NO MAN KNOWS MY PASTRIES

Oh, October. The month were our house finally turns the air-conditioning off sixty-four degrees and  opens the windows in the bedroom at night. When I was a kid October meant a whole month of planning my woefully effeminate Halloween costume. This would be the girlie costume I would wear to our churches ward dinner and Halloween alternative Jesus fest.

Our fall church ward dinners were just an amazing showcase of orange streamers, family values, and Jell-O. I’d stand there in my witches or Ken doll costume and stare with amazement at the rainbow of Jell-O molds. A kaleidoscope of artificial sweeteners and canned fruit. Thank Jesus and the latter day saints that the church provided a Jell-O matrix so each family would know that Jell-o mold to bring…

No, not that matrix. This matrix.

This is from No Man Knows My Pastries,  Available on Amazon,  the definitive Mormon cook book. Now you too can be spared the embarrassment of bring the wrong gelatin dessert to that fabulous soirée. I’m a giver.

....TO A DISCO BEAT

I get to work long before the office fills up. Now that the year is waning, I sit in the dark until the sun comes up into my office window. I sit in the dark, drink my coffee and slowly wake up by blaring Gaydar Radio, London’s gay internet radio station.

This happy Steve time was interrupted this morning by the fire alarm with all its screeching alarms and flashy strobe lights. Well it’s predawn, I’m alone with thirty fire alarm strobe lights flashing and gay house music blaring. What would you? I grabbed my highlighters to use and glow sticks and ran to the hall way and danced to the upbeat disco. The strobes flashing to the bass beat.

It was fun. Dancing alone under the disco lights, having Alex Baker as my personal DJ. Until the fire inspector snuck up behind me.

“Uh, are you okay sir?”

“Christ! Sorry, yeah I’m okay.”

“Maybe you should head outside. It’s just a test but maybe some air would do you good.”

Six o’clock in the morning and I’ve already brought shame to myself and to our people.

THE 4

I finally broke down and bought an iPhone 4. About frickin time, right? It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was blogging about the long wait for my 3G. Weird, I guess time flies when you’re having fun.

I really bought it for Facetime, Apple's answer to The Jetsons video phone that you where promised as a kid. “When you grow up we’ll all have video phones.” Well it’s now the future and I can video call Dalton in Brooklyn. Dalton and I are like totally future fags now. Oh, snap.

My sexy new friend also has an amazingly great quality video camera. I smell trouble brewing……






Too late…..



BLINKY, BLINKY

What’s your earliest memory? The thoughts that motivate you, I’m not talking about morals or values, more just the little drives in your day to day life.

I spent the weekend installing red LED lights in my car. Because I’m an eighteen year old, and I wanted flashy lights when the music starts thumping. Actually they’re very subtle, tiny little lights installed in the cup holder and under the dash just to cast an awesome red glow.

Okay, I also bought the music interface that flashes a disco scene inside my car, but it has a controller switch to turn all of the disco magic off when I want to be a mature thirty-eighth year old man who drives a grey four door saloon. But, when the nineteen year boy comes out and he’s driving a silver sport sedan with a fin I can crank up the light show. It’s very diplomatic.



Happy waffle iron is happy

As I had my car’s interior disemboweled upon the garage floor, and Fuzzy was having a meltdown because I had my car disemboweled upon the garage floor I started to explain how I just love little flashy lights that come from anything techy. If it has a blinking light on it; I’m going to buy it. This is when I started to ponder why I have this drive for anything that glows.

Sitting at the kitchen table watching the waffle iron blink. Its little indicator flashing away letting me know it was soon going to be time for hot yummy waffles. “Huh, my drive to install accent lighting in my car is from the waffle maker I was obsessed with as a tiny girlie child.” Strange. Freudian. I wonder why I make guys call me Daddy during sex? No reason, probably. Now I want waffles.

DESKTOP FRIDAY

What's been on Steve's  computer desk top this week?

This week it has been robots.....

Found here.

Found here.

found here.

Found here.

