Day of the Deadpan

My upstairs neighbor passed away. He was 88 and his death not unexpected. He lived in our building for 50 years. He attended all my Christmas parties; supported me when my 14 year relationship ended (“let's go to Musso's and get drunk!”), and consoled me the last time I cried over Woodsy. 

His death is another loss in a year of losses for me. I am inconsolable over his passing. 

One of my recent organization projects has been to get my old NKP posts into Blogger so that the entire Speed Limits trip is together. The good news is after a marathon copy and paste session over the weekend, I'm 90% done.
You can now go back 2 years and catch up on my misadventures, musings, and more. I dislike blogs that abruptly end without warning: as if their author just forgot about them. I will not leave you hanging, dear reader…

This is your 'last call' notice that Speed Limits 4 the Curious officially ends with this post.

I thank my followers who were brave enough to attach their screen names to a community and culture most people will judge, dismiss and scorn. I appreciate those who commented, and moreover so those who sent me private emails.

It's time I climb up the rabbit hole and step out of the Looking Glass into the light of a new day. Party and Play in our cyber-cafe so-ci-e-tay was a detour I do not regret taking, but a rite of passage I will not miss.

This has been a especially rewarding writing period for me. Recreational drug use and abuse, sexual orientation and preferences; and people who love neither wisely nor well. These are subjects I don't write about very much: and perhaps I should more often. I've always tried to make others laugh and be happy in the hopes that it would make them happy.

This began with my mother, who was addicted to prescription meds. Although it's ridiculous, I carry the blame for her death that long-ago summer when I was 12. If the stories I've seen, lived and written about make you think twice about puffing a pipe, snorting a line, shooting up, or swallowing pills, then my mother's death was not in vain.

If you have read this blog and remain curious to explore, by all means do so. 

Remember though, you always have the choice to stop. And never let anyone treat you as second class for making the choice to party onward. 

After such a phenomenal fiftieth birthday, perhaps I am beginning to realize that to view the world with childlike wonder ultimately teaches us that our own Shangri-la lies within. I have only broken ground on making peace with myself. It may take me another fifty years to arrive there, but arrive there I will.

More than anything, when I do arrive, I hope all of you are there too. Because as children of God (or whatever Supreme Being you follow), we all deserve the happiest of endings.

'Night

Advice to a Reader

I'm not quite sure how I became known as the person who has all the answers and while I don't, I replied to an email from a twenty-something and I wanted to share it. It's been edited for general reading. Interestingly, I think it may be as much a letter to myself as it was to him. 

Thank you for writing. In my opinion, Mormons are trendy because of that Broadway musical and Mr. Romney and by virtue of putting Utah as your state...you immediately get labeled a Mormon whether you are or not. However, this infatuation will pass and people will move forward. Ride the wave but when you sense it's time to dye your hair black, paint your body blue and take up yoga because Krishna is the new Brigham Young, do so.

It sounded like the job you were going for depended on erasing your adult site info quickly.  Then less than a day later, the job isn't happening. and I'm sorry you weren't given a job offer. You stepped up to the plate and those that do often find they're rewarded, simply by stepping up. Don't knock Disney too much....they pay well...think of it as taking their money and 'funding' your passions, like any artist. 

I suggested you do an internet search because Googling ‘your’ screen name brings up quite a bit of interesting images and links.  BTW, Is that really a pumpkin?

I'm not saying this to freak you out and reviewing my suggestions doesn't require immediate action.  What you do or don't is your decision alone. The great thing about growing older is that I can see how you and your generation respond and react to life. It’s very different than when I was 25 but those were different times.  (That 'different time' sounds as dorky as when I was 25 and heard it from some older man). 

 

My point is that you won't truly 'get what I'm saying' at all: you may not care, but at the least I hope you may be intrigued. And one day it will make sense. And no amount of living fast and furious can change that.

The following are concepts I strive to master. They aren't original. They aren't specifically speaking to you or me, but if you familiarize yourself with them now, you'll be that much farther ahead of the game. 

You seem like a bright guy. And you're cute and outgoing. Continue to ask questions; challenge authority and remember it's always easier to ask forgiveness than it is…to ask permission.

-There is no 'good' nor 'bad'. There are actions and consequences of those actions.

-Be wild and free. Life will get in the way eventually and you won't be as willing to take chances, but don't go overboard and become too constrained. It's that balance that teaches us to appreciate the good times when they are here and to soldier through the tougher times.

