July - Month in Review

July started with a bang even though we didn't get to see much of the fireworks in NY since we traveled to Montreal for The International Association of Gay/Lesbian Country Western Dance Clubs Conference.  There, we learned a lot about each other, got to spend some time with Tommy Sciacca, enjoyed Montreal and discovered Jazzy Jeff.  We also celebrated our first anniversary with Ipads, and concert tickets to Madonna (Sept) and Well Strung (Oct.).  While in Montreal, James made a connection with Lisa, which he hopes to find ways to leverage her school work with his, thus making him more attentive to his projects.

Later in the month we did some more traveling as Chris's birthday is on July 17th.  We drove to NC and rediscovered a connection between ourselves.  We also worked on building bridges between us as well as with various family members.  We ate breakfast at Cracker and Barrel and talked about the confederate flag and swastikas.
There, we connected with Arinn, Mom and Dad more...James worked on some speech class presentations which worked out ok.

In between all this, we purchased 28 lessons with Arthur Murray Dance Studios in White Plains where we later encountered a "we need to dance with the ladies' first" type of microaggression.

We did more work on moving forward with the new apartment and settled in with an appraisal at the end of the month.  We also learned that my credit report indicates months of unpaid mortgage, so the mortgage will only be under Jeff.

We worked on a budget for the future and started to work on saving and using that budget now to see how the budget will play out.

Throughout the month, we learned to balance helping Ken Mauricio move to NY, meet Rich Bretan, and get settled into his apartment.  We are hoping he will also work on buying the car soon.  He borrowed it for the weekend we went to NC, which caused us to have a little fight over the mis communication about it.

I started cooking more in the home.  One week, I made lots of Chinese food with the sausages.  Another week, I cooked the curried potato dish from the vegan book and this week, I cooked some pasta and some Chinese vegan food.

We saw a movie this month - Self/less.

I learned about up speak and creaky voice and Jeff taught me about a discrimination term "disparate impact, which means that the law protects minorities and that any policies should not have an adverse impact on people in those groups.

Writing Exercise 30: Write about the ending of something.

The Runner, the Avoider, and the Reflector

There are a few ways people respond to the ending of something.  Some people run, some people avoid, and others reflect.  All three types of people can be annoying and frustrating.  Knowing who they are can help you better deal with them, and manage your own suffering, knowing it is not about you.

The people who run from the ending of something can be seen gathering their stuff and standing up in a theater at the end of a movie, just before the credits roll.  They are the ones who are in the aisles making a dash towards the exit before the last frame of the film.  You can never spot them leaving a party as they are the first ones to leave without even saying goodbye.  If you happen to be dating one, you might be lucky enough get a text from them when they decide to break up with you. 

And then there are the avoiders.  These people will watch the film all the way through to the end.  They will attempt to read every name listed on the credits rolling up the screen and then sit in the empty theatre for a moment after the film.  They may have to be ushered out by the staff wanting to clean up the space.  You can easily spot them at a party as they are the ones who will say goodbye for over an hour, and then remain to help tidy up, wash and dry the dishes, and be surprised that everyone else has left.  If you are unlucky, they are the exes that will attempt to keep hanging out with you long after you have broken up.  They might show up to your place of work, hang out space, or home.

And finally, there are the reflectors.  These people will want to go to the diner after the film and review the movie frame by frame, talk about the themes of the film, and then relate it to all human experiences.  In addition, after they see a film, they will read reviews online and then send them to you with their review of the review.  You can easily spot them at a party as they are the ones who talk about the party as if they were a sports commentator and they usually are encouraging people to hang out at an after party, so they can talk more honestly about the party without the hosts present.  If you are unlucky, they might post a vlog or blog about you after you have broken up with them, detailing both your faults and positive qualities.  They may even send you an email a few years later after they have had time to sift through the rubble of your relationship.

Hopefully, after reading this, you are better prepared to spot the three types of ways people deal with endings.  However, if you have read this far, you can discount yourself as the first one.  If you are more like the second one, you can read my other posts on this blog or follow my other blog www.thoughtsfromafeminist.blogspot.com.  And if you happen to be a reflector, please do post a comment below or send me an email.

