TORN TOM

When I was a kid my family would go fishing. Well, they would fish. I’d sit back and pass judgment on doing such a gross and low class activity.  While I sported a sailors cap. Have I mentioned that I wore a sailors cap when I was a kid? And yes, I’m sure it was worn at a jaunty angle.

So, as my Brother baited his hook and talked to our Mom about “catching dinner” I’d sit on the rocks read GQ, get some sun on my legs and chewed on the lead fishing weights.

Fishing weights are little bits of soft lead you’d normally attach to your hook to make your line sink. I’d chew on the lead balls like they were chewing gum.  My Mom being a nurse saw nothing odd about this.  Maybe if I broke open a thermometer and sucked down the mercury she would of said something, but consuming lead? Bon Appétit.

I think of this sometimes when people asking me the question “What the hell are you thinking!?!?”

Which surprisingly happens a lot in my world. Like on my birthday.

On my birthday last Friday we spent the day wandering around downtown Denver and exploring our fair cities museums. At the Museum of Contemporary Art Fuzzy found an art book that he fell in love with and had to have it.  This over sized book dedicated to a modern master came with an over sized price as well. Really? Two-hundred bucks for the life and times and complete collection of one artist?

The art book came in it’s own designer box with handles and a little cardboard latch because the two foot by three foot book  was so damn heavy it was the only way to drag it around.

Flash forward to late that night is when I heard “What the hell are you thinking!?!?”   The two-hundred dollar book was laying in front of Fuzzy and myself. Fuzzy was slowly unboxing the book as if he had pulled it from a clay jar in a cave on the shore of the Dead Sea. I watched intently as he slowly manipulated the box open. This would be when I decided to “help” grabbing the cardboard fold and ripping the tabs completely in one loud tear.

Maybe it was because it was my birthday that I didn’t get chased from the property wearing only boxers whilst being hit upon the head repeatedly with a two-hundred dollar Tom Of Finland XXL art book. Or maybe he cut me some slack knowing my childhood diet of lead and carcinogens.  Either way….. You wanta buy a slightly used Tom of Finland art book? 

LE STEVIEB

What do I want for my birthday? Well other than a brand-name vacuum cleaner, a tasteful trunk organizer and not having to wheeze on the decline bench trying to get a flat stomach back. I want a day off to visit my cities museums. Just a quiet day to walk around the smooth clean floors, rub my hands over the stanchions, and experience the intellectual gravitas. Or something like that. Then I’m going to see about buying the tightest fitting Super Boy T-shirt I can find.


Birthdays for me have been a day to just pull out of my life and live as I would if I was on another continent. This is one reason I drag my friends to the same restaurant every year. Every year on my big day I eat my birthday dinner at the same French restaurant here in Denver. Now that I type this it sounds little… repetitive.. But the restaurant itself holds amazing memories going back to my childhood.

For some reason back in the 80’s my family would drive by this restaurant. I would stare out the car window and gaze at the building as if it were the Eiffel Tower itself. I would spend hours dreaming that Dack Rambo would fall in love with me and take me to this French Restaurant to express his undying love for me. What? I was twelve. And hopeless in love with Dack Rambo, or at least his jeans. In high school I would have to change buses near the corner where Le Central stands. During this time it wasn’t Dack Rambo but, Scott Bakula who would profess his undying love.

Now I’m in my late thirties, Dack Rambo has been dead since 1994 and Scott destroyed our love with Enterprise. but, the idea that I’m still here and can still dream of far off places and far off faces is still very much alive. The friends will gather around for my annual pilgrimage and together we will celebrate another year of us.

THIRTY-NINE

They say that humans learn more before the age of two then the remainder of their lives. I beg to differ, since I’m days away from my thirty-ninth birthday I would like to offer that as for me I’ve learned more in my late thirties then I ever thought possible.

Some of this learning I’m referencing would actually be un-learning. A perfect example would be my snap judgments. In the last year I’ve had to unlearn making quick judgments on people. Character is more telling than looks. Or maybe I’ve had to unlearn my steadfast taste in men, or even down to my need to only drive a 4X4.