-Have no regrets. The choices you make today reflect you, at this moment and nothing more.  It's easy to look back ten years and go 'that wasn't very smart.' Monday-morning-quarterbacking is useful only to sports writers on a Sunday night deadline.

-Follow your heart. It will get broken a few times, but you'll not have compromised it for doing 'the right thing'. Doing the right thing often leads to boredom and living life vicariously through others.

Know that in cyberspace, your kindness, even if nothing more than a hello, can make someone's day.  And cruelty can destroy the last bit of hope for another. Be kind.

A New York State Of Mind and Panic

Aside from the fact that Macy's Herald Square had nothing irresistible in the way of markdowns (which was just as well: on my way to JFK for my return flight a quick log in to mobile banking revealed my checking and savings accounts were overdrawn), I truly had the Best Birthday Ever. 

It was So Wonderful that two weeks later I find it hard to put into words how grand it was. Also, I do not wish to disrespect the privacy of the man who made such magic manifest. I'm not the easiest person to be associated with: and being a writer who puts himself out on for the world to read about doesn't help.

My time was spent enjoying the company of this wonderful man, pinching myself that it was actually all happening and that we seemed quite in-sync, eating, sleeping, pondering, road trips, having amazing sex, writing, working, eating, sleeping and dreaming out loud. I reconnected with nature when we traveled upstate. I stayed in a home rich with history and roots.

It's dreaming out loud where I get into trouble. I think my jokes about wanting an iPhone 5, and a Ralph Lauren wardrobe played as a little too needy. My comments aloud about being open to relocating perhaps a bit too earnest. And God help me if I really suggested a marriage proposal. I'm not regretting telling him and later texting that I was in love with him, and that I loved him. Some might argue that decision. 

Things haven't been quite so in-sync since I got back: I would like to hear from him more: but what defines 'more'? He doesn't have a lot of time on his hands, and I probably have too much.

I try hard to live 'in the moment' because what we do have and can count on is 'now'.The 7 days I was in New York it was all about being in the moment.

And back in Los Angeles, in my apartment just past midnight, cats sleeping on the bed while I try to not worry about all the things I have to worry about,  I wonder if he thinks of me and if I will see him next month as we discussed.

New York Nostalgia

Thanks to a cab driver who enjoyed breaking the (traditional) speed limits, and the fact that I left for the airport at 5:30 AM on a Tuesday, off-off peak by traffic standards I found myself at LAX in a record 20 minutes instead of my average 45. My driver got a nice tip and soon I was on a plane heading East to celebrate my 50th birthday. Big Apple, look out.

31 years before, I was a college student on a Spring Break Broadway Theater tour: my first time to Manhattan. It was a coming of age and time of transition. HIV was called GRID and for we kids from Texas,, was nothing more than a pesky STD.  I had cocktails at Uncle Charlie's Downtown, danced at the Ice Palace and waWe watched Colleen Dewhurst and other great actors make impassioned pleas to stop the demolition of the Morosco and Helen Hayes Theaters for the Marriott Marquis. This was happening right outside our 46th Street hotel, the Century-Paramount. At least five times a day coming and going to the CP, I'd walk by a long staircase . This led up to the 'Gaiety Theater' which was atop the Howard Johnson's Restaurant where we ate almost every meal. The Gaiety advertised a 'Gay Male Burlesque' but I never ventured up those stairs. I was too chicken (and being 18 probably too 'chicken') to visit the Mineshaft, a multilevel club with each floor more decadent than the last, or so I'd heard

I did venture into Central Park, and without planning it, found myself in the Rambles, although I didn't know the legendary gay cruise section existed then.  A rite of passgeIt was incredibly hot to be either blown or jacked off by a  Mysterious Older Man: how much 'older' he was I don't know-at 18 everyone is older.

Later in the week I was buying postcards in a little shop in the Village/SoHo neighborhoods called 'Welcome To NYC'. The owner, whose name I am ashamed to admit I can't recall, tried in earnest for a few weeks afterwards to get me to move to Hoboken and settle down.

I traveled to New York regularly from 1989 through 2000. Times Square was just beginning its transformation to what it is today but with regularity, I would visit the old theaters on Eighth Avenue, the Adonis, the Eros ,the Eros 2, Capri and a few others, and not for the films. It was the unusual  and complicated lengths people had to go through to hook up there. The action in the Adonis was in the balcony. In the Eros or the Capri, I think you went downstairs to a sort of delivery hallway. Another theater on 46th I recall having to walk behind the screen and take stairs up to a small room where men played around.

