Tag: Men

Love is Like a River

Can we pretend yesterday was just a bad dream and start over? Sheesh.

It began with me not sleeping well on Sunday night. I was having some stomach issues on Sunday–heartburn, mostly, with an occasional side of unpleasant burping–and then remembered that oh yes, tomorrow is my injection and I can usually tell the days leading into it., which was why I wasn’t hungry or eating that much over the weekend, and the last few days of last week. Okay, fine, but the heartburn was intermittent and thus I had a night of fitful sleep where I awoke periodically, but never really fell into a really deep sleep. The reason I hit “snooze” yesterday morning just once was because it was warm and comfortable and Sparky was curled up in a ball on my pillow beside me. But I was already awake, needed to shave, and so I grabbed my sweats and ventured out in the horribly cold apartment, and down the stairs, where it was even colder. YIKES. I noticed when I was running water to fill the sink to shave that there wasn’t much water pressure.

Which, of course, led to there not being enough water pressure for the shower.

Sigh. I know it’s more a habit and a mental thing, but I never really feel awake until I’ve showered and gotten cleaned up. Once I am out of the shower, I feel ready to face the day. Not showering? A long day in which I am out of sorts literally almost all day. Turns out, a big water main near the intersection of Claiborne and Toledano burst…and it flooded the neighborhood before they were able to get it off. The drop in water pressure also led to a boil water advisory, businesses and schools closed, and so on. Such a New Orleans thing (note: put that in a Scotty book)!

After I got to work, the day leveled off and I had a relatively good day at the office, in spite of being tired and not taking a hot shower on a cold morning (cold again this morning, but at least no blizzard). Of course, the day was going to be one of those days, it’s just that none of the nonsense was work-related, more of a macro thing than anything else.

Ugh, the world was ablaze yesterday, wasn’t it? The glow I was feeling coming out of the Olympics is now gone, and I rescind my pride in the US Men’s hockey team winning gold–and their alchemic transmutation of gold to lead. Straight men in groups are always garbage, especially when they think no one who isn’t a straight white men won’t know. “Locker room talk,” that bullshit. As for the Hughes brothers, congratulations on being pieces of shit and letting us all know that your mother is one, too. I really don’t think that bitch should be in charge of the safety of young women when she excuses demeaning talk about women from her own sons. This tells me she did a shitty job of raising decent human beings, and I suspect all their “advocacy” for Pride Nights and all that is just PR. “Yay, spend your money to come see us play and buy our merch!” while calling us fags in the locker room and laughing. The minute any white woman pulls out that whole “locker room talk/boys will be boys” dismissal? That tells me she doesn’t believe rape victims, thinks sluts deserve to be raped for leading men astray. I wasn’t a hockey fan–never watch, don’t care–before this, and I won’t be watching any men’s hockey again, and certainly not the US men’s team. I hope they never qualify for another medal round at the Olympics, frankly. That trash doesn’t represent me.

I can’t imagine how the women’s team felt, seeing and hearing that after cheering the men on in every game.

At least my taxes are done. That’s something, right?

Here’s hoping for a better day today! See you tomorrow!

The height difference between the street and the sidewalk is demonstrated by the live oak roots!

Alice

Iris Saturday, and it’s sunny with blue skies outside my windows this morning. It was a beautiful day. yesterday. I ran my errands after my meeting before coming back home and working until it was time for me to call it a day and start doing things around here. I did get the laundry finished, and the dishwasher is running (I meant to run it overnight but forgot), and the apartment is a bit of a mess, but I am taking today off from worrying about doing anything other than maybe doing some cleaning. Today is also the anniversary of Mom’s death (it’s been three years already) and I hate not being able to meet Dad up in Alabama this weekend, but that was just how everything shook out. I hate that she died on Valentine’s Day and Carnival always is around that dark anniversary, too.

Well, I guess I could just say I hate that she died.

I did watch Ilia Malinin and the men’s figure skating yesterday, and my heart broke a bit for the young man…and the pressure and everything is precisely why they should have sent him to Beijing four years ago instead of replacing him in the spot he earned for Jason Brown. (Don’t get me wrong, I do love Jason and his skating, but strategically it was an incredibly stupid self-inflicted wound by US Figure Skating. Congrats, how did that bad decision work out for everyone? I said it was a mistake at the time and got swarmed by Jason’s fans–hope you’re all happy!) I also remember that the same thing happened to Nathan Chen at his first Olympics, too, in 2018, before he won gold in 2022. And there are any number of great figure skating icons with no gold medal–and some with no Olympic medal at all. But Ilia handled the enormous disappointment with incredible sportsmanship and grace; amazing for a twenty-one year old with every camera lens in the world on him. I’m still incredibly proud of him and he still has an incredibly bright future–and there’s also no reason he can’t do another two Olympics, either. (Still bitter about the ice dance robbery.)

