My Town

January 4, 2014 ~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

I have always had a habit of thinking about “today” or “yesterday” or “tomorrow” in relation to when I sleep and wake up again, rather than by the traditional means of following the clock. In the strictest sense, it is already Saturday and as with all the other’s so far, this post is “late” because it’s for Friday’s prompt. I say, however, that it’s the thought, the intent, that matters and not the very “letter of the law”, so, whatever. Here it is.

The Fat Mum Slim Photo-A-Day prompt for Friday, January 3, 2013 is “My Town”, which is actually kind of a neat coincidence, given that the town I live in, Oakland, California, is known as “town” or “the town” because of its geographic location across the bay from San Francisco, commonly referred to by the locals as “the City”.

*Quick side note: I’ve always held the philosophy that there are hundreds of “the city”s in existence. When I was attending my one semester of University in 1993, I was attending a relatively small school about 40 minutes east of Oklahoma City and many of the students at this university referred to Oklahoma City as “the city”. I always thought that was kind of funny, quaint even, because I had often heard people on television refer to New York City as “the city”. Then I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area and heard the locals talking about “the City”. It didn’t take long for me to adopt the vernacular and begin referring to “the City” myself.

I finally arrived at the inescapable conclusion that it is all accurate, but in its own way; it just depends on how you spell it. Observe: Living outside Oklahoma City when my friends and I wanted to go to the nearest metropolis, Oklahoma City, we made plans to go to “the city”. I suspect that anyone living near a metropolis, could, and many do, refer to that metropolis as “the city”. I now live in a significant town with a population of over 400,000 people. With a large downtown business district and new housing and arts and shopping areas popping up all the time, Oakland is a metropolis in it’s own right, however, it is overshadowed by the specter that is its sister city across the bay, San Francisco. Therefore Oakland isn’t “the city” because there is a larger city within a reasonable distance. San Francisco is “the City” (notice the capital C). New York City, however, is the city with the highest population in the country at nearly nine million people. With the nations financial center and the east coast hub of the entertainment industry, it is easy to see how New York City would be “The City” (also written as THE City).

Anyway, for the part of the country where I live, San Francisco is “the City” and that makes Oakland “the Town”. (I’m not making this up. I actually read this recently in a local paper.) Since today’s prompt was “my town” I decided to go out into “the Town” to get some shots of a few local iconic sites. There are literally dozens, if not hundreds of things I could have taken pictures of, but I decided to limit myself to three basic concepts.

On the southwest edge of Downtown Oakland, near the Lake Merritt BART station (a name that has always amused me, given it’s distance from Lake Merritt) is a smallish community college campus, which happens to be the location of my swimming classes. The main, most identifiable building on the campus is a three sided structure, roughly nine or ten stories tall. Tall enough, that with an unobstructed view it is visible from quite a distance. If I had been out late enough, I would have attempted some evening shots as well. The script sign at the top of the building is repeated on all three sides and created out of green neon lights, making the building distinctive, and distinguishable even after the sun has gone down.

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Arguably the most notable and iconic sight in the Downtown Oakland skyline is the Oakland Tribune building’s clock tower. It’s visible from all directions, again if your view is unobstructed. Also created using neon lights, this time in red, the Tribune sign at the top of the tower is visible day and night. There’s a long, rich history, I’m sure, but unfortunately, I don’t personally know anything notable other than the fact that one Sunday afternoon a few years ago, an employee of the paper climbed up to the clock tower and jumped to her death and since that’s not an uplifting story, we’ll just move on to the pictures.

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Next I made my way to the Port of Oakland where there were lots of things to take pictures of. The iconic view that I wanted to capture was that of the cranes used to off load the shipping containers when the cargo ships come into port. The entire area is surprisingly bustling with 18 wheeler tractor/trailer trucks rumbling around constantly. I was standing on one street corner with my camera at my eye, positioned just so and ready to take a crucial picture when a truck pulled up along the curb in front of me completely blocking my view. The driver got out, detached the trailer from his rig, then climbed right back in the cab and drove away. That shot was not to be had. But that’s okay because it forced me to walk a little further down the street and ended up with a better vantage point of what I wanted.