 Boop...beep boop....beep. I do not understand this concept of love....boop

COMPLIMENTS

Well. Haven't we been serious this week.... Or so I've been told.

Here's a song about giving compliments...





I change clothes frequently in my car; it’s just part of living far from the city center. I guess it’s another good reason I have my windows tinted so incredibly dark. That and highway JO sessions, but that’s another story.

The other day I was changing out of work wear into a comfortable pair of jeans. I had parked in a parking garage and slipped in to something more comfortable. I then got out and started walking through the garage towards the mall, still tucking in my shirt. Just as I rounded my car a fortyish woman walked near me. Without blinking she said “If you’re looking for compliments, you'll get them with your pants open.”

Yep.  flapping around.

An unsolicited compliment I guess.

I'm Still Here

Last Friday I met the boys out at a British pub and finally found a great Shepard’s pie since the vegetarian restaurant where I was a gay waiter back in college. After watching some rugby and cleaning our plates at the British Bulldog, we walked next door to a bar that I had never been in and yet knew every inch of its dark layout.I turned twenty-one on January 28^th, 1993. On the day of this major event through the birthday breakfasts, the beers bought by family and friends there was only one thing on my mind. The Denver Triangle.

The Denver Triangle was Denver’s the tri-state region’s premiere... and well only men’s leather bar.  I had snuck into a lot of bars before turning twenty-one, knowing a whole routine to get into The Ripcord in Houston, Texas. But, this night I was going to walk in as a man. Not a boy having to promise sexual favors to anyone letting me step foot on its hollow ground.

I believe like a Bat Mitzvah or leaving for your first mission gay men have their own rights of passage. There’s realizing that they don’t have to be effeminate to be gay, learning how to give an amazing blow job and walking into their first gay bar with their head held high, proud of who and what they are.

My twenty-first birthday was that night.

To tell you the truth I was scared shitless, I don’t know why but I was. My friends quickly spread to the bar that I was fresh meat.  This actually helped me meet a lot of great guys that I remained friends with for years.  This also helped me not forget the passage into manhood by not being able to sit down for a week. [insert giggle here] 

The Denver Triangle is long gone.

Last Friday after dinner we walked next door to a bar that I’ve never been to and yet knew every inch of its dark layout.  I knew every inch of this hipster beat-box bar, I giggled to myself as I showed my ID to a twenty-five year old hip-cat door man.

As I walked to the back of the bar it was if I was  desending the staircase of the Titanic. the atmosphere was thick with rust. It was lost forever but I’m still here. 

RUN, STEVIE RUN!

I gave myself heatstroke on Sunday, because I am an idiot. Sunday in Denver started off cool so I went to Cheesman Park for a run. Since I’d been avoiding my early Sunday runs I thought I’d make up for the lost time. This meant pushing my tired yet pliable body further than it had been in a long time.


Although the morning was cool, it warmed up fast. I pushed through the whinny bits and made record time around the local gay park keeping up with the skinny shirtless guys that usually lap me several times over.

Ignoring the hunger pains and my screaming feet, when I achieved a true state of catharsis I headed down the street to Dazbog our local gay coffee house to sit down for some coffee. This is when a BFF called and talked me into hanging out with him in the sun. Meanwhile the cool day had turned into a hot June day of 97 degrees. By the time I then stopped by another friends house I had to decline a movie invite because my body started to rebel. Stopping off to eat seventeen dollars worth of Chipotle I drove home, but by then I was a goner.

I hit the bedroom and stripped. Chills started to shake my body and a cold sweat appeared as the room spun. Grabbing all the blankets and gallon water I climbed into bed. This was four, Sunday afternoon. I woke up again at nine with the Shar-pei standing over me cursing me in Chinese that he had just soiled the living room rug due to my intolerable actions. With what energy I had left, I laughed at what an idiot I was.

OUR FUTURE

New Years Eve 1997 found me in a private room at Saint Joseph’s Hospital sitting in a chair pulled up close to the bed of my partner, Randy Jorgensen.

