You Don't Know Me Ben Folds feat. Regina Spektor

Those of you who've been with the same man for a looong time will appreciate this song.

Brent.

Social media use gives kissing the kissoff, according to new poll - Winnipeg Free Press

Social media use gives kissing the kissoff, according to new poll - Winnipeg Free Press

An article I found - an interesting follow-up to my posting 'Switch off'

Brent.

Big Hole

A couple of weeks ago, Sean and I were sitting on the sofa having one of our little ‘talks.’ The topic? Home improvements. A bookshelf had recently fallen over in the study because we'd not secured it to the wall, the deck was in dire need of paint and we still hadn't installed proper back steps. Our conversation became more and more depressing as the list of things needing to be done grew longer and longer.

Just as we'd exhausted the issue, we heard a loud crash. We ran outside to investigate. I shit you not, a branch from the giant gum tree beside our house had just crashed through our roof.

The insurance company categorized the mishap as an act of God. That didn't make me feel much better. Bad omen, more like it! The fact we'd just been discussing home improvements when the branch fell through the roof was both comedic and unsettling.

The good news is that everything is fixed now, thanks to a few visits from a lovely tradesman who called me 'champ.' Nothing pornographic transpired, he simply filled our gaping hole.

And with our hole fixed up, now we can get back to that growing list of things in need of repair and pray for no more acts of God.

Brent

22 !!

No matter how successful and ambitious a twenty-two year old may be, they are still twenty-two. I recently became friends with a guy nearly ten years my junior. He’s an absolutely beautiful boy inside and out and his journey of growing up in a country area and moving to the big smoke sounded familiar. Although I’ve assumed things are easier now for young gay adults, it appears little has changed since I was that age.

My 22-year old friend is optimistic, excited about new opportunities for friendship, love and career. He runs his own business and he wants to buy a house when he turns 25. At the same time, he’s not driven by numbers in a bank account, expensive clothes or Apple products. There’s a sense of humility about him.

When it comes to men, he told me he usually falls for older ones, meaning guys in their mid and late 30’s because, as he put it, ‘they’re more confident and know what they want in life.’

When he told me that, I dropped my fork and he giggled at my clumsiness. Was I sitting across the table from a younger version of myself? I wanted to say something about his assumption about older guys, but I didn’t. If there’s one thing I promised myself when I his age, it was that I wouldn’t become a bitter old queen that implants negative attitudes into younger men. Experience is the only teacher.

When I was 22, I dumped my 21-year old boyfriend for a man aged 32 who appeared to know he wanted. He represented both a physical ideal and social confidence that I wanted to foster in myself. For three years I got pulled into a world of 30-year old ideals. And then, when the relationship ended I fell for a man even further ahead in age. Needless to say, for most of my adult life I’ve been the youngest person in the room.

Instead of being that trail-blazing 22-year old I once was, I quickly became the caboose, always ten steps behind my boyfriend in life experience. Is it any wonder that now at age 31, I wake up every morning not knowing what the Hell I’m doing? Sometimes wondering how I ended up across the globe for my boyfriend’s career, with little consideration for my own?

Why did I rush my youth? Not only did I not have much of an adolescence (I blame the Mormons for that), I also feel like I missed my twenties because most of that decade was spent trying to be 30. And there is a consequence to skipping the natural order of things. Mother Nature is imposing an age/experience correction on me and I’ve been behaving like a 20 year old lately … maybe that’s why even I befriended my 22-year old in the first place.

Brent.

P.S. Hindsight can be a pain in the ass sometimes!

Bathroom Scales and Morning Duty

Sean bought a bathroom scale a few days ago. A real fancy, ultra thin one that lights up and blinks your weight at you. I'm not exactly sure why he bought it since we have a scale at our gym. But we're having fun with it nevertheless (I've even stood on it while taking a pee to calculate how much body weight I lose in piss). Yes, things are boring in suburban gay coupledom!

Our canine daughter (who's 4 months old today) didn't register on the scale. Apparently, the high tech bathroom scale doesn't weigh things under two kilos. Can you imagine being so light? Ruby is still so small that I'm convinced she's not purebred miniature-pinscher, but 1/2 vermin or something. We love her even though some people call her a rat and she's adjusting well to life with two Dads.

I'm not a morning person, but somehow I've assumed morning dog duties. For awhile, Ruby was waking up at 3 and 6 AM respectively. This week she's only waking up at 6 AM. Getting a full night's sleep is doing wonders for me. Last week I thought I was going to flip out and go on a plate-smashing rampage - which I've never done but reckon would be a lot of fun.

Still, 6 AM is early and after I've weighed myself while taking a piss what to do next?

When Ruby learns to walk forward on her lead instead of tying my ankles together with it, we will start doing morning walks. The fact I'm excited for the day when I can get up and take an early morning walk makes me feel incredibly old. Lord have Mercy. I'm really not in Kansas anymore, am I peeps?

