, that Part i breathed,
that bit of you,
as it slowly drips its way to my heart
becoming a bit of me.

I heart Panera

Thanks to my parent's unbelievably slow internet connection I have spent much time at Panera Bread. They boast a fast wireless connection, great pastries and loads of cute college guys. Unfortunately, most are students from Liberty University (yes, THAT Liberty University- Jerry Falwell's university) but that's ok. Eye candy is still eye candy and for the price of a cup of coffee I can sit to my heart's content.

It's a warm, friendly environment that's given me the chance to look up grad programs, job opps, email and generally mess around on the web. So to make it official... I LOVE PANERA!

Had a good talk with my mom last night about the Church and being gay and such. I'm really lucky she's open to talk about this stuff. She said that it was nice having me around. I said that I'm always nice to have around and she stopped short and said that it didn't used to be that way. I was moody, mean and irrational. But no longer. I used to be that way because i hated myself, being gay, and therefore life in general. But since I've come to terms with it, I've been much nicer. Funny isn't it? Trying to be everything the Church wanted me to be made me mean, hard and bitter. Now that I don't care what the Church wants me to be I am kind, caring and emotionally stable. There's a moral there, but I hate morality tales so I'm leaving it alone.