A year ago this week, I gave up blogging.

I ended the blog on Valentine’s Day. Kind of appropriate, given the heart motif. I wasn’t trying to be ironic — it just turned out that way.

At various times over the last few months I’ve considered coming back. I don’t know why. There are so many reasons not to.

First, it takes such a long time to write entries.

Second, blogging — at least, the way I did it — used up lots of emotional energy. I was never able to avoid giving this thing access to every inch of my psyche. For me, that was the point of having it. Also, people like to read that kind of thing, and I wanted the readership.

Third, I’m a perfectionist. (Unfortunately, perfectionism is a flaw, so no human being can ever be a successful perfectionist. Nothing can ever be flawless. But I digress. Oops!) Anyway, because I’m a perfectionist, I’m afraid that my writing will be inadequate. I’m afraid of subjecting it to scrutiny again.

Fourth, I have a theory that blogging (at least the way I did it) is inimical to finding a serious relationship. It’s been known to happen, sure, but — well, think about it. If you write openly about your life (as I did), you’ll probably write about the dates you go on. If you wind up becoming serious with someone, you’ll either have to continue to hide the blog from that person — making honesty in the relationship impossible — or you’ll have to confess to him that for weeks or months, you’ve been using your dates as entertainment for a whole bunch of people. And what if early on, you described your misgivings about the guy? That could make for some tense moments.

Fifth, I’ve been working on a more substantial writing project, and I’m afraid that if I start this site up again, it will siphon off some of that energy.

Sixth, there’s always the risk that someone I know will stumble across the site. That can be bad.

Seventh, life in the fishbowl can be really annoying.

I thought about coming back last August, but I was drunk at the time. I was thisclose to coming back in November — I even redesigned the site — but I still didn’t come back.

I’d been thinking about this for a while, and I finally decided it’s time. Actually, decided isn’t really the appropriate word. My gut is telling me this. It just feels right.

It felt so damn refreshing to quit. It felt terrific, it really did. I felt so free, so unencumbered. Blogging is fraught with all the stuff I’ve just mentioned.

Given all of that, why the heck am I trying it again? I don’t know. But something inside me must want to.

So I’m coming back — on a tentative basis.

I’ll see how it goes. I’ll see what works for me. I might write about personal stuff, or I might not. I might write every day, or once a week, or never again after today. I really don’t know.

But at any rate —

for now, at least —

I’m back.

Gay Gay Gay Gay Gay

A couple of weeks ago I watched a softcore gay porn video gay-themed film called The Journey of Jared Price, which Netflix recommended to me. It turned out to be badly written and acted, as well as very low-budget and grainy. I could forgive the production qualities, but not the writing.

I wrote a review of the movie for Amazon.com. Days went by — no review. It was finally posted a few days ago, after about two weeks.

Apparently, one of the reasons it took so long was because someone found my use of the word “gay” too controversial.

Here is my original review; the parts that Amazon deleted are in boldface. Some of the cuts I can understand, but others I don’t get.

Lots of heart, but that’s it

(2 stars out of 5)

I’m sure all the folks involved in making this movie are good people. The DVD contains an interview with the cast and the writer/director, and they all seem pretty likeable. I bet they’d be nice to hang out with. But the movie just wasn’t very good.

First, the good points. The story was ultimately sweet — it had heart. I found myself liking Jared and Robert and I rooted for them to get together. (Corey Spears is so damn cute that I was often distracted from his mostly not-so-great acting; Josh Jacobson was better. On a side note, I looked him up and learned that he was in the Buffy episode “The Gift” — he was the teenager who told Buffy “You’re just a girl!” after she rescued him from a vampire at the beginning of the ep.)

The film quality: I could forgive the fact that it was filmed on digital video — after all, they were given only a $30,000 budget.

And now the bad points.