While I’m sure this is anything but common knowledge around the country, it is commonly held lore around these parts that some of these cranes were George Lucas’ inspiration for the design of the AT-AT Walkers seen in Star Wars: Episode V, The Empire Strikes Back. (I am a bit disappointed to have just read this article which seems to definitively debunk that theory.)

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Of course, my town wouldn’t be my town without the equally iconic views looking out. From my vantage point at a public park located in the midst of all the activity at the Port of Oakland, I was able to get some nice shots of “the City” (my City – or so I wish!).

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One last shot worth sharing. This sign was posted at every pedestrian and mobile entrance to the park. Guess what I spent the entire time avoiding walking in…

No Dogs Allowed posted at every entrance to the park. Spent the entire time dodging petrified dog poop.

Starts With G

January 3, 2014 ~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Have I already bitten off more than I can chew? Hmmm. I wonder.

The Fat Mum Slim Photo-A-Day prompt for January 2nd is “Starts with G” which seems simple enough. Who can’t find plenty of things that start with the letter G? Only, I ended up with eight photos, all of things from around the house. I actually took more than eight, but after I downloaded them and did some basic editing in iPhoto, I realized some of them were no good so I deleted them. Actually several of the ones I deleted were duplicates of the ones I saved (’cause you always take multiple pictures in order to get the good one, right? Right.)

Anyway, after staying up most of the night last night, and accidentally sleeping all day today, followed by going out for dinner with a friend and not getting home until around 9:00, I didn’t have a lot of time for taking pictures. Here’s what I came up with:

First up is my swim goggles. I wore these goggles twice a week, nearly every week from August to December as I took the “Fundamentals of Swimming” class at the local Community College. I nearly drowned twice before I was six years old, once in the Pacific Ocean when a large wave crashed ashore, knocked me over and then began to drag me back out to sea as it receded and again at my father’s apartment complex when I fell into the deep end of the swimming pool. On both occasions my father immediately pulled me to safety, but the experiences traumatized me enough that for a long time I was afraid of the water altogether, and once I got over that, I was not willing to get into any water where I could not see the bottom and could not stand up. I finally decided it was time to conquer my fears and to learn a means of exercise that I would actually enjoy doing. After one semester of swim classes, I can safely say “I know how to swim”, but I’m not very good at it and I still haven’t gotten into water in which I can’t stand up. The next session starts up on January 22nd and I hope to make vast improvements during this next class.

Anyway, after each class, I would bring my bag home from the pool and unpack my gear, take my goggles into the bathroom to rinse them off and hang them from my bed post to air dry and be ready for the next class. They have been hanging from that post since early December because I haven’t been in a pool since the class ended. Along with the new piercing I vaguely (or not so vaguely) eluded to the other day, I also have a new tattoo I’ll share about sometime later. Both instances of “body modification” needed to be mostly healed before going into a public swimming pool, essentially exposing “open wounds” to the potential soup of other peoples’ bacteria we’d all prefer not to think about when we go for a swim.

The next two pictures go hand in hand. One is my glasses. I made a very unspecific reference to these when posting something completely unrelated several weeks back, but as of mid-October, I am officially a full-time glasses wearer. I picked these glasses while my eyes were still dilated which is certainly a risky proposition. I had some assistance from one of the opticians in the vision center, but I wasn’t completely sure what I’d be getting when I went back a week later to pick them up. I must have done a fairly good job, because when I arrived at work later that day, no one seemed to even notice that anything was different, as if I’d had the glasses all along.

The other picture is of a mirror that hangs behind my front door. The mirror has hooks along the bottom from which I have always hung my sunglasses. I have multiple pairs so that I could always match the color and style to the clothes I was wearing that day. The sunglasses have been rendered somewhat obsolete by the introduction of the glasses in the picture above and a pair of prescription sunglasses.

Some of the other pictures I took are pretty self explanatory. A few G words around my kitchen:

Gas flame from my stove.