Note: This was a 30 day writing exercise which has now come to a close.   

Thank you for reading.

James Young

Writing Exercise 29: Is it Déjà vu?

Writing Exercise 29: Journal about something that recently happened.

For all my life, I have had the experience of being in a present reality when I can also recall dreaming about that situation long ago.  I used to call that déjà vu.  However, after researching the terms more thoroughly, I learned that the experience of dreaming something that later happens in real life is commonly mistaken as having déjà vu.  My research indicates that déjà vu is actually being in a new place, but somehow feeling like that place is familiar.  My experience is quite different. 

For example, last night, I was walking about the cruise ship, bored, when all of the sudden a memory hits me.  I recalled that I had a conversation about 10 years ago with my then partner, Johnathan, about a dream.  Standing on the ship last night, I remembered the words I said, and then I started getting flashes of that dream.  As I looked about the stairwell I was climbing, I noticed the wooden bannister, art deco designs in the wall, the glass vases, and the patterned carpet.  All of these images were in the dream I described to my partner so many years ago.  I am certain of it as I apparently dreamt and then shared my dream with my partner thus making me remember more of the details.

Another reason I remember vividly having this conversation with him is because I remember feeling so puzzled.  We were relatively poor and in debt, living in a small rented 2 bedroom apartment in Mohegan Lake with his eleven year old son.  However in this dream I was on a lavish cruise ship with my adopted African America 21 year old son.  In my dream, I also lived in a nice converted 2-bedroom Bronx coop.  None of this made sense.  How could I be living in the Bronx, be on a cruise ship, and have an adult child when we could not even afford the outrageous prices of gas for our cars?  It seemed impossible for me to be living in the Bronx when we lived in Mohegan Lake, and I worked in Rockland County.  I had no ties to the Bronx, and thus dismissed my premonition as merely a wacky dream.   

Well, as it turns out, Johnathan and I split up for years ago. And after climbing out of the ashes of that dissolved relationship, I moved to the Bronx, where I taught, and still teach, at a local private college on Jerome Avenue.  One year later, I was in the process of adoption, and after six months, I was visiting with an 18 year old foster kid once a week, who would later become my son. 

As I write this in the library of the cruise ship, glancing out the window at the gently textured open blue waters while thinking, the dream I dreamt so many years ago doesn’t seem so wacky anymore.  It has become my reality.  My relationship with Johnathan, and his son Jake, is becoming less and less real, and my life with my son is no longer a dream. 

When I have dreams that turn out to be more like remembering the future, I am always left to wonder two things.  Did I have a premonition back then or did I dream of something and then I turned my reality around to make that dream come true?  I suppose it doesn’t matter because I am here now, and I am grateful.  And I so appreciate the ability to have these sorts of dreams and then see them come to life in my waking reality even if my research says that I can’t call it déjà vu. 

Writing Exercise 28: Personal and Public

Writing Exercise 28: Write about your writing exeperience.

Writing can be both a very personal and a public experience.  In the last 28 days, I have written 28 times whether it be stories, poems, or essays.  Within each one, I have poured a little piece of myself into it.  My thoughts and feelings are recorded into the computer as well as my arrogance and mistakes.  This personal experience is then made public when I upload it to this blog. 

Knowing my writing will end up on a blog keeps me accountable to writing every day, but it also can influence my writing.  Sometimes, I will start typing a journal entry only to change most of it in the editing phase for public consumption.  The content remains the same while I will add more details and explanations so that the public may enjoy the piece without having to know me personally.  Other times, I start clicking away on the keyboard with the audience in mind, and I edit my thoughts as I go. 

And like my writing, my audience can be both public and personal.  My public audience is the actual people who read my blog and may even sometimes respond with an email, comment or a Facebook post.  Blogger records how many people read my various posts and tallies them neatly on a statistical page which includes a graph.  According to this chart, I have an average of 10 readers per post, or per day.  Although Blogger keeps these viewers anonymous, I do know a few of the people who read my blog as I also update my Facebook status with my posts.  There, some of my FB friends will read my blog and then post a comment in FB.  However, that doesn’t account for all of those who read my blog, so some still remain as strangers.

