Night thoughts

I've been trying to lose weight.  All my life I've eaten for comfort.  Food helped me feel better when I was lonely or bullied or stressed.  Alcohol also helped.  It makes some people aggressive, but it relaxes me, and makes me happy.  There's a problem, though.  There're lots of calories in alcohol.  But sometimes, the trade-off tilts in alcohol's direction. 

I'm worried about the world.  I know, I read decades ago that if you think the world has gone to hell in a hand-basket, you're probably over 30.  Which I am.  But I've always tried to remember that little aphorism whenever I've got disgruntled about the state of the world.  Maybe it's not as bad as you think, I say to myself.  Maybe you're overreacting.  But ... maybe I'm not, too.

I look at Donald Trump and his overthrow of truth and decency.  I look at our own government, which in the face of the hottest summer ever, by far, still lies about the country's emissions and wants to subsidize coal power stations.  I look out of the window at dying fields and trees, dying because of a horrendous drought caused by global warming.  There's the war in Yemen, where hundreds of thousands of people are starving to death.  I read reports about how the numbers of insects have dropped 75% over 40 years.  Without insects there won't be an environment; there won't be food.   And I wonder about the rank folly and greed of mankind.

Alcohol helps.  I've lost 9 kilos (20 pounds) but my despair about the world around me threatens to stop that, even reverse it.

Ah, well.  I'll try to be better tomorrow.

Je n'ai que des souvenirs

Heath Ledger

... would have been 37 yesterday.

atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale

.

Betrayal

Looking over old emails, between me and Henrik, Jack and Arn.  Each claimed to be my friend, and each betrayed me, in their own way.  Even 5 years later, it still hurts.


Ah well, as Ennis Del Mar says to Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain: If you can't fix it, Jack, you gotta stand it.

Depression and sadness

I've seen several commentaries and discussions which treat depression and sadness as the same thing.  They are not.

Sadness is an intensity of feeling.  It's akin to grief and sorrow and loss.  It hurts.  It has colour and depth.

Depression is the absence of feeling.  It's greyness.  Indifference.  Akin to exhaustion and tiredness and weariness.  Nothing seems to matter.  Everything is too much trouble.  Life is flat and dreary.

Of course, sadness and its brothers grief and loss can lead to depression, as they did in my case. Over a period of a year  or so, someone I thought loved me as a friend dropped me; my best friend's wife died; my father-in-law died.  I lost some illusions and I grieve for them still.

As time when by, my grief lessened, but my disillusion deepened.  It came to seem to me that people I had trusted had betrayed me, that those who appeared to love me did not in truth, and those who were truly fond of me were dead.  To add to my depression, I had to take a massive pay cut at work (one still not reversed).

Gradually my depression eased too.  But still it is there, lurking just out of sight, and sometimes, it returns though, thankfully, never as bad as it was at the worst.  However, the cynicism and doubt engendered by the behaviour of my "friends" and of the universe have not left me, and I have to work hard to keep going.  When you are depressed, you do what you have to and what you can.  And everything else slips by the wayside.

So, like Lord Peter Wimsey as he worked through his post-war shell-shock, I play patience.  Endlessly, hour after hour.  And I read and reread old familiar books (Dorothy Sayers among them)  and watch old familiar films on DVD (Miss Marple, Star Wars, Poirot).  Drink helped get me through the evening, but I'm not drinking now. Sometimes I have enough energy to write.  To play my clarinet or sax.  But often I don't.

Well, what I suffer is no more than what millions of others have endured, and here I am after all, surviving.

I make a point of being grateful for something every day.  I make little lists of things to be glad about.  This makeshift philosophy works.  Sometimes.

At any rate, tonight is one of the nights when I just don't want to do anything.  I'm reading Lois Bujold with enjoyment, and when I've reread all her books, I will move on to Mary Stewart.  Or Miss Marple.  Or Star Wars.  And glad it is I am that I have even those distractions.

Onwards and upwards.