The characters: they’re mainly unoriginal archetypes straight out of 60 years of gay pulp fiction. The cute, innocent small-town boy in the big city; the rich, 30something guy who turns out to be a lecher (because all gay men over 30 are jerks, right?); the elderly woman who dispenses wisdom and turns out to be open-minded towards gay people [something like that — I can’t remember the exact phrase I used there]. If you’re gay, you’ve seen them a million times before.

The plot: I recall writer/director Dustin Lance Black saying that 10 Percent Productions wanted a gay morality play, and that’s what he gave them. It’s all black and white and obvious. Men with money won’t bring you happiness; follow your heart instead! Duh. Okay, okay — there are lots of people out there who still don’t know that, so maybe they’d benefit from watching this. But you can advocate a point of view while still writing an entertaining movie with three-dimensional characters.

The plot has little narrative flow. Things are left unestablished. For instance, what does Jared see in Robert in the first place? And there’s little dramatic buildup and payoff. Things happen abruptly. There’s a scene where Robert calls Jared but Matthew doesn’t give him the message, and then it’s dropped. In a better movie, this scene would lead to misunderstandings and a little bit of tension. But nothing happens here.

The movie’s dialogue is pretty bad. It consists mostly of cliches, as well as things like “cool” and “oh, okay” and “my bad.” Sure, those expressions are true to life. And many of the scenes between Jared and Robert seemed very real, as if I were watching them on a surveillance camera. But there’s “interesting” real and there’s “boring” real. Watching paint dry is also real, but it’s not entertaining.

Although much of the acting is decent, two of the actors were pretty mediocre.

Basically, the movie had the production quality of a porn video with little of the payoff.

Here are Amazon.com’s General Review Writing Guidelines. I’m trying to figure out where the word “gay” fits in. Maybe someone thought it counted as “profanity, obscenities, or spiteful remarks.”

I love you, Amazon.com, but this is for you:

Gay gay gay gay gay.

So there.

(And Google, eat your heart out.)

[update: see this entry]

Happy Teen Anvils Day

I typed “Happy Valentine’s Day” into the Internet Anagram Server and came up with the following, among others:

Also, It’s Papal Hen Envy Day, to all the celibate priests out there.

To continue the Valentine’s Day motif via sly penned apathy, here is a Valentine’s Day poem I wrote back in college. Beautiful closeted musings.

And if you’re in the military, It’s Penal Navy Hep Day! Enjoy!

Cold

Cold is not presence but absence.

Cold bites you, burns your skin, but it’s not there.

Cold is defined not by what it is but by what it lacks.

Cold cannot seek out. Cold is vacuum. Cold can only wait for warmth.

Cold is negative space.

Warm clothes do not keep the cold out; they keep the heat in.

Heat wants to flow into cold places. Vacuums yearn to be filled. Aloneness is not natural. All things want to be together.

When you put on a hat and scarf and gloves and trudge out into the snowy winter wonderland, you’re not just keeping your body warm. You’re helping postpone the eventual entropic death of the universe.

Cold is zero movement. Cold is death. Cold is absence.

Cold is something missing.

Leaping

I went to a gay dating workshop last spring, and the organizer said that in order to have a successful relationship with a guy, you need to be compatible on three levels: the head, the heart, and the penis (and he moved his hand down along his body as he said each one, like some perversion of the sign of the cross).

The thing is, I’m usually too shy or nervous to approach the ones who seem promising.

The other thing is, no guy is good enough for me unless he’s too good for me.

What I mean is that I seem to be interested only in guys who can give me a bit of an intellectual inferiority complex. I’m interested in guys who can dazzle me intellectually and creatively — and who can do it to such an extent that I worry they might look down on me.

I don’t mean guys who dazzle me through being pretentious. I mean guys who dazzle me just by being the smart guys they are.

When I was a kid, I always felt competitive with, and threatened by, the other smart kids, because until I met them, I was the only smart kid I knew, and my parents and teachers loved me. Then these other smart kids came along and started elbowing in on what I’d thought was my turf. I was six years old and I was learning that the world was not as I’d thought.