My personal audience, you may think would be my FB friends or my actual friends and family who read my blog.  However, you would be mistaken.  When I refer to my personal audience, I am referring to the imaginary, mostly faceless, people in my head that could be reading my blog.  I think they are the same voices that make comments when I look in the mirror in the morning that tell me I am not good enough.  You might have a similar audience in your head.  These are the voices that are the most critical.  They say things like, “You aren’t fit enough, nice enough, smart enough, strong enough, whatever enough.”  And it has a very limited vocabulary which includes words like won’t, can’t, no, and such.

So when I write, I tend to focus my attention to my personal stories and opinions, but I try to bypass my personal audience in my head and focus on the public audience that is slowly growing.  If I were to spend too much time with the personal audience in my head, then I would probably never have started writing for every day, for 30 days.  The critical voice would have stopped me long ago.  I am grateful for learning to bypass that audience so that I can post this for you. 

Oh, and thank you for reading this as my public.

And if you want to post a comment, please do so below or send me an email. 

Writing Exercise 27: Top, Bottom, and Versatile, Oh My!

Writing Exercise 27: Write about something you feel very strongly about.

In 1948, Alfred Kinsey studied human sexuality and postulated that the missionary position was coined by the people of the South Pacific.  There, missionaries tried to convert the natives to Christianity and wanted them to also adopt a way of having sex.  The preferred way, according to the missionaries included inserting the penis into the vagina with the man on top and the women on the bottom.  The man on top allowed him to have more control or power over his female partner and it was assumed that he would initiate the sexual encounter.  The locals thought it strange to be prescribed only one way to have intercourse between a man and a woman and named this position after the missionaries. 

It is now 2012 and although most people regardless of sexual orientation have sex in many different positions, it seems like many men who have sex with men still use hetero normative concepts, including the missionary position to relate to sex and sexuality. Scanning through personal ads on Craigslist, Grindr, Mister, Jack’d, or Adam4Adam, common apps or websites for men who have sex with men to meet potential partners, one can easily find guys declaring their sexual position as Top, Bottom or Versatile. 

Although it may be helpful for a man to find a willing partner to be the inserter or the insertee, the terms Top or Bottom is a misnomer.  One does not have to be on top to be the inserter, or on the bottom to be the insertee.  Also, these hetero normative terms describe more than a physical position; it generally assumes the characteristics of that man.  For instance, the “Top” may be viewed as in control and aggressive.  It can also be assumed that he would be the one in control, similar to the hetero normative structure.  However, the man who is interested in penetrating his partner may not be, or want to be, the one in control.  Furthermore, the “Top” may not even initiate the sexual encounter.  And of course, the reverse is true for the “Bottom.”  Someone who is interested in being penetrated could be sitting on top of their partner, might be aggressive, as well as initiate sex.  Assumptions about tops and bottoms are made with these terms, and they could confuse the sex partners if they aren’t clear about what they expect or want from their partner aside from penetrating or getting penetrated.

And similar to hetero normative structures about being a man and a woman, assumptions about tops and bottoms not only are active in the bedroom.  They are vibrant in the culture as well.  Many men who have sex with men will value tops, much like the larger culture values men.  Bottoms, are related to females and are therefore deemed less valuable, yet more plentiful.  Evidence for this can be seen in the evolution of these terms.  Someone who enjoys being penetrated and is masculine, aggressive, and physically on top might be referred to as a “power bottom.”  Bottoms are also wrongly assumed to be more financially dependent on their partners, whereas tops are wrongly assumed to be more financially stable.