Post coital

Does he really love me?

Artistry of Male

Sadly, Artistry of Male (AOM) is being closed down.

This was a special gay-shaded blog, about beauty and love as much as about beaut blokes.

A recent pic:

 I shall miss it.

Footy

Footy is balletic.  Like my novel.

I uploaded the last two chapters of Footy to my blog.  This is where you can find the second last chapter, and at the bottom of that chapter is the link to the last chapter.

It's been a bit of an odyssey.  But I hope you've enjoyed it.

[The pic shows Nick Riewoldt.  He isn't gay.]

Sadness

A reader sent me this email:

Just got up to date in Majorca Flats.. U are a great writer Nick. Characters are nicely drawn, likeable, and u make me care what happens to them. 

Difficult for me to believe you can write that way about man to man tenderness, and you say you've not had it with the guys you've had sex with. You write so realistically, not cloying, just DTE.. You got a nice imagination! 

I suppose empathy comes in to why i was so engrossed..as I can see myself potentially in some of them. Especially Cody... Makes me very glad I've made the decisions that I have. 

It made me a little sad.  Not because he praised my writings -- I love that.  (And thank you, buddy!)  I earn no money from what I write, so to have someone tell me it hits the spot is satisfying and pleasing.  It encourages me to go on writing.

No, it was because it made me think. And the truth is that no man other than my father, and then only when I was a liitle boy, has ever held me with love.  And you know what?  Now, no man ever will.  All the men who fucked me didn't love me.  It was just sex.

Are men capable of love, real love, not just a rush of oxytocin as they come?  Love when the man they love is sick or grumpy?  Love when he's old and warty?  Love, the love which conquers all?  I must go on believing that it does exist, and yet ....  yet I am starting to wonder.  To wonder whether there isn't something in the male psyche, in our genes, which makes it hard for too many of us to love, dispassionately and selflessly.  I know there are some men who love other men in this way.  And they give me hope, but a general and impersonal hope, because there won't ever be one for me.

There's no point grumbling.  It is was it is.  And we must bear our burdens without complaining, and I do try to do that (believe it or not!)   Other people endure worse.  Yet love is so central to our humanity, to our sense of worth, to our happiness.  Not money, not possessions.

Love.

I never wanted more from the men I loved.  And I've never had it.

Shallow

I sent a recent photo of me to an e-friend.  After years of being my "friend", he's abruptly stopped talking to me.  I suppose I'm too old and ugly.  How shallow that is!  To judge someone by their looks, not by their heart.

It makes me sad though.

Nice to know that gay shaded men can be just as shallow as straights.  Now I know how women feel with sexist straight men.   If they're pretty, they get listened too and courted.  If plain, they get ignored.

Majorca Flats -- 216

Luigi stared through the window at the two men on the barstools in the café. Cody was staring deep into the eyes of an older bloke. They seemed very intimate. He was filled with rage. He wanted to go in and wring Cody's neck. How dare he!

The older man was slim with salt-and-pepper hair, his face a little lined with rubbery folds, and undeniably handsome. He looked vaguely familiar. Luigi wondered where he'd seen him before. Cody looked as beautiful as ever. Luigi's anger was quickly replaced with sorrow. After all, it was he who'd dumped Cody, not the other way round. Even taking into account that Cody had deceived him ...

He stood back so that Cody wouldn't see him. Yet he was unable to simply walk away. His life with Cody was over. But his heart was breaking. If he could just look at him again.

Cody and the man stood up and left the café. Cody seemed to be tipsy, and his companion was helping him. They came to a Toyota people carrier. Supporting Cody with one hand, the man wrenched open the car door. Cody turned and looked directly at Luigi. Their eyes locked. Luigi's heart stopped. He felt sick. Then Cody smiled, a sweet smile, and unable to help himself, Luigi smiled back.

A moment later, the car drove off. Turning on his heel, Luigi plodded home, his mood black and despairing.