I’ve realized this week that I’m learning that what I thought I knew, I don’t know. Confusing? Not really, it’s like I’m finally calming down. Getting comfortable in my own skin.

This was made clear not long ago when I gave a hug to my friend Carl. See, I spent the last twenty years hating hugs. I’d never hug anyone because I didn’t see the point and it somehow made me “less masculine” in my eyes. Thirteen years of friendship and not once had I hugged Carl. Really? How does that make me more masculine?

I feel I’m going to enter my thirty-ninth year with a much more clear Idea of what it takes to be Steve. That being said, let me re-read this when I ‘m at forty-nine so I can have a good laugh.

THKS2GOD

I’d like to throw a shout out to the F-150 that cut me off on south bound I-25 not once but twice this morning. Your personalized license plate reading THKS2GOD is a good replacement to using your turn signal. Thanks, God.

I’m glad that the weekend is over, actually. On Saturday I pulled off a surprise birthday party for Fuzzy the Homosexual lifetime companion partner. Although most of the work was done by the BFF Carl, I was nervous that every day since the 1st of January I would be the one that spilled the beans and divulged the party plans. The stress was getting to me.

“Steve, did you change the laundry?”

“Oh, God….. Uh…. No nothing’s going on for your birthday. Maybe what do you mean?” As I start to flail my arms around like Helen Keller at a felching party.

I knew that trying to get Fuzzy to Hamburger Mary’s precisely at 7:15 last Saturday, was going to near impossible. A cold sweat started on Saturday morning. A sweat that lasted until in the parking lot of restaurant when he turned to the car next to us and stated “that looks like my Dad’s car”.

As he walked into fifty of his friends and family wishing him a happy birthday, I realized that all the stress was worth it. THKS2GOD birthdays only come once a year.

LIKE A KENNEDY

Yesterday was one of those days were I just wanted to go home and climb back into the bed with the puppy. I was a great day, nothing bad happened like getting yelled out at work or getting a flat; I just needed some 500 thread-count quality time. I watched two movies both obscure low budget foreign films.

The first was so odd it defies explanation. The second was about a gay, Japanese twenty-one year old with washboard abs lamenting about his life for two hours. Two hours of zero present body fat complaining about his lot in life. As I eat an entire pizza.

This is when I talked to the Mom. She wanted to let me know that our blood line was tainted by my Grandfather on my Dad’s side. It was recently unearthed that in the twenties the time that Granddad George was in a Sanatorium being treated to tuberculosis he was elsewhere. The state pen.

Our family history on my father’s side was a lie. I thought it was funny. I asked if she was going to record that in the Mormon Temple family tree history the same time she recorded that her youngest child was not “single – no children” but married to a bald man. She said no.

I hung up with a new sense of toughness to my family heritage, like coming from a line of cowboys or being a Kennedy. As I finished this thought the Japanese gay boy came to terms with his amazing good looks and the dog had eaten my last slice of pizza.

SNOWY DAY

Just a dusting of snow today. 

Just enough to remind you it’s January and eight days away from my Birthday.

WELCOME TO DALLAS

I moved to Dallas, Texas in the fall of 2000. I made my partner of four years an Ex, tossed the dog into the truck and head back to Texas. I was excited because this would be the time for Steve to stand or fall on his own. That and three and a half years of cheating, drugging, and pure crazy was finally coming to an end.

I moved into a former high-end apartment complex built around a former Dallas mansion at 4810 Cedar Springs Road and quickly took my place drinking coffee and cruising on Cedar Springs, the center point for the Dallas Gayborhood.

Within a month I had been “Reno-vated” Texas style. It was early spring when sitting either in The RoundUp Saloon wearing a perfectly starched and creased pair of Wranglers or in JR’s wearing a perfectly starched rugby shirt that I met Brian. A tall lean mass of muscle. tight abs, large forearms and a look that was either part Asian or part Swedish. Either way he filled out his wife-beater in a way that made me want to strap on my climbing gear.

A native Texan he reeled me in with his cool low southern drawl. We had a date planned. Steve’s first real date in over four years.