Aside from borrowing the hetero normative concept of top and bottom from our missionary ancestors, there are three other issues with these labels.  First, it is generally assumed that two tops and two bottoms cannot have sex with each other, nor be in a relationship together.  This “filtering” mechanisms that helps men find potential sex partners, actually does more than filter.  It limits. So many men will pass up the opportunity to meet another man due to their listed sexual preference: Top or Bottom.  This is problematic as sex between two or more people is not just about penetration.

This leads us to the second issue.  The second issue is that many men who have sex with other men may choose to have sex without penetration.  Men can engage in mutual masturbation with their sex partner where they both masturbate themselves.  They can also masturbate each other, engage in oral sex, and enjoy each other’s bodies in many other ways without penetration.  The binary labels of tops and bottoms assume that men only want to and must have anal penetration in order to have sex.  This is another self-imposed limitation.  It can be quite fun and sexually arousing to engage in various sex acts that don’t include anal penetration.  Claiming to be a top or a bottom values penetration as the ultimate goal, and that if the two or more people don’t get to insert something, then something has gone terribly wrong. 

The third issue about using Tops and Bottoms as labels is that they can lead to assumptions.  Sex is a physically intimate activity and is linked to our emotions as well.  It might be safer to speak less about sex and simply use these labels to know what our sex partner wants.  But the truth is that no one really fully knows what their sex partner wants without some sort of communication. 

Knowing whether or not he is a top or bottom is only the first step to knowing him.  Some men, at various sometimes, like it slow, fast, rough, gentle, and sometimes all of those in one romp!  How can the labels top and bottom convey all of that?  They don’t.  That is why some men have reported that they had bad sex.  They say their partners were clueless in the bedroom.  And although that might be the case, it is possible to clue them in by communicating with each other with more than asking if he is a top or bottom. 

And finally, just because a man has labeled himself as a top or bottom doesn’t mean that he would want to top or bottom in every encounter.  So communication with each other is vital not only to being good in bed, but also to gaining sexual consent.  Many men who are attracted to men have reported going along with the sexual encounter even when they didn’t really want to because they were afraid or embarrassed to express how they were feeling.  Communication between sex partners can open the door to more sexual gratification as well as stop men from going further than their partner actually wants them to. 

And there is hope.  Many men who are having sex with men are declaring themselves as versatile, meaning they are willing, able and interested in having sex as the insertive partner or the insertee, or with no anal penetration at all!  The versatile label allows more sexual freedom between the two or more people who are interested in having sex.  Some men subscribe to the, “If there is chemistry and consent, then trying different and new things is a go.” Many men who have sex with men who declare themselves as versatile will not assume that their partner wants anything, and will tend to ask more questions.  This allows for more communication and sexual gratification.

The labels top and bottom may be a great filtering tool for hook ups, and anonymous sex, but the dangers of using those labels outweigh the benefits.  This hetero normative concept values one over the other, limit the definition of sex to only include penetration, encourage assumptions and discourage communication, and supports sexual assault and rape.  Using less of the archaic concepts borrowed from the missionaries of 1948 that spread hetero normative propaganda may allow all people, including heterosexual Christian missionaries of today, to be open to trying different and new things, value all people regardless of their sexual desires, communicate with their sex partners, and increase their sexual gratification.

Writing Exercise 26: Shaving It Off

Writing Exercise 26: Create an experience with a twist.

          

Shaving it Off.

The desserts on the buffet were extravagantly dressed.  Some were layered with chocolate ribbons and doused with raspberry sauce, while others were adorned with fruit trimmings in the shape of rose petals, swan wings and hearts filled with decadence!  I masterfully eased my way through the crowd that was rushing towards the confectionary delights.  I turned sideways as I walked with my filled plate, thus allowing me to snake through the hordes of people aching for a sugary mouthful.  I found a quiet corner and started to dig my fingers into the fresh whipped cream.  I find it tastes better that way.  Something about eating with my fingers makes food taste just that much better.  It makes my consumption a tactile experience as well as a tasty delight.  And this first taste was surely a very different experience.  When I pulled my finger from the piled high whipped cream, I noticed a hair threaded through cream on my finger.  Gross!  If extravagantly dressed desserts don’t shave, I would rather not have any!