One of the adult shops, maybe it was Peep World by Madison Square Garden, but I think was on 42nd had these booths where you put in money and a floor to ceiling panel would rise up and you could see the guy in the next booth...if he wanted you to, that is. We were separated by a thick sheet of glass which was kinda hot.

I remember how incredibly hot to be having sex again in Central Park-this time in a bamboo thicket near the Plaza Hotel. Did I mention it was snowing? I was in this thicket going at it fast and furious because my flight to Los Angeles was later that morning. My anonymous playpal in the park was an Englishman who had the best hairy chest.and who was also in a rush as he was going back to London that day also. 

True to the my-life-is-a-movie formula, we would meet again: my departure gate at United was next to his British Airways one. Upon seeing each other, we burst out loud laughing and hugged.

These days I'm more about getting to know someone in additional to the sexual gymnastics. And with the announcement to fasten our seat belts as we were about to land, I was about to add some new experiences.

Finally... Fifty

Coming Soon!
Years in the Making!


For at least thirty of my previous 49 years, I had a very strong vision for my 50th birthday. That's not to say I obsessed over it-or even over-analyzed as I am inclined to do.


An Extravaganza of Entertainment!

Love and Laughter!
Music and Merriment!
Songs and Sex

Mystics, Mysteries...and Men! 
 
OK...so previews always go a bit overboard. And speaking of overboard, in the movie palace of my mind, this was what I saw:

It's night and I'm on the deck of a transatlantic ocean liner. I'm looking out over the rail across the dark sea. I'm feeling peaceful, secure and, I guess...reflective. And I'm alone. Absolutely, assuredly alone.

I didn't think so much about the 'being alone' aspect and I've been in steady (and unsteady-ha ha) relationships off and on for 25 years. But even at my most committed period of partnership, the vision remained unchanged: a one image, one-man-show. 

In 2008 I found myself single; and that same year the Queen Elizabeth 2(above) was retired. The QE2 had sort of been the vessel of choice in my dream, since the Queen Mary is permanently docked in Long Beach and we all know where the TITANIC is. 

And the calendar goes forward to 2012   Briefly I'd considered checking into the Hotel Queen Mary which is no longer a Hyatt, nor owned by Disney, but no matter how I sliced and diced, it sounded pretty lame.

About two weeks before my birthday, I was in my kitchen. Suddenly, just like in the movies, my vision popped in my head but this time, it was followed by an explanation. I wasn't on an ocean voyage, I was on the journey of life.While I couldn't see into the horizon of the future, I was warm, secure and content. 

It's a journey we ultimately take alone.

And just like that...........

The players and the playing field change.

In 2 hours I should be on a plane heading east. Tonight I feel panicky: foolish and forlorn when I should feel  the opposite. The clock keeps ticking. I've not packed. The greatest guy in the world bought me the ticket and though I don't know him that well, I decided 'why not' accept his kindness.

I'm so very tired of Death and the loss of friends. I've grown very weary of the ongoing theatrics continuously being played out around me by the living. I handled some of these better than others and there were a few that I didn't handle well at all.

Teddy  I had made plans for dinner two weeks ago and we'd discussed going to the LA County Fair. I waited and waited but Teddy didn't show up. Nor did he call. Ordinarily I'd been pacing the floor convinced he'd been in an accident: that's how I used to be wired. I'm sorry to report I've changed. That doesn't mean I wasn't worried. I didn't pursue calling Teddy the following week about the Fair, since he failed to follow through on dinner.  Tonight of course, he logged into Skype and after the customary greetings I told him I was disappointed he blew me off. He stated he'd had lot of problems that he had to resolve. Don't we all? Somehow I thought that's where friends got together and supported each other. But I didn't feel like giving Theodore a lesson in etiquette.

I was not quite as kind on my iPhone to Swing Time Slammer.  He and his partner were going to be in town for the weekend. The partner who is clueless as to Swing's overstimulated sex drive and the fuel that powers it. It's none of my business what spoken or unspoken agreements Swing has made. But when Swing made the of telling me I needed new 'friends who weren't pointers'.

In elementary school I was the smartest kid from a wealthy family. But I was lousy at team sports, wore glasses, had bucked teeth , painfully shy and because my mother had drilled 'walk away from a fight' into me, got picked on and thus cried a lot (tender-hearted, my mother always said) One recess period, I wandered to the edge of the playground, where the Special Education kids were. I didn't quite fit in there either, but I never was asked to leave. I found acceptance.