Double Gs: Green glass sweet and dry vermouth bottles in my bar. And a bonus G: The green label on the back of the Apple Puckers bottle you can just see on the bottom right side.

And a green Starbuck’s label on the front of a plastic reusable cold drink tumbler with a green, plastic, reusable straw. Heck it’s even “green” in the environmental sense. Boom! Triple Gs!

In my bathroom, there is grout between the 12 x 12 marble tiles that make up my floor and shower surround.

And finally, still starting with G, the kind of “green” we all know and love, money. As a Bartender, I come into possession of many small bills so this is not a terribly large some of money, it’s just the money I had left in my pocket when I came home tonight.

Green Money.
“You don’t want to know what I have to do for $20s.”

2014 New Year’s Resolution… Failed Already

January 2, 2014 ~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

I guess it’s good to get these things out of the way early. Heh!

I had a plan. It was a good plan. A great plan even. If I do say so myself. And I do. Because if I don’t… who will?

As demanded by my nephew, age 2 1/2. My sister has a strict rule against pictures of her children appearing on the internet, but I’m pretty sure a photo of the indistinguishable knees of her only male child would be considered harmless enough to not cause offense, if she even knew this website existed.

You see, it’s like this. Back in April, after I was offered the short-lived disaster of a job I had this year, and negotiated a start date that would allow me to take a much over-due trip to visit my sister and her family, including four children (my nieces and nephew), two of whom I had never seen in person, I decided that it was the opportunity and excuse I needed to invest in a fancy new 35 mm digital camera. I’ve always been interested in photography and wanted to learn more about it and with a digital camera I’d be able to see the immediate results of my attempts to improve on technique and composition. I bought the camera and took it with me on the trip, and of course, as soon as I took the camera out on the first day, the children started being children and wanted to take pictures themselves, and tell me what pictures I should take (my nephew kept saying, “take a picture of mine’s knees”), and insisted on seeing the pictures the instant they were taken. Very few pictures were actually taken on that trip because the camera posed such a distraction and any hope of getting some candid, true life photos was dashed on the first day.

Over the summer, I decided to take a photography class at the local community college. I knew from other’s experiences that this class would teach me not only how to compose a good quality, artistic photograph, but also, how to use editing software to make the picture look even better. A few days after I registered for the photography class, I decided to register for the first level, beginning swimming class and soon after decided that both classes were too much to do all at once, at the time. Ultimately, I decided that the swimming class was a higher priority because I wanted to be able to find a place to go to swim for exercise and once I had that covered I could be swimming for exercise while I learned to take and edit good quality photographs in a later semester. That is still the plan, although when classes start up again in a couple of weeks, I’ll be taking the next swimming class with the hope of getting more effective and confident in that skill. Photography will wait until Summer or Fall Semesters. The camera sits in its case for weeks or months at a time without getting used and I’ve never finished reading the owner’s manual, or the “Photography for Dummies” book that I purchased and lugged all the way to New York and back with me, without ever cracking the spine.

During my most recent previous stint of unemployment, I began participating in a “photo-a-day” program run by the author of another blog, using just my iPhone and an Instagram account I haven’t even looked at in months. When I started working, I found myself far too busy and far to pre-occupied to keep up with it and I let it drop.

Recently, my urge to learn to properly use my camera has returned, as has my desire to practice and build my skill. I have also wanted to get back to more regular posting here on this site, and not have everything be all gloom and doom and woe is me as the last several months have been.

And then it hit me! The great idea! The perfect “solution”! “Photo-A-Day” meets “posting 365” (or whatever the hell they called it) meets new inspiration for both more and better photography AND more and more cheerful writing… I decided I would pull out the photography books and read a little bit of them each day, and I would combine that with the photo-a-day prompts from Fat Mum Slim and everyday, I would take a picture that is prompted by the Photo-A-Day prompt and post it on this here bloggy thingy. I would write a post about the photo if the spirit moved me, or I would just post the picture with a minimal explanation/caption and let it stand on its own. Every day. For 365 days.