Writing Exercise 15: Autopilot vs. Out-of-Pilot

One of my guilty pleasures in life is to get in my car and drive.  Now, I don’t mean driving to run an errand.  I mean I like to get in my car and drive long distances.  I start by plugging in my iPhone to my stereo system, and then head towards Interstate 87 North, the nearest highway by Fordham Manor, where I live.  Once I merge onto I-87, my iPhone and I rock that ride for the entire the distance, with me singing mostly off key to all the songs on my playlist,.

It is quite the norm for me to use the cruise control feature on my car’s steering wheel.  When I was younger, I used to think cruise control meant the car would drive its self, steering left and right all the way to the desired destination.  I thought all cars with cruise control were akin to Kit, the automated or was it robotic car in the television show, “Knight Rider.”  Imagine my dismay when I learned Kit was not real and cruise control only continued the speed of the vehicle set by the driver. 

Nowadays, I know better and I use cruise control quite often, fully understanding what it can and cannot do.  I set the speed and ease my foot off the gas pedal so I can use it to keep rhythm to the song I am singing to while driving. 

Sometimes, I can drive for hours, partying all the way to the next point of interest, and not remember most of the drive.  I call this the autopilot mode.  Just to be clear, this is not a reference to the car in “Knight Rider” again.  This autopilot mode is the experience of forgetting what I am doing, yet doing it all the same and getting the job done.  However, while I am doing the task, in this case: driving, I am doing it successfully, though most of my consciousness was on something else, in this case: singing – and maybe a little dancing. This is the autopilot mode.  You may have experienced this before.  You might have talked on the phone while walking to work, all the while, avoided crashing into people or dodged cars as you crossed the street.  But when you get to work, you may not even recall having walked those four blocks from the train to your office.  Or perhaps you have had the experience where you are meeting someone new for the first time, and you exchange pleasantries and names, but as soon as you walk away, you can’t remember half of what they said or even their name!  When part of your consciousness is diverted or distracted, you might be on autopilot.

If you have done that, you are not alone.  Many people experience various parts of their lives on autopilot mode.  When the activity is routine, boring, or simple, it is natural to put our attention towards something else.  In fact, psychologists who study motivational theories say if we are performing a mundane task, we need to have some extra stimulation or arousal otherwise our performance will suffer.  So being on autopilot is not only helpful in these situations, but necessary for us to complete some tasks successfully.

However, there is a vast difference between being on autopilot and daydreaming versus being out-of-pilot and out of control.  For those of us who are guilty of texting while walking, we know when we have multi-tasked just one too many things when a car honks at us as they nearly misses running us over!  Being out-of-pilot is just that!  It is when we are no longer in control of the situation we are engaged in.  Being out of control means that something, or someone, is going to make decisions for us.  

And in some cases that is very much okay.  However, if we are in a plane and it was out-of-pilot, we rightfully would be nervous.  There are other times when we should also be anxious.  For example, texting while walking might be dangerous, especially if we are crossing the street, but texting while driving is being out-of-pilot, as too much of our attention and vision is being drawn away from the quick approaching road ahead of us. 

I tend to find my out-of-pilot mode kicks on when I am angry or upset with something or someone and time is too short to sort out all of my feelings.  In those situations, I can become quite unreasonable and demanding, not act like my usual charming self.  Another place where my out-of-pilot mode engages is when I am eating.  On many occasions, I will start a meal by looking at my plate and think, “How will I ever finish all of this food.”  Minutes later, I will be surprised by the empty plate staring back at me and I will think, “Where did all that food go?”

So when I am upset, or faced with a plate full of food, I practice turning the out-of-pilot off and engage the manual override.  I mentally scan my body and monitor my forkfuls along with my chewing. This works most of the time, but usually I am so on autopilot in my life, I forget to continue this practice.  I so wish I had an automated or robotic plate, like Kit, that would help remind me to be more engaged. Until then, I wish for myself as well as all people to engage and enjoy the autopilot and turn off the out-of-pilot.  If you need help, try using my manual override code: practice.