I ran home a put his card on the middle of the dining room table….. Then I put a rock on it. So it wouldn’t blow away…. After the appropriate “God I’m not needy” number of days, I called Mr. Brian and listened to his drawwwl as we planned our night out. Which came to pass the next week as we met in the parking lot of my former high-end apartment complex. Brian’s pearl snaps strained under the pressure of his chest as we climbed up into his F-250.

Just as I got settled in a way that the skin tight Wranglers to not cut off blood to my feet, I turned to see Brian pick up a small hose attached to a tube coming from a blinking black box wired to the dash of his over sized truck.

Time stopped. I turned my head sideways like your cat as she’s watches intently and tries to decipher why you’re shoving stuff up your butt. That look. He stopped in mid-blow. “Yeah, It’s something my parole officer makes me do.” He calmly rolled out like James Dean in Giant.

If I would have had my IPhone with me on that cool spring evening of 2001 I would of Googled “blow into device before car will start” and found out it was a court mandated alcohol monitoring device used after a DUI conviction. Several DUI convictions. Those Swedish Asians can drink.

WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?

This egg wants you dead. He wants you dead for what you’ve done to him and his family. I don’t blame him.


The homosexual lifetime companion partner and I made a pact yesterday. No fast-food for two weeks. God help me. Not because I need it, It’s living with a bear that isn’t getting a continuous supply of fast food preservatives in Egg Mcmuffins.

AQUARIUS 4 LIFE

I think I’m going to go get ink done. Across my abs I’m going to get “Aquarius 4 life” in old English script.



Apparently we’ve all been walking around with the wrong zodiac sign. Well, according to a Minnesota astronomer, Parke Kunkle as reported by the Chicago Tribune.


http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/wdaf-whats-your-new-sign-shift-in-zodiac-adds-13th-sign-20110113,0,4502664.story

So what I thought was a nice quiet Aquarian life has been a lie. Now I have to come to terms with being a Capricorn? No thanks. I’m livin large in Aquarius. Yo.


Here’s the new list, to see were you fall….


Capricorn: Jan. 20 - Feb. 16
Aquarius: Feb. 16 - March 11
Pisces: March 11- April 18
Aries: April 18- May 13
Taurus: May 13- June 21
Gemini: June 21- July 20
Cancer: July 20- Aug. 10
Leo: Aug. 10- Sept. 16
Virgo: Sept. 16- Oct. 30
Libra: Oct. 30- Nov. 23
Scorpio: Nov. 23- Nov. 29
Ophiuchus: Nov. 29- Dec. 17
Sagittarius: Dec. 17- Jan. 20

CRAZY FAN GIRL

I think I could quickly become a crazy fan girl. My DVR delightfully delivered to me the new TV show, Young Justice. This take on the Teen Titans, “young superheroes taking their own path” scenario.

 It debuted on January 7th and I’m already impressed with having a new DC show to watch. So far it does not disappoint. That and Superboy is wearing cargo pants, ya know what that means…

Check it out.

You can find Young Justice on the Cartoon Network.
 
 

THE ICEMAN COMETH

This week has been snowy in my fair city. Like most of the northern hemisphere really, so there’s nothing odd about it. What’s odd is how I’ve responded to it.

Mostly when Denver gets 18inches of snow the sun comes out and the meltdown starts, a day of bad slush on the roads and then dry pavement. However, this week the temperatures haven’t moved up out of the twenties. Frozen slush and ice getting layered upon my car. The OCD to keep my luxury automobile clean quickly moved into the high eighties. A heat wave of compulsive thoughts.

It was bi and tri day at the gym yesterday, after the push-ups I headed out to clean the evil salt and magnesium chloride that was quickly eating away at my wheel wells. The wheels wells on my car were so packed in with ice there was no space between tire and ice. So, it really wasn’t vanity, it was for safety. Yeah, safety.

I had a rush of warmth move over me as I high-pressure hosed off my windscreen. The compulsive thoughts of a perfectly clean car were subsiding. As I stood there in utter bliss spraying the Steve-mobile in my gym shorts and T-shirt I started to wonder what the temperature was. This was quickly answered by “Helen” a sixtyish local citizen who had pulled off the street filled with concern when she saw a crazy man. A crazy man out in the weather in just running shorts and a tight T-shirt.