I’ve already failed.

I wasn’t going to get too bogged down in the details of actually starting the plan on January 1st. It’s already 2:00 in the morning on January 2nd, so you see how well that worked out. But I was going to do a post for every picture and a picture for every day…

I worked last night. For the first time in more years than I can remember, I worked on New Year’s Eve. I would far rather have been out celebrating somewhere, preferably somewhere far away, like Las Vegas, or Sidney Harbor, but I need the money, and New Year’s Eve seemed like a good opportunity to earn a lot of tips. (It could have been a lot better than it was, but the whole experience is a separate story for another post.) I didn’t get off work until 1:45 AM. One of the other bar tenders who happens to live right down the street from me and I rode BART home from the city together and I gave her a ride from the station to her house. She invited me in and we had a two plus hours over-due celebratory glass of champagne and chatted for a little while before I went home. I arrived at home around 4:00 AM at which time I took a shower. I’ve never been able to go straight to bed after either arriving home, or taking a shower. I need time to settle in first. Plus, I had “nerd things” to do with my tip money. I briefly entertained the idea that I just wouldn’t sleep until bedtime on January 1st, because I knew that what happened, would happen… By 6:00 AM I was exhausted, could barely keep my eyes open and had no idea what I was seeing on the Netflix DVD I was watching. I gave up and went to bed, slept until noon and have not had the slightest inclination to sleep again. This is a scenario I do not want to make into a habit

When I woke up I was hungry and didn’t have time for “what should I cook for lunch”. I needed to eat immediately, so failing all other options (or rational consideration thereof) I ended up eating a couple of Eggo toaster waffles. Once the waffles were gone and the dish was washed off and in the sink (the dishwasher is full of clean dishes and I haven’t put forth the effort to put them away yet) I went to the living room and sat down. It was only then that I pulled up the schedule of prompts for the photo-a-day program and saw today’s prompt: lunch. I couldn’t even think of a viable and reasonable way to cheat.

Sometimes it’s good to set the bar low right up front so you only have one way to go from there…

The Words Will Come

December 27, 2013 ~ riggledo ~ 2 Comments

Just start writing…. The words will come… Just start writing…

That’s what the great and powerful “they” always say, right? Just start writing, the words will come. And the truth is, the great and powerful “they” are not wrong. This strategy has worked for me many times before. It’s just that, there’s a lot of stuff going on and swirling around in my brain, and I haven’t quite figured out how to sort it all out yet. How much of it to share and how much of it to keep to myself.

Despite my best efforts I’m still inclined to worry a bit about what readers of this site will think of what I put here, and yet, I’m actually quite proud of my last post. Yes, I discussed some “mature themes” and yes I admitted to some activities that, in the past, I would have completely kept to myself, as much out of embarrassment, as anything else, but I think it’s a good thing that I posted that. I spend a lot of time in this sort of “in-between” stage of life where I feel like, I shouldn’t do anything I’m ashamed of and therefore I don’t do anything I’m ashamed of… Yet I’m ashamed of things I really shouldn’t be, and therefore, this philosophy holds me back.

There is an excellent chance that I’m confusing shame with fear, or shame with unfounded guilt which causes fear, or some other tremendously deep and impressive introspection that I’m not quite clear about and obviously can’t manage to articulate…

I’ve come a long way in the last several years of blogging, and even before that. I’ve learned a lot about myself, I’ve gained a considerable amount of emotional and mental independence (not to be confused with the physical and financial independence that I’ve had since I was 22). But “a considerable amount” can be just a drop in the bucket when you’re coming from a place of such dependence… Or co-dependence. There are still a good many subjects and issues about which I can hear my mother’s voice, or more to the point, her judgmental, disappointed noises. Tsking and groaning and sighing (oh my!). And it’s not like she even needs to know about my behavior and my activities, but it doesn’t matter if the physical being knows anything because the non-corporial manifestation of her that exists in my subconscious is ever-present and equally judgmental. And, of course, I think I’m inclined to project that judgement and condemnation onto other people both local and afar. I imagine the gasps and the shaking heads of the people who might read my words, the disappointment that might come from having the image of me, which they have created, sullied by the revelation of the things I don’t dare say.