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Episodes 1 to 180 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)

Majorca Flats -- 215

They lay together in the afterglow. Esmé knew that it wouldn't last, this happiness, this contentment. Keith was gay, and one day he'd find a man he really loved, and they'd get married. But “sufficient unto the day the evil thereof”. She would worry about that when it happened. She snuggled up to him.

“Hi, beautiful!” said Keith.

“Hi yourself, sexylegs.” She put her head close to his. She could hear his breathing slowing. “So are you fucking Jace and Lou?”

“Yeah. And Tom. I'm a slut, amn't I?” But he didn't sound sorry.

“What happens when you find Mr Right?”

He pulled her closer, and drew the bedclothes over them against the late night chill. “Maybe I have.” He stopped for a while. Just as she was about to break the silence, he said “I have this draim. Of you and me and Jace, sharin' a house and a life.” He was silent again. “I know it's a draim. It'll never happen. Things daon't work out like that. See, Ezz, I'm gay enough to need a man in my life. I daon't want to have a wife and then cheat on her behind her back. Like Cody with Lou. And I don't want casual pick-ups. I mean, they're hot and all that, but … I want love. There isn't room for people like me in this world. The gays think I'm a fake, that when I like women I'm pretendin'. The strights think I'm just another hypocritical homo. All that stuff. All those expectations. Fuck it, Ezz, I love ya and I love blaokes too. Settle daown they say. But I'm me! Not them. And naow I'm hurtin' ya, roight?”

Unable to speak, she just kissed him. Yes, he was hurting her. Oh yes. But if he changed, he wouldn't be Keith any more. The sparkle would go out of him. She didn't want that. But she didn't know whether she could take him as he was.

She'd been right. The happiness didn't last.

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Episodes 1 to 180 (without pictures, 10 episodes per chapter)

Melancholy

Melancholy? Or just thoughtfulness? Sometimes the one leads to the other: one thinks about one's life, about life in general, and one is filled with the poignancy and sadness of it.

The harsh bones of life

The harsh bones of life
Aging flesh and skin, friendless
Soul long departed

Majorca Flats -- 99

“I'm not being very helpful, am I?” she said. “Well never mind, I believe we both need another cup of tea and I have some special biscuits which will cheer us up a little.”

She went into the kitchen and when she returned with the tea, she was carnying a worn hard-cover exercise book. “This was his diary,” she said.

The diary of Bart Cumberledge, 9B, TOP SECRET, was written in a faded ink on the inside cover. Jason started reading. At first, the diary was just an uninspired catalogue of things done, a schoolboy's idea of the sort of things you should write in a diary: went to swimming today, saw Batman and Dead Poets Society (lied about my age, but worth it), tore shorts (mum was cross); but when Jason flipped ahead, he saw that the texts had morphed into something else, an open and sincere record of Bart's emotional life, descriptions of guys he'd developed a crush on, things he wished, and the first stirring of the horrible school bullying which in the end killed him. When Jason read an entry, I WISH I WAS NOT GAY he snapped the diary closed and said to Eleanor, “May I keep this for a while? I'd like to read it properly.” Mrs Cumberledge merely nodded.

Jason took the diary up to his room and put it next to his bed. He would read it when he felt up to it. Not yet, not now. He had much to think about, and he spent the day oppressed and filled with sorrows.

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Majorca Flats Episodes 1 to 10

Majorca Flats Episodes 11 to 20

Majorca Flats Episodes 21 to 30

Majorca Flats Episodes 31 to 40 

Majorca Flats Episodes 41 to 40 

Majorca Flats Episodes 51 to 60 

Majorca Flats Episodes 61 to 70

Majorca Flats Episodes 71 to 80  

Majorca Flats Episodes 81 to 90

Everything I touch.

Another of Issa's haikus.

Everything I touch

with tenderness, alas,

pricks like a bramble.

Love hurts.  Issa said it better, though.

Majorca Flats -- 96

“But what I did was so wrong, Mrs Cumberledge.