I was flipping through the channels trying to find Dick Clarks’ Rocking New Years Eve on the television. Randy having been re-admitted for complications with pneumonia lay in the bed trying to find a comfortable spot. With the IV and feeding tubes he found it hard to see the screen. He’s family long since left for their comfortable homes in the ‘burbs it was just the two of us waiting for the ball to drop. In many aspects.

When Dick Clark showed a clip of London and how they brought in 1998 something in Randy and I just snapped. We both quickly started to make plans to travel to London in the new year. We decided to get an expensive hotel in the gay part of town, we would travel on day trips to see every castle and walk every museum and lay on a blanket in every park, forgetting that he could barley walk to the hospital room’s bathroom. 

We spent the next hour planning our vacation. Every once in awhile we would lock eyes and know that everything we were enthusiastically deciding upon would be complete fiction. We were lying to each other; Randy was close to the end of his hard fought battle with AIDS. But on that New Years Eve we pretended that we were in control of our future.

During my late teenage years I found myself sitting with my Father in his Bishops Office at our town’s Mormon temple. We were discussing my future mission around the world to bring Mormonism to people and cultures that desperately needed to be brought to Christ. After my mission and becoming a man, I would attend BYU in Utah. This would find me a degree and a wife.

We discussed my mission and coming back to our small town so that my wife and I could bring more children into our extended family, raising the population of smiling happy Mormons in the church. Every once in awhile we would lock eyes and know that everything we were enthusiastically deciding upon would be complete fiction. My life would quickly take me down a path far from him and the Mormon Church. We were lying to each other, but in that church office we pretended that we were in control of our future.

Soon the ball dropped and 1998 saw Randy living for only twenty-two days. On the twenty-second day I helped Randy slip his skin telling him that we would see London someday. Feeling somehow apologetic that we didn’t get to go. I felt the same overriding guilt was I did when my Father heard me say that he would not get grandchildren from me as my life was on another path.

It’s funny, this weekend I started to read a biography about a young man’s struggle with the church and homosexuality and suddenly I realized that I really want need to visit London.  

WANTA RIDE?

This has been a hard week, I haven’t been this glad to see a Friday since I had to share a cubical with the Pope. I’ve had a drawn out conference calls every day, yesterdays was held up for twenty minutes debating if the word “us” verses “we” could be approved by the legal department. I just started to jab a pen into my eye. But, no one noticed.

Big plans for the weekend? Anything? On my way to work I get an amazing view of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, all snow capped and…rocky and mountainy….. Today I thought about my new bike rack for the car and my tuned-up mountain bike just sitting in the garage begging to be taken out and used. Man I need to escape and go for a ride. Anyone want to ride with me?

DAYS UNTIL I GET PRESENTS

You know what? There are only 99 days until Christmas! Excited? I know me too! Wait, what was that? Oh, I just heard the collective moans of everyone that just read that first sentence. Sorry, it’s just my favorite time of year mostly because there are only 71 days until I get to staple up the Christmas light up around the front porch and hang the garland around the windows, much to Fuzz’s chagrin. Last year I used the old style “screw in” type of lights on the house to go with a retro feel. Well, let’s just say that the OCD in Fuzz flared up and the fear of the house burning down from the holiday decorations over-powered him. It was an obsessive Christmas. This year it’s a LED theme. Nice and safe, yep because LED light do not start fires. Nope.

I’m probably just happy because for the first time in my selfish little life we have started to buy presents now, instead of trying to rush around and buy everything last minute and on one credit card bill. Yes, I am finally an adult. Also what I really want for Christmas is a new high end mattress. God I’m not an adult I’m just old.

So, 99 days until Christmas. And if you’re Jewish you only have 77 days until Jewish Christmas.

THE AGE OF DIANA

It happened again on Saturday. I tuned into a lunchtime conversation about the impending date of December 2012, this time it was Fuzzy and our friend Michelle. Fuzzy was explaining the real science, the truth of 2012. Which I’m sure he picked up from the creepy ass History channel.