I am aware, as I write these words, that I’m creating a proverbial mountain out of what many would see as an equally proverbial mole hill. I am also aware that, while I do value the regular readers of this blog and would hate to put anyone off, concealing things about myself and allowing the fears of other’s opinions to hold me back is not only destructive and hurts me more than it does anyone else, it is potentially more destructive and hurtful than not acting because of the fear.

I’m human. I’m alive. I’m male (stereotype). And like everyone else, I have needs, both physical and emotional that need to be fulfilled, one way or another. The truth is, while I’m over here hiding from that fact, all of you are probably reading this blog and assuming it; assuming that I take measures to have my needs fulfilled (trust me, I do), you just don’t necessarily want to know what those measures are. Certainly, there is a fine line between open and honest sharing, not leaving out pertinent details, and this turning into a very different kind of blog from what it has ever been before.

Prior to the vague implications and poorly shrouded subliminal information in my last post, I believe I have discussed specific sexual activity on my part, exactly one time on this blog. One time in five and a half years. Meanwhile, any regular readers probably haven’t given my sexual endeavors much conscious thought, but have unconsciously assumed that I have not lived as a eunuch. Society, as a whole, tends to frown on free and open discussions of sex, or so I have generally believed. Yet as I write that I realize it happens far more frequently than I am comfortable with, and I have to question why that is.

Why am I so uncomfortable with it? Why is it so hard for me to discuss it?

Certainly, it is, in part, due to my lack of experience and a fear that engaging in such conversations will result in any number of uncomfortable situations where I can not contribute as much to the conversation as people might expect me to; something I generally prefer to avoid. But part of it is because of that non-corporial manifestation of my mother that exists in my subconscious, which is ever-present and tremendously judgmental. It comes from a damaged place within my psyche that is influenced by my mother’s constant over-vilification of sex during my childhood to the point that sex scares me.

There. I’ve said it. Sex scares me. It doesn’t just make me nervous or uncomfortable because it’s “new”, it scares the ever-loving shit out of me in a way I don’t even know how to combat.

Logically, I know it shouldn’t. Intellectually, I know that sex is a perfectly natural, and healthy thing. Through the power of study, meditation and independent thought, I have even arrived at the conclusion that I believe pre-marital sex is not only not wrong, it’s important and healthy. Reasonable, not overly graphic discussions of sex in general, are not something to be afraid of and shy away from, particularly when they lay the groundwork for a further story…

Yet any discussion of my own sexuality (not my sexual orientation, but my sexuality) makes me very uncomfortable and self conscious.

…..

I have a date tomorrow night, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think it’s a date. I didn’t really think it was a date when it was discussed, but it seems that it is a date.

Everything I have said here that leads up to that revelation does not, in any way, mean I think there’s an expectation or obligation for sex tomorrow. In fact quite to the contrary, I think it’s clearly understood that sex will not be happening. Rather, it’s about how this date came about, and how my shame, prevented me from writing about it before now.

In this wonderful, 21st century world in which we live, there is an iPhone app for absolutely everything. Seriously. According to one source in October, 2013 there were approximately 1,000,000 apps in the Apple App Store and that number just keeps going up. If you can realistically conceive of it, there is probably an app out there for it, already. And society (and men – stereotype) being what it is, there is more than one app for on-line dating and people-meeting available that uses the GPS signal in phones to show you the profiles of any number of people within a certain distance of where you happen to be holding your phone and looking at that app’s screen. The first time I ever heard of one of these apps, I downloaded it on my phone, because it was free, and I was curious to see how it worked. I never had any delusions that I would use the app as it was intended. I still don’t. That’s not my style. But because I have discovered that my, once thought to be impeccable, gaydar is, in actually, completely for shit, I thought it might be interesting to see the faces of other gay men in the area, see if there was anyone I recognized and might, therefore, meet organically and get to know, in real life. Of course, I wasn’t about to post my own face, because I would be mortified if anyone knew I had even heard of the app, let alone actually downloaded it and look at it once in a while. I rarely initiated conversations with anyone, and even more rarely did anyone initiate conversations with, or respond to, me. When they did, it was, without exception, overtures toward having anonymous sex.