I fell down into the rabbit hole of PNP with the idea that everyone was middle-aged, Caucasian, educated, affluent and were gentlemen who played fair. That didn't prove to be entirely true but with few exceptions I found acceptance. I've been humbled many times by the kindness of strangers and I've tried to give back in return. More and more I find myself wondering if my lifestyle is to much of a distraction from moving forward. Yet I imagine walking away and leaving the friends I treasure and sorrow fills me. I've said goodbye to so many people in life. Yet, others have walked away. It's a personal choice in the end.

I felt hypocrisy in Swing's statement. And a future vision of he rejecting me because of one aspect of my life.  How many others would too? Feeling trapped and torn between decisions, I became hysterical and collapsed sobbing on the floor of my bedroom. So much so that my cat came in and began circling, meowing. How blessed to have consolation from another living being at such a dark hour.

Swing doesn't know how very sad I felt about cracking up in his presence, because I typically don't allow that side of me to be seen. I  have since apologized. Swing has a good heart and soul. And he is a pointer.

I have to get on that flight.

Dream Lovers, Speed Dating and Me

The heat has been relentless this September. Paychecks in the form of my Social Networking job arrived. I still need to do a major eBay or Yard Sale. I've been reading of people who cull through every six months and eliminate stuff. Yet I still have so much baggage scattered about.

It had been a most unusual day. A phone call I expected failed to come through. And then on cam4.com, this hot guy I'd seen months ago re-materialized under a new screen name. He was rather shy on cam....but I would be too if I were buck naked with 30 people watching. I cammed for a few minutes; my standard fully dressed, full of bullshit patter..juggling 4-5 conversations.

Eventually we got over to Skype. He lived north of Chicago which sounded great til I remembered that Wisconsin isn't 'down' from Illinois but above it. I was taking a risk by talking to him..small world that it is but we got so involved in discussing things we had in common and people we knew in California. I have dozens of friends in Chicago and visiting there wasn't out of the ordinary.

He wasn't 60 but 50. He wasn't 5'4" but 5'11". I kept shaking my head in disbelief: he was stunningly built but as he puffed and puffed on his peace pipe, his eyes began rolling about in his head. He made my crazy act look tame.

I sent him on his way into cyberspace and went from Lake Michigan to the Atlantic Coast and Maine where I had a great time with a fellow writer who was running a large turn of the century inn. Of course it's haunted so my Dark Shadows memories went into overdrive. I've not been to New England: I have a feeling I'm not going to get Peyton Place.

Alas he had two or three romantic triangles going on but as I've learned, it's better to listen and keep my mouth shut vs offer advice. No one asks for it, nor takes it anyway. Ha.

By the time I finally logged out and powered off the computer I felt like I'd been on a speed dating frenzy. And there were so many, it was simply fun.

In humble gratitude

I took a couple of weeks off from blogging, as you see. The first of August saw one death notice after another: Charon's ferry finally filled up, for fatalities have been few. The end of August coincided with two previously very committed freelance gigs that failed to happen: thus putting me in the worst financial bind since....this time last year. September just is not a good month for me financially. I'm disappointed in myself for assuming both clients were as good as their word: pun not intended. One is a fellow writer, newly single, from my home state, who tends to forget he is a 'fellow writer' and isn't the only person who can diagram a sentence, conjugate a verb for pay and wasn't weaned on cuneiform while the rest of us had Fisher-Price alphabet blocks.

So what does that bit o' bitchin' have to do with the blog title?

My life could be a lot worse. I have a place that I call home with a bed to sleep in, clean clothes to wear, and a refrigerator stocked with food, milk, and Dr. Pepper. I never have all the money that I want, then again, I've always seem to have some in my wallet, a bit in the bank and some loose change. According to a survey that makes me in the 8% of the world's wealthiest.

I am typing this to you on a laptop powered by wireless technology: something 35% of American homes don't have. 40% don't have a home computer. Having internet access allows me to blog and to keep up with my cyberfriends around the world. It also facilitates income for me: training people how to be online safer, smarter,and more secure than before; serving as a platform administrator for adult social networks, or offering advice based on how I see a situation. I've been the recipient of some well-needed advice as well. Not all of it taken...despite all attempts to the contrary.

With regards to my problemas sentimentales: well, I've linked to alot of corny songs; I've made some bad rhymes: and a few questionable choices. But I'd do no differently given a chance to change the past. No sir. I've acted out my love affairs on pages; with ten thousand people reading.  Amy Winehouse and Whitney Houston have covered it, but The Carpenters still deliver it the best.

I am one very grateful topman.