Can I just stop here and ask, what the fuck happened to the History Channel? I watched it for years to learn the history of Bauhaus’ impact on the thirties or about the glamour of the great families of Italy from the Renaissance. Now it’s all WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE! Cuz, Nostradamus, said so. Life after we’re all dead! Yippy. That and a lot of shows on the glamorous Nazi party. It’s scary. Someone over at the History channel needs to switch their meds or stop thinking that the Book of Revelation is a ficken textbook!

Anyway, so Fuzzy is explaining the science of the magnetic field around the earth and how when the planets align in 2012 the poles will shift. Coming from the guy who can’t get the remote to turn on the TV, cable, and surround sound.

So I’d like to introduce my own theory into the 2012 super consensus. Read carefully, you’ll need to speak with confidante at the next cocktail party.

The polar magnetic field has a history and tendency to fluctuate. There is recorded data to show that it builds to a climax and shifts every Millennium. We’re due for one of these magnetic climaxes in late 2012 due to the Earth’s orbit around the Sun and aliment of the magnetic pull of the other planets in the solar system. The magnetic fields run through strong lines from pole to pole. The strongest of these lines or “bands” runs straight through England. The apex of this magnetic field runs more specifically through Northampton shire. In the 1990s’ this field was disturbed causing havoc to the poles and the earth polarity. This polarity switch or “climax” will happen December 22nd 2010. The Earth’s static discharge will shoot through an island in Northampton shire on Oval Lake. Since the body of Princess Diana and her interment on the island was the original disruption to the magnetic field this will channel straight through her sarcophagus and body, reigniting her very life, her soul to be super human.

On the morning of December 23rd, 2010 Princess Diana will arise anew, but it she will not be as she appears. Soon she will enact revenge upon the populous of the earth, smiting anyone who dares defy her only the souls intelligent enough to align their allegiance to her will survive. This will mark the end of the old world order and mark a golden age for the planet. The Age of Diana.

So…. Start spreading that around at dinner parties.  Then follow that up with “That’s why we’ve decided to stock up on white gloves and Tierra’s.” Just to sound convincing.

I'M MAD AT THE DIRT

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SUPERGAY

Growing up Beige

Growing up as a good Mormon boy I had a lot of idiosyncrasies. Being the youngest of seven kids probably compounded this. Let’s just say it was like Equus but with Jell-O after dinner on Saturdays.

Part of living in a big house on a big ranch in the middle of nowhere is when a sibling got married and moved out everyone got to move up to a better bedroom. After several basement bedrooms that have scared me for life, when the last sister got taken away for marriage, I got to move upstairs. A room with a window, no longer to be a subterranean dweller. Which to this day has made me hate basements.

Being the youngest also means I got the painted furniture and painted walls from countless sisters wanted bright happy colors. The room I was to inherit had been pink, blue, yellow, and puke green, along with all the furniture. Now, after kicking six other kids out of the house the Mother didn’t care at this point what the hell I did, so she sent me into the K marts with fifty bucks and told me she would wait in the Kmart Kafe, sucking down ham sandwiches.

Having the urge and twisted desire to be grown up like Steven Carrington I went about decorating my room. Beige walls, beige sheets and pillows, brown paint on the furniture and I ripped down the flowery curtains and installed beige mini blinds. It looked like the inside of a cardboard box. The only thing my Mom said was “It looks like the God damn underside of a God damn mushroom” and she was right. But my yearning to be normal made me want to be bland. Unlike the flamboyant little boy with an Under Gear magazine hidden inside the beige sheets.

The funny thing is, although I still use the design esthetic the Steven Carrington’s “bachelor pad” It’s taught me that even when you cover up things with beige paint you’re still the flamboyant boy underneath.