Subconsciously, I seem to approach the dating process like a missionary. I want to convert the ones who I think don’t think I’m good enough. Once they think I’m good enough, I lose interest. No more challenge — mission accomplished. If they think I’m good enough — what’s the point?

I gotta work on that… because that can lead only to failure.

Right now, I’m like Sam Beckett on “Quantum Leap”:

…and so Dr. Beckett finds himself leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong… hoping each time that his next leap — will be the leap home.

When do I leap home?

Buffy 7.15: Get it Done

“It’s about power.”

Power has been the theme of Season 7. Buffy (or The-First-as-Buffy) uttered those words at the end of “Lessons,” and they’ve echoed throughout recent episodes — they’ve even been repeated once. “From beneath you, it devours” (or, “it eats you starting with your bottom”) is much catchier and has been repeated more often, but while it ostensibly refers to the First, the power beneath us all, it could just as easily refer to the power within us all. Power devours. Power corrupts.

Buffy’s been growing into her role as leader lately, and it hasn’t been all smooth and happy; and while she’s inspired the troops a great deal, there’s been foreshadowing of a rift among the Scoobies (“Buffy won’t choose you”). And she went all super-bitch for a moment there last night, lambasting Willow and Spike and the Potentials and even Anya and Xander a little bit. (And it was great to see Anya acknowledge that she hasn’t done much this season but provide comic relief. Last week’s “also, I have to pee” was priceless.)

But when it came down to it, Buffy refused power last night. I was surprised. I was thinking we were going to see her evolve into something either more or less than human. She was already partly there — something has been up with her ever since we learned that her resurrected molecular chemistry was somehow fooling Spike’s chip. She came back a bit darker, perhaps with a smidge of demon in her — something was different, despite Tara’s reassurances that she didn’t come back wrong.

But she’s still human. She’s always mourned the normal life she couldn’t have — this goes as far back as her date with Owen in the first season’s “Never Kill a Boy on the First Date.” The Slayer can never live a normal human life, but last night she decided that she’ll be damned if she’s going to lose her humanity completely.

And yet there’s another Slayer out there who wouldn’t be so quick to turn down the gift of so much power…

Meanwhile, Willow and Spike both grew last night. Willow bit the bullet, made the portal, sucking the energy out of Kennedy in the process. Power is not what Kennedy thought it was. She thought it would be neat, fun, calling people “maggot,” with no strings attached, just like Willow used to believe when she was a junior witch back at Sunnydale High. But power does have strings. Too much power makes you power’s puppet.

Spike seemed to break out of his slump last night, too, and it was wonderful and fun to see him throw on the leather again and kick ass. (The “Matrix”-like music didn’t hurt, either.) He’s seemed defanged lately — he’s even looked different lately. Have they changed his makeup? He’s looked like a junkie in rehab, worn out, tired, sad. And then last night — he kicked the demon’s ass. The bitch is back.

We’ll see how Robin Wood reacts to this.

Strangely enough, my favorite characters lately have been the ones with the least overt power: Xander, Anya, and — especially — Andrew. The apron and baking gloves? A total scream. He is so gay. If the show continues in some form after this season, they’d better keep him. (And not just because of the surprisingly nice shot of his stomach last week as Dawn was pulling off the wires.)

Power is still dangerous. It almost corrupted Buffy. It’s corrupted Willow before. Spike — we’ll see. And if power does corrupt — then it all comes down to the ones without physical power: Ms. Dawn Almost-Potential Summers, Mr. Yellow Crayon, and Ms. Sarcastic Ex-Vengeance Demon.

Power comes in different forms. That vision of a million Turok-Hans at the end? I don’t think physical power is going to be enough.

It’s still going to be about power. Only a different kind.

To Suck or Not to Suck?

What are the chances of transmitting HIV through unprotected oral sex? Pretty darn low, and much lower than through unprotected anal sex, according to this week’s Village Voice. This isn’t the first time we’ve heard this. I seriously doubt the risk is zero, as Klausner posits, and I, for one, would just as soon not take a guy’s load in my mouth, because you never know. Still — the chances appear to be very, very low.