And how wonderful for that young man from Kazakhstan, Mikhail Shaidorov, who came out of nowhere and won the gold medal. What a delightful Olympic moment! It was fun whenever they’d cut over to him after someone’s score was posted and he was still in first place and it would hit him–I was pulling for him to medal, and the progression of watching him was this: Oh my God I’m getting an Olympic medal to oh my God I’m getting the silver medal to holy shit, I won the Olympics. I hope this means a secure financial future of touring and doing shows and so forth.; his life changed forever yesterday for the better. That’s one of the things I love about the Olympics, you know? Someone can go from being a nobody to a global superstar in one day.

We watched the LSU-Auburn Gymnastics meet last night, and after a wobbly-seeming start (to me) they roared back to the highest score of the season for any team and they left points on the board on several routines. The floor exercise was insane; the lowest score, the one they dropped? 9.925! They tied a school record on the floor exercise rotation and I’ve never seen such stuck landings from forward tumbling in my years of watching gymnastics, going back to Munich in 1972.

I also made notes on some short stories I am working on; my mind was kind of scattered yesterday; I didn’t even realize yesterday was Friday the 13th! It was a nice relaxing day of trying to get rested for today’s Iris parade so I can be out there for as long as I can. I doubt I’ll make it to Tucks; and I am not walking down to Harmony Circle for Endymion; I’ve not seen Endymion in years. I may wonder out tomorrow to check out Thoth and maybe take some pictures of the crowd–Thoth is very popular, as is Bacchus tomorrow night–but will most likely spend the day doing things around here.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines to read for a bit before I get cleaned up and Iris arrives. See you tomorrow!

Fitness instructor and swimsuit/underwear model Dave Rich of the UK. Pretty face, too.

Liberation

Constant Reader is no doubt aware–or may not be, who knows–that I’ve always had a love for wrestling, particularly in professional wrestling. I first became a published writing of fiction with two wrestling stories, “The Wrestling Match” in Men for All Seasons, an anthology of erotic (porn) sport stories, and “Headlock”, published in Men magazine. Yes, I started my career writing gay porn, you got a problem with that?

I published quite a few more over the years, eventually collecting them into a book titled Wanna Wrestle?–which was the first time in my publishing career I was fucked over by a publisher, but that’s a story for a different time–and eventually, as “Greg Herren writing as Cage Thunder”, published an erotic novel about a gay professional wrestler called Going Down for the Count. Alas, by the time that book came out, the market for gay erotica had completely dried up (thanks, free Internet porn!) and so it didn’t sell as well as it might have, say about ten years earlier. I’ve long been toying with a wrestling noir novel, Muscles, which I was hoping to write last year (ha ha ha ha ha) and might eventually get around to; the story has taken firmer shape in my head over the last few years.

So, I was very interested when I saw on Twitter that Hector Acosta (an Edgar finalist for Best Short Story) had recently put up a wrestling short story on the Mystery Tribune website, “Besos”:

Fabi el Fantastico beat La Sombra Blanca with a kiss, and the crowd hated him for it.

Cries of maricon littered ringside, landing next to crumpled wads of paper and empty cups. Grabbing his pink feathered boa, Fabi climbed the turnbuckle and soaked it all in. Lips painted rojo vivo turned up in a smile even as the crowd pelted him with what he told himself was warm beer, the arena voicing their unhappiness at seeing some exotico beat their idolo in the ring.

Fabi el Fantastico beat La Sombra Blanca with a kiss, and the crowd hated him for it.

Cries of maricon littered ringside, landing next to crumpled wads of paper and empty cups. Grabbing his pink feathered boa, Fabi climbed the turnbuckle and soaked it all in. Lips painted rojo vivo turned up in a smile even as the crowd pelted him with what he told himself was warm beer, the arena voicing their unhappiness at seeing some exotico beat their idolo in the ring.

Their boos grew as Gloria Gaynor’s defiant voice escaped out of the speakers, Fabi swaying to the tune. A big reason the gimmick worked as well as it did was because of his willingness to go the extra mile.

It’s why he came out to this song, feathered boa suggestively dangling from the front of his wrestling trunks, and the reason his finishing move revolved around locking lips with his opponent, which per wrestling logic, confused them to the point he could roll them up for an easy three count.

Voice cracking, Fabi sang about surviving and blew more besos, his sweat mixing with the heavy mascara running down his face. He was preparing to step down when the beer bottle sailed out of the crowd and struck him on the forehead.

It’s a great story; short, sweet and to the point–with a couple of twists added to the story for good measure; proof you don’t need a lot of room or a lot of words to tell a great story full of surprises for the reader. He really captures the feel of an arena filled with wrestling fans; the sounds and feels and emotions of the crowd, and the characters are all remarkably well developed. Highly recommended.

You can read the rest of the story, here, at Mystery Tribune.