“Do call me Eleanor, Jason. Yes, by your standards it was. But perhaps others might not have thought so?”

Jason thought of his parents and how they would have responded to the revelations about Brent's behaviour. “No, that's true, but ...”

“... You set yourself high standards. Not that I disapprove, and of course, if you do set high standards, well, you must keep them. Jason, I am an old woman now, and I have seen much of he world. I can't insist that what I think is right and wrong. For starters, I have learnt to think differently about things than I used to when I was young. The young are so judgemental, even of themselves”—and she looked at Jason as she said this—“but when you get older you realise just how fallible we all are. Of course, there are some people who never make that realisation. They remain idiots their whole lives.”

“If I’d been there for him, he'd be alive today.”

“I don't doubt it. But you're only human. As long as you learn from your mistakes ....”

“It's too late.” Jason stared away across the tiny garden and tried hard not to break down again.

“It was for me too,” replied Eleanor Cumberledge, quietly and very sadly.

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Majorca Flats Episodes 1 to 10

Majorca Flats Episodes 11 to 20

Majorca Flats Episodes 21 to 30

Majorca Flats Episodes 31 to 40 

Majorca Flats Episodes 41 to 40 

Majorca Flats Episodes 51 to 60 

Majorca Flats Episodes 61 to 70

Majorca Flats Episodes 71 to 80  

Majorca Flats Episodes 81 to 90

Could man be drunk forever

Could man be drunk for ever
  With liquor, love, or fights,
Lief should I rouse at morning
  And lief lie down at nights.
 
But men at whiles are sober
  And think by fits and starts,
And if they think, they fasten
  Their hands upon their hearts.

A E Housman, A Shropshire Lad

Majorca Flats -- 68

In the menswear section there were board shorts, not famous brand names, but colourful and rather nice. They were $30 each. There was a rack of swim briefs, in black and navy, and they were half the price. Conscious that he had to be careful with money, Jason shrugged and bought a pair of the navy Speedos. $15 saved was money for food and drink, and he was used to wearing swim briefs for his school's swim team. At the checkout he also bought some suntan lotion. He'd been burnt before, on a holiday to Greece with when he and Brent had gone there on holiday once.

It had been a marvellous holiday. Memories of sun-kissed beaches and translucent seas were intertwined with images of him and Brent at dinner with a bottle of wine, Brent's eyes filled with laughter and love, his skin glowing from a day in the sun, and then later, making love and Brent tasting of salt and sweat and happiness. Of course, that was where the trouble began, and once again Jason castigated himself for not seeing what was happening sooner. His own blindness, his own assumptions, and then, fatally, his own arrogance. How he wished, with all his heart, that he could do it over, and this time do it better.

These bleak reflections made him want to go home and hide, but there was no home any more, and he had nowhere to hide. So he forced himself to keep going, and went looking for the number 1 tram to the beach.

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Majorca Flats -- 65

Charcoal drawing from Paul Bielaczyc

Bolt was getting good at welcoming Jason home without making too much noise. At first he had barked frantically. Now he just whimpered and whined. Jason knelt down and caressed him. He was glad of the welcome. Dogs didn't judge you on how you look or whether you're witty or interesting. They simply love you for you,

Jason slept badly. Once again the dreadfully realistic dream about Brent came to him, in all its horror. He tossed and turned all night, waking from wild fever dreams, where he was always too late, where he did too little, where he wasn't there for the man he loved.

His initial optimism and hope when he'd first arrived in Australia (was it just 4 days ago? It seemed as if he'd been here for ever) had been replaced by depression. He wouldn't be able to give his heart to any guy, not for a long time. Forget your sorrows in the arms of another might be a good motto when you've been dumped, though Jason doubted even then that it really worked, not if you loved someone enough. But when the person you loved had died, died horribly, what then?

Getting involved with Keith wasn't fair on Keith. And despite what had happened with Luigi, he wasn't ready for casual sex.

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