Of course, oral sex can still transmit syphilis, gonorrhea, and other fun things.

Some people challenge the accuracy of such studies:

“A standard analysis will not show the effects of oral sex,” Koopman says. That’s because, if an infected person is having both anal and oral sex, most researchers assume that anal sex is the source of the infection. Therefore, the effect of fellatio is masked.

I don’t understand why it would be so hard to conduct an accurate study — one that tested people who had unprotected oral sex but not unprotected anal sex, as happened in this San Francisco example. I’ve read that it’s hard to find such people, but is it really? I know lots of people who fit this category. There must be enough of them to conduct a study.

Of course, a 100% accurate study would probably reach the same conclusion: that the possibility is not zero but is very, very small. It’s not a wholly satisfying response. Throw in guilt issues and the possibility of contracting a deadly disease, and it’s even less satisfying. But that’s life. Nothing is ever certain.

I’ve updated my photo page, God help me.

We’ve got whatever combination you desire. We’ve got clean-shaven with glasses. We’ve got clean-shaven with no glasses. We’ve got goateed with no glasses. We’ve got goateed with glasses. We’ve got clean-shaven with glasses.

Oops, already said that one.

My current status is clean-shaven, sometimes with glasses, sometimes without.

We gay men love experimenting with our appearance.

Yesterday my best friend called me from the South Pole to ask for legal advice.

I swear I am not making this up.

After you’ve sat in a bar with him and talked for an hour and a half; after lulls in the conversation that are filled with two-second gazes into each other’s eyes (a longer time than it sounds, really), gazes broken by mutual shyness; after you’ve asked him if he’d like to go, and he’s picked up the tab himself; after you’ve walked a few blocks back to the area where you both live, after you’ve asked him if he’d like to hang out a while longer, after he’s responded by inviting you back to his place; after you’ve sat there on opposite ends of his couch, facing each other, continuing to talk for another hour or so, and he’s broken every silence by asking you questions about yourself; after you’ve decided it’s time to say it, so this time you break the silence and say to him, “You’re cute,” but it comes out sounding much more abrupt and blunt than you hoped it would; after all of that, how would you hope for him to respond?

Thank you. So are you.

or

Thank you. You’re adorable.

But he responds:

Thank you.

and his eyes dart away awkwardly.

I can actually hear the crickets chirp.

Points of ellipsis struggle to form in the air… and evaporate.

“I guess I shouldn’t have said that,” I say; “I guess you don’t think I’m cute,” trying to sound flirty and jokey.

“I didn’t say that.”

But you didn’t not.

Dot dot dot.

The night still ends with kissing and clothed cuddling on the couch.

And ambiguity.

One new blog I’ve recently discovered is Tort(e). It’s written by two gay men, each in a different city, and they’ve got this quirkiness that I like:

Tort(e) is about whether things in our respective lives are torts against us, torts committed by us, tortes because of how great they taste (even if they’re bad for us)… or some combo of all of that.

Check it out for yourselves.

While I’m at it, there’s a blogger I’ve been meaning to thank. He starting blogging during the week that I stopped, so we never crossed paths, which sort of makes us the Cordelia and Riley of the Blogiverse. I stumbled across his site a few months ago and was charmed by his writing and wit, as many others already had been. His entries reminded me of how much fun blogging could be. I began to envy the fact that he was doing it and I wasn’t. There are several reasons why I began blogging again, and Dr. Faustus is one of them.

I’ve already thanked him privately, so I guess this is the public one.

I have just been informed that e-mail sent to my tinmanic.com address has been bouncing back to senders as undeliverable. It should work now. My apologies. Bring on the mail!