The block button is my friend.

Through all the bullshit that went down with The Guy this summer, one good thing did come out of it. Well– He doesn’t, by any means deserve all of the credit, it was the whole unfortunate experience with that short-lived job. From the day I walked in the door, I was determined not to hide who I was or try to keep secret the details of my existence that have been so hard for me to freely share, verbally, in the past. It was a fresh start in a new place, with a new group of people, and I was determined to start things on the right foot. The Guy figured it out, or believed he did, from the very first day. So, apparently, did my boss, though she couldn’t say so until I revealed it to her. All she said was “I knew you were ‘family’. Well, I was pretty sure, anyway.” I learned to be more open about myself. I learned not to fear people’s reactions. (To this day, I have not had one person outside of my family react badly to learning that I am gay.) I learned to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may, because these people were all new in my life and if they learned the truth up front and they didn’t like it, well, there was no loss.

Thanks to The Guy, I started to feel better about myself, physically. Again, he doesn’t get all the credit. Over the last two and a half years, I have lost approximately 70 pounds. The man I see in the mirror today, is definitely not the man I saw back then. That man’s clothes don’t fit me anymore. I still have a long way to go, but I’ll gladly take what I can get. I’ve learned to appreciate my body in its current form, to take control over the things I can, and not obsess over the things I can’t. But at least for a little while there, I believed that, not only did someone find me attractive, but someone who I was attracted to, found me attractive. Due to the nature and circumstances of our involvement and the end thereof, I temper any excitement at that fact with a healthy dose of he-was-full-of-shit, but at the very least, I learned what it feels like to appreciate having someone pursue me due to physical attraction.

I posted a face picture on the app, and filled in a simple profile telling people what I was about, and what I was and, more importantly, what I was not looking for. I tried to put the hurt and shame of my experience with The Guy behind me and see what came next. Suddenly, out of the blue, people started initiating chats with me. Talking to me. Having real conversations with me. Much of the time, those conversations end with “so when can we hook up?”.

The block button is still my friend.

Early this week, I crossed paths with a guy we’ll call “No. 1” (not for any reason you’re likely to think of, just go with it) who was deemed to be a “likely match” by some inexplicable algorithm the site uses to suggest people you might like, based on your reactions to their previous suggestions. No. 1 had a very relatable profile, with a statement about relationships, fidelity, and where he stands on the subject that I happened to like quite a bit. As it happened, he hit the little “like” button on my picture and I hit the little “like” button on his, and the app was kind enough to let us each know that the other “liked” us and suggested we chat. So we did. And he was a nice guy. And he appealed to me. And we exchanged phone numbers and I suggested that we should talk again. I even considered asking him if we could meet for coffee or something sometime, but I decided against it. The next morning, he sent me a text message and asked if I might be free on Saturday after he gets off work at 8:00. I am and said as much, and we set up what I thought of as “meeting and getting to know each other better, face to face.” I know. I know. That’s pretty much what a date is. Only, I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t think of it as a prelude to anything. I thought of it as meeting a potentially nice person and getting to know him. (Again, pretty much what a date is.)

My mind is reeling with this. Really, it wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if it is a date. It wouldn’t be such a terrible thing if I enjoyed our date. It’s just… I admit it. I’m terribly skittish. And it pisses me off. It’s not fair, that this one experience with this one, completely fucked up guy, has done such lasting damage in me. I want to move past it. I want to put it out of my head and forget about The Guy entirely. I sure as shit don’t want to let him affect how I handle dating going forward.

But I’m so afraid of taking another chance.