SCRUFF

I might be obsessed with a certain app on my iPhone. Scruff. It’s like Grindr but for men who have not seen Lady Gaga in concert. I’ve been talking to some really great guys from all over the planet. So far I can say that guys from Brighton, UK are not shy at all. I've met a nice man that wants me to come to San Francisco to help him polish his boots. That’s nice of him to offer. And a twenty-four year old truck driver that  keeps sending me really close up pictures of starfish. He must really likes starfish because he wants me to kiss them. All the time.

I noticed that I may be obsessed on Sunday when I took the dog out for a walk. I guess the dog and I were standing in one spot for quite awhile, until I looked down and Harley the Shar-pei had gotten off his collar and after wandering around for awhile was standing in front of me with the same look all my friends have given me as of late. The one of “Are you going to answer the question I asked four minutes ago?” As I realized how long Harley had been waiting he just rolled his eyes and started to walk back to the house.

Everything in moderation, unless there are Asian bears or wash board abs in the UK that need to have their portfolios gone over. Or an police officer in San Francisco that needs help to maintain his shine.

BLINDSIDED

I was standing in the middle of the locker room last Friday, I had just stripped down to my 2xists when I felt a sharp pain in my left calf. Then another painful smack as I turned to see who or what was attacking me. At the other end of a very long cane was a forty-year-old woman.

“Uh, ma’am? You’ve made it in to the men’s locker room.” I said as she smacked me again.

“I’m going to the woman’s room!” She barked at me loudly, like I’d accused her of eating children or something equally as horrible such as voting Republican.

“Uh, okay. I’m sorry can I help you to the other locker room?”

“NO!” She said waving her cane towards my furry man parts and spinning around 180 degrees.  She then took five steps directly into the wall.

“Ma’am, my name is Steve. I’m more then happy to help you….”

“Shut up! I’m fine.”

You know, if you live long enough you’ll just do about everything once. Like smack down a blind woman. In your underwear.  Just as started to contemplate the justification I’d give to the cops a gym manager came in and asked to help her. “Yes, please.” She said with sweetness in her voice responding to the offer. The gym manager then looked over at me like I’m the one that just made her blind.

It just goes to show you. no good underwear caning goes unpunished. 

DEMOLITION MAN

I love to destroy things. I get some sort of thrill when it comes to ripping the crap out of anything. I usually control myself since the time I got trapped inside a Victorian house in the Highlands of Denver. Back in my early twenties

I climbed inside a beautiful mansion that was slated to be demolished. My goal was to photograph myself jerking off in one of the bedrooms that overlooked downtown and smash some plaster walls. After my territory was marked I soon realized that there wasn’t a way to get out of this massive shell. The first floor was strongly boarded up and the fire escape that was easy to climb up was impossible to climb down. I wandered around for a couple of hours trying to find an egress but nothing.

After jerking off again I decided to jump from the second story on to the only soft ground that didn’t have broken glass glistening in the moonlight. I dropped like a stone and rolled into a chain link fence. After that night of limping home with two twisted ankles and covered in my own seed I curbed my enthusiasm for breaking into abandoned houses.

When I get the chance of playing demolition man I jump at it. This is why when BFF Carl asked if I could possibly help him gut his fifty year old garage I acted like an eight year old. I had to pretend it was work since Carl slaved over a huge breakfast that morning. But, the entire time I was giggling behind my mask.

DEATH BY PUSHUP

The coffee machine in my office broke yesterday. This means that I’m running sans coffee and I use the term “running” loosely. When it was determined that the coffee maker had bit the dust I dropped to my knees and screamed “Why Lord! Why have you forsaken me?!” This made the Christian lady in our office who might of jumped on fixing the coffee maker, not to happy. So I wait until I apologize to her and to her God.


This wouldn’t be such a big deal if it wasn’t for my new commitment to the gym starting this week. My new philosophy is pushups until I can’t pick myself off the mat and crunches until I slide off the bench. Why am I doing this to myself? Oh, yeah when I grow up I wanta be Scott Herman.





So excuse me now, I’m off to buy a cup of coffee. Thank Jebus the nearest Starbucks has a drive through since I can't move my arms, and will not be able to actually get out of the car.