Brent

Okay, I know you're dying to know. I usually piss out 0.5 - 0.7 kgs. If you're a doctor and that means something bad, DON'T TELL ME.

Switch Off

I log onto Facebook today and read some ‘cutesy’ love message between these two guys that are dating. One declaring his love to the other on his wall. I nearly vomited. There’s Public Displays of Affection and there’s Facebook Displays of Affection. The latter puts me off my breakfast. In my never-to-be-humble opinion, text messages and social networking banter are shitty substitutes for phone calls and face-to-face conversation between boyfriends/partners.

Maybe I feel this way because I’m a late bloomer with computers and mobile phones. The first time I used the internet was 1997 (also the year I graduated from high school). I got my first mobile phone in 2004, and in 2006, I learned how to send a text message. In 2008, my only gay relative – my flamboyant cousin Trevor created a Facebook page for me and got me hooked up with 20 or so friends (all Mormon relatives I’ve since put on ‘limited’ profiles). It took me six months to get into the habit of checking it.

Maybe I’m bitter because I’ve also been ‘burned’ by the same technology. December, last year, when Sean and I were on hiatus, I sort of fell ‘in love’ with this guy I met at the beach. Before I knew it, I was at my shrink’s office crying because this boy-who-I-thought-I’m-in-love-with sent me a Facebook message saying he didn’t think we should see each other anymore. I was sobbing because a) I felt guilty for liking him in the first place b) I was pissed he dumped me on Facebook, c) I didn’t know how I would ‘face Facebook’ again when the boy-who-I-thought-I’m-in-love-with started networking for a date via his status updates less than 24 hours later.

My shrink’s advice? Stop using Facebook and turn off my mobile when I’m not using it. Btw, check out: http://www.bengfort.com/benjamin/facebook-anxiety-disorder-fad/

Let me rewind a bit to 2007. My friend, Christine from Edmonton is visiting me in Vancouver. She’s obsessed with some guy – one who clearly wasn’t interested in her but was kind enough to return her text messages. Christine is glued to her phone during the entire visit. Every few hours she asks me ‘Do you think I should text him?’ I say ‘No’ each time but she just ignores me, sends the text, then obsesses about how long it takes him to respond and when he does, she wants to analyze the syntax and did he sign off with a =) or a ;0 or :) ???

Holy Fuck. I wanted to shoot her. And here’s the worst part. At the end of the day, she’d transcribe their text message correspondence into a notebook. When I asked her ‘What on earth for?’ she said, ‘It’s so I don’t forget important stuff we’ve talked about.’ What a freak, I thought.

Fast forward a few years, and there I was. Obsessing about my own love interest I’d met at the beach. Sending text messages and wondering why he didn’t get back to me right away. I’d be nearly bursting for joy at the sound of new message coming in, then fall into the depths of despair when the message was from someone else. Then all the speculation, wondering why his Facebook messages were brief and why he didn’t sign off with an xoxo like he did the last time. I was embarrassed for myself. I’d become Christine (who has never been laid, btw).

Eventually, I got over the boy I had these feelings for, and the way he ‘dumped’ me. Thank God, Sean and I were able to get over the whole thing, because this other guy turned out to be a really shady character. But I’ve never gotten over the anxiety I felt towards Facebook and text messaging. As a result, I completely refuse to text, or send Sean messages on Facebook. I stand my ground on this one: Nothing can replace a phone call and/or a face to face conversation.

In case you’re wondering, Sean is my ‘friend’ on Facebook and has proper status, as in ‘Brent ______ is married to Sean _______ .’ But we do not write to each other. We don’t post cute or nasty things on each others' walls. And why would we? If the message is cute, other people out there are going to roll their eyes and spew their coffee and if the message is bitchy, mutual friends will vulture-in to offer support or feed fuel to the fire. Potential love interests who’ve been hiding in cyber-shadows will swarm and tell us how bad we were for each other in the first place …

Phew. Well, I feel much better getting that off my chest. I bet none of you would accept a friend invitation from me now?

Brent.

Permanency

If you haven’t already figured it out, things are shit here again between us. A lot of the same old issues have resurfaced and we’re not sure how to deal with them. The ‘making it work’ mantra feels like a sadistic self-imposed punishment at the moment, so I’ve avoided the blog, but missed the comments and the feeling of being connected.

Today, I discovered the blog ‘Canadian Down Under.’ SPOILER ALERT – I read the last blog entry first and realized it was a final posting. The author’s five year blogging journey was over and she was saying goodbye to her readers because she was moving back to Canada. Even though I haven’t yet read any of the previous postings about her experiences in Australia, I felt the weight of all that history, all those postings and experiences. It made me realize that I have to be realistic. Perhaps, despite all good intentions, there will come a time when I’ll say goodbye to my relationship. Maybe not. I don’t know. But I’m not going to delude myself with thoughts of permanency.

For now, I keep writing, and keep working at it.

Brent.