I’m not sure I’m open to a relationship right now. I’m not sure I’m ready to date right now. When I agreed to meet No. 1 and we settled on a time and place, I thought, “Great! That’s that. I’ll see him on Saturday and we’ll have lots to talk about,” and I’m sure we will, only, he continued to text and talk to me after we settled the plans. He has texted me every day since then, and I can’t quite explain why that bothers me. It just does. He has made some fairly innocent comments here and there that really have me on edge. I’m probably reading too much into it, but he has made some comments which elude to the prospect of a relationship with me and I’m so not in that place. I mean, we haven’t even met yet.

And all I can think is, “Oh my God! I’m The Guy!”

In Which I Share TMI and Try To Draw an Analogy With Facing One’s Fears (And Try Really Hard Not To Mention The Guy — Oops!)

December 11, 2013December 27, 2013 ~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

In planning this post I thought about a recounting of all the holes in my body… Well, the holes God did not give me, anyway.

Do you care that I passed out cold when I got my left ear pierced in 1993? Or that I was so nervous that it would happen again that when I got my right ear pierced in 2001, I sat on the piercing stool for at least five minutes after the job was done while Heather went to pay? (It was her idea. She said I needed to be “balanced out”, so she paid for it.) I did not pass out, FYI. Do you care that when I finally made up my mind to get my upper ear pierced, something I had wanted to do for years but had been too afraid, both of the pain and of my mother, that it didn’t actually happen until just four years ago, after going to Tulsa to take care of my mother, post surgery, and coming face to face with her disdain (which wasn’t as bad as I expected) for my then three tattoos (I now have four and have an appointment for my fifth on Tuesday), I was still anxious. I felt liberated and able to do whatever I wanted so I went for it, but I was still nervous. And, well, you Probably don’t want Any of the details of my fourth and most recent piercing; one very few people will ever see.

Then I thought about a post discussing the number of men not named “Riggledo” who have touched my favorite appendage (hint, the answer is three– no make that four. I have to assume my father changed a diaper or two… No… actually, that’s five – I just remembered a trip to the doctor…) Anywhoo… Only one of those five men was neither related to me, nor was he being Paid, And oh look we’re talking about The Guy and I’ve failed, again. There’s no need at this stage of things to go into that story. It was risky and stupid, and in the end, quite possibly the least pleasant of all the experiences, and that’s including the man who, just two days ago, touched it TO POKE A HOLE THROUGH IT….

So much for vague allusions…

But the simple truth is, all of these things do directly lead back to the idea of facing one’s fears. You see, I was afraid to do any of these things, or write any of these posts. In the end, I decided not to write the story of my most recent Piercing, And I decided not to write the story of the “special massage” I got a week ago, before which I was quite nervous though simultaneously tremendously excited.

(It was actually a really incredible experience which I can’t wait to repeat and unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before – so much more… better.. than I imagined. So incredible, in fact, that I had no inclination to try to recreate the experience on my own before going to the body piercing shop on Monday… Something which, judging by the aching in my dangly bits, I should probably have planned out better…)

Even the simple act of writing this post, in place of the other two, was something I was afraid to do. I’ve put it off for two days because I feared who might see it and how they might react. But the simple fact is, we have to do what’s right for ourselves. I’ve just finished a six week class I’ll probably write more about later. It’s an “anger management” class, though most people who are acquainted with me and hear that, can’t imagine why I would take such a class. The truth is, I felt very out of place, but I needed to be there and I did learn some things from the class, the most relevant of which, at this moment, is the importance of taking care of one’s self first and foremost.

The fact is, there are people who will read this who will wish they hadn’t. (Some of those people are unwelcome here and should have stopped reading, should have “unsubscribed” from the e-mails, as soon as they read Reclamation. They lack either self respect, or a shred of human decency, or a combination of the two, and therefore, continue to receive and read these posts in their e-mails. I can’t be bothered to concern myself with such people and their reactions.) The fear which I had to face was the idea of someone who matters thinking less of me for what I’ve had to say. The act of writing this post is me over-coming that fear. It’s a step in the right direction.

And it’s a step that feels pretty good.