“Honey, you know it’s twenty-four degrees out? Are you okay?” I wanted to say that I was fine, just an obsessive gay boy whose life revolves around going to the gym and not letting a speck of dirt hit his windshield. A gay boy that doesn’t have the sense about him to bring other clothes to wear after he spends hours at the gym. Instead I just nodded at Helen and thanked her for her concern. Then off she went into the freezing mid-afternoon in her filthy snow covered Oldsmobile as I thought, man she was crazy.

PHOTO OP

I'm thinking we'll start a new segment here on the Steve ranch dedicated to the random photos that people send me. Today it’s another cool shot from the mighty, mighty Dalton in NY.

I'd kill to look better naked too.

THE JOY OF KIRBY

Yesterday in my stumbling around the interwebs I came across a photo and a blog about a love between a man and his vacuum.


The award for the gayest blog post not meaning to be a gay blog post goes to…..

http://www.keithandangela.com/2009/09/new-kirby-newfound-passion.html

I was Carson.

Way to go buddy, growing up a shy Mormon boy I too wheeled the vacuum into the bathroom so I could look at it while I was in the bath. My obsession for the Jesus Christ and the latter day saints came right above the man who sold us our Kirby.

RUN STEVIE RUN

I love winter running. Although I’m very aware that this is half so I can casually mention at a cocktail party or even blog to the fact that I’m one of those crazies that run in the snow. The other and more important half is genuine love for the adrenalin rush I get from the cold hitting my face as I run in single digit temperatures.

That’s what made yesterday so hard for me. Our fair city received four inches of snow in the early morning hours.  With the high in the teens this made it the perfect conditions to get that runners rush that only comes from snow blown into your face.  That and the rush that only comes form saying “yeah, the conditions were hard, but I still put in a couple of miles.” Pause for quiet admiration. 

As I received many emails and texts last week asking about the melancholic theme of my blog posts. I was taken down by a severe head cold on the 4^th. Guess I kissed one too many of the boys on New Years Eve.  New Years is the one night I pop my annoying personal space bubble and kiss everyone in sight.  Which paid off getting to know some guys at the bear bar, but also gave me a week dictated to Nyquil. 

If you do decline crunches with a head cold, snot will shoot out of your head. Sorry, just saying.

The chemically induced dream state lifted on Saturday. This was due to watching copious amounts of bad gay cinema and super-heated green chili.  The result of this was our aforementioned quandary on Sunday morning. Should I go for a run? I’m feeling somewhat better. A long run might just be what I need to get my Steve back.

I sat at my coffee shop going over debating the “take care of yourself, you’ve been sick.” With the take care of yourself,  get some energy flowing.”

In the end I compromised and ran on a treadmill at the gym. Cough, cough. 

DESKTOP FRIDAY

What's been on my desktop all this week?

Found here.

MORNING

Wow, sometimes mornings start to look good. Really, really good. Yep.

MORNING

Wow, sometimes mornings are way too early. Really, really early. Yep.

MORNING

Wow, it is really dark in the morning.  Really, really dark. Yep.

Resolutions 2011

Do you do the whole “Resolutions” thing? I’ve always have a couple of things in my mind, like in years past.

2008 2009  2010

But really, if you work hard all the time then you don’t have to make deep soul searching decisions that lead to deep soul crushing disappointments. If I blow off a day at the gym, then it’s my choice but that decision will affect my overall goals. So I just go to the gym. If I need to set goals for myself, this is a great time but, shouldn’t I always want the best for me?

I guess my big resolution for ’10 after eating a huge breakfast burrito at Pete’s Kitchen is to run. Run a lot. This will be easier, I believe because of a Christmas present I received from Patrick.

I’ve already plunged my monkey brain into this book. You can check it out here. I feel it’ll be a huge help in changing my thought pattern from someone who is trying to get into running to someone who just runs. Thanks, Patrick.

So, welcome to 2011. This reminds me, 25 days until my 39th birthday.