Buffy 7.16: Storyteller

I wrote a review of the latest “Buffy.” I’ve also created a separate page for my episode reviews, so I’ve moved the review to that directory. The review is here if you want to read it.
—–

So let me see if I have this straight: Smallville High was built on something called the Hellmouth. Every week the Hellmouth spews out green meteor rocks that make a different student go postal in a different way. In every generation there is a Chosen One, and this time it’s Kal-El, who was sent to Earth after accidentally burning down the gym at his old high school. He has a Watcher named Giles. He also has a somewhat older, mysterious friend, who lives in a mansion and may or may not be bad, and whose name is Angel. With his friends Xander and Chloe, Clark fights for truth, justice and really cool clothes. And he’s given moral support by his parents, Jonathan and Joyce.

Do I have that right?

Fred Rogers, 1928-2003

When I was a little kid, I used to have this routine. At 4:00 p.m. I’d turn on Channel 13, New York’s PBS station, and I’d watch “Sesame Street.” (I’d probably been watching “Sesame Street” from the moment I came out of the womb.) At 5:00 I’d watch “Mister Rogers,” followed by “The Electric Company,” and then “3-2-1 Contact.” Each show was for a slightly older audience than the show before it. And then some boring news program for the adults would come on at 6:30, so I’d go into the kitchen and watch my mom make dinner.

I liked different things about each of those shows, but the one I felt most connected to was “Mister Rogers.” I was a shy, introspective little kid, scared of many of the other kids, but Mr. Rogers just seemed so sweet and friendly. He truly seemed to like me. He wouldn’t yell at me. He wouldn’t try to take soccer balls away from me. He wouldn’t intercept the candy I was supposed to get as a reward for telling a good joke at camp one summer, which is what one of my counselors did once. No — he just sat there, smiling at me, spending time with me, telling me what a wonderful person I was.

I haven’t checked, but I’m sure the news of his death is all over the blogging world today. A disproportionate number of us bloggers are 20somethings and 30somethings, and lots of us grew up watching him. He was a popular college commencement speaker for our generation.

I’m sure there are tons of obituaries out there already, with sentences like “It will always be a beautiful day in Heaven” or “It’s us he liked” or “He was special” or “He was our F-R-I-E-N-D friend” or “He’s gone to Someplace Else.” Perhaps someone will draw a picture of King Friday XIII and Daniel Striped Tiger and even Lady Elaine with tears in their eyes.

Some memories:

– A childhood friend of mine and I once decided that we were going to make the entire Neighborhood of Make-Believe (NOT the Land of Make-Believe — I’ve always hated it when people screwed that up) out of paper, life-size. We got as far as making the door to X the Owl’s tree or something, and then we gave up.

– I used to pretend that my parents’ bedroom was the Neighborhood of Make-Believe. Everything was in the right order: their door could be Grandpère’s tower. Their dresser could be the castle. The first window could be Cornflake S. Pecially’s factory. The armoire could be X and Henrietta’s tree. The radiator could be the Museum-Go-Round. The TV could be the Platypus Mound. And the other door could be Daniel’s clock.

– I used to draw those buildings with colored Magic Markers and cut them out and play with them and rearrange them as I saw fit. (I think there was actually an episode in which someone magically put the buildings in the wrong order.) I did this lots of times.

– One day I wrote a letter to Mr. Rogers. In the letter, I asked him if he could come visit me and bring the models of the Neighborhood of Make-Believe that he had on the shelves of his kitchen. But I also wrote that I knew he was probably busy, so if he couldn’t visit, it would be great “if you could SEND me a COPY” of the buildings. Several weeks later I got a typed form letter, telling me that Mr. Rogers thought I was special and that he thanked me for writing.

No model buildings. I was hurt.

Despite being rejected by Mr. Rogers himself, I continued to feel a deep affection for the man.

I’ve always wondered what he thought about gay people. Would he still like me if I came out to him? Would he still like me if he knew that I lay in bed at night, touching myself and thinking about other boys? I didn’t want to disappoint him.

I can’t believe he’s dead.

A gay independent short film starring Tom Lenk of “Buffy.”

(via a friend, who found it on Whedonesque)