Seeing Brokeback Mountain has left me in a mood to talk about it, and... with no one I can really talk to who'll understand. So time to dust off the blog.

It's a story about two men who fall in love, while working together in the wilderness for a few months in 1963. In those pre-gay-lib days - especially in the flyover regions of the West - the idea of actually following their hearts is almost unthinkable, so they go their separate ways, with only their "fishing trips" together as a way to satisfy their mutual longing. Starring the lovely and talented Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger, and directed by the talented (and not bad looking either) Ang Lee, it is (rather obviously) worth seeing.

Of course I can't help drawing parallels to the one great relationship of my own life. In this analysis, I am Ennis (Ledger's character) and Andy is Jack (Gyllenhaal). Although neither character is ready to declare "I'm here, I'm queer, get used to it", Jack is the one who entertains the idea of the two of them finding a place somewhere to settle down together. Andy and I were both plenty openly-gay, but it was he who was more eager for us to set up housekeeping together. And while not quite as laconic as Ennis, I was definitely the less talkative one.

This parallel breaks down a bit in some ways, of course. Jack seems to be the gayer of the two, with "needs" that can't be sublimated or simply channeled into heterosexual love-making. Ennis seems to be attracted to women... it's just that the one person he carries a torch for is a guy. But Andy was definitely the fence-straddler of the two of us, a card-carrying bisexual, while I never had any interest in the fairer sex.

But ultimately it was I who played the spoiler, balking when Andy finally made the move to... move in. I wasn't ready for that, and I pushed him away. And for that I'll always bear that burden of being the one who broke us up.

And what makes the story in the movie all the harder to watch is the analogy between what happened to them, and what happened to us. SPOILER ALERT! As the years go on, Jack and Ennis aren't together, except in their hearts. Until tragedy strikes, and Ennis finds out that Jack has died. Although Andy didn't die, he suffered a brain trauma that took him from me just the same.

For years I've feared hearing the news that Ennis actually received: the news that the love of his life has died. Although his family know about our relationship, they don't seem to respect it or understand it. They think it's over. But of course it isn't. Not in my heart. And knowing that Andy's health is more precarious than mine, I expect to someday learn - with the same casual indifference, well after the fact - that he has died. And even just thinking about that brings me sobbing to a stop. Because I know - like Ennis - that the reason we never truly got together, the reason we never found happiness as a couple... is me. My reluctance. My fear. My emotional distance.

My fault.

And it's too late to do anything about it.

P.S. If nobody comes out with a cowboy-themed gay porn movie called Bareback Mountain or Brokeback Mountin' before 2006 is out, then shame on the adult video industry.

Several years ago, I tried to teach myself to juggle.

I bought a book Juggling for the Complete Klutz (which came with a set of three bean bags to practise with), and tried seriously to learn how to do it. I never got beyond the second chapter. I just didn't have the coordination for it. No big surprise, really. Even in comparison to white heterosexual men, I'm still just a marginal dancer. It's not that I can't feel the rhythm deep down in my soul... I just can't shake my groove thang, get footloose, and do the hand-jive, all at once. It's too much to keep track of.

One of my friends used to refer to me as "the absent-minded professor", which is both an affectionately patronising stereotype and a Disney movie starring Fred MacMurray. To this day it bugs me that I've never actually achieved professorship, but I find the moniker endearing, because it acknowledges my (objectively confirmed) brilliance, whilst recognising my greatest weakness: my inability to keep track of things.

This wouldn't be so much of a problem, except that I have a tendency to let my life become more complicated than I can handle. I have a lot of interests. I'm into computers. And not just one operating system, but several (Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, Netware, BeOS, etc). I like the visual arts. Not just drawing and graphic design and photography, but a little interior design and interface design as well. I love to write. Whether it's factual information on Wikipedia, insightful commentary here on GodsExBoyfriend.com, or creative storytelling, I think (and I'm told) that I'm pretty good at it. I have an aptitude and interest in the law. I scored better than 90% of law-school applicants when I took the entrance exam on a lark. Which is to say nothing of almost minoring in Philosophy, considering a career in politics, and a stint serving as an amateur social worker for gay and lesbian teenagers. Hell, just look at the categories for this blog! There's too much that I want to get involved in!

A big part of my problem is that I don't trust people to do things for me. Mostly that's because I've been burned when I did. Hell, I'm probably smarter than them, and with my diverse interests, there's a good chance that I could do the job better than them. So I do.

I host my own web sites, running my own server, using an operating system and other software that I can configure and modify myself. Hardware failure? I replace it myself. Power failure? I have my own generator. There are still a few links in the chain that I'm powerless over (e.g. the internet itself), but for the most part, I have the ability to keep my own systems up, all by myself. Which means that when there's a problem, and my systems aren't online... it's entirely my fault... and my problem.

I have more domain names registered than I'll admit. I get an idea for a site I'd like to develop, discover that no one's registered the domain yet, and I grab it. But I don't have time to actually develop it. Earth-Zero.com just sits there. GraphicNovels.info was just a place-holder until recently. And against my better judgment, I just volunteered to be webmaster for yet another web site.

Meanwhile I'm trying to get around to realising my childhood dream of writing and drawing comics. I have scripts for half a dozen different stories, and ideas for a few dozen more. Some are downright brilliant, if I say so myself. But how and when am I going to produce them all?

Which is to say nothing of my day job, which I'm trying to get converted from a simple not-quite-full-time techie gig, into a full-time position in which I'll help to set direction and policy, and work on a more creative level. Like I need a reason to stay later at the office.

What I need to do is to focus. I need to simplify my life.

The irony is that I've already done that - or allowed it to happen - pretty extensively. I don't have a family (except the parents and siblings I was born with). I don't have a spouse, or even a boyfriend. I have few friends. Dumped the church ages ago. I don't even have the activism-based social life that I once had. And even without all that, it's still too much.

Which is a somewhat round-about way of getting to the point (because I wasn't really sure of it when I started writing this) that I'm officially deprecating God's ex-Boyfriend. It's obviously been neglected a bit for a while now, and I need to acknowledge that and let it go. I'm not going to take the site down, and I'll probably still post things here from time to time as the spirit moves me. But it's officially off my "current activities" list.

Thanks for reading. Cheers!

I found myself doing something unusual today.

I was walking down the street to the post office to mail my rent and health-insurance checks. Nothing unusual about that. But there was something about the way it felt...

It took me a second to figure it out: my hips were moving.

I'm an uptight white boy, raised in a homophobic culture. Sure, there was disco when I was little, but I was never really the dancing type. I learned to walk with a manly stride in which the pelvis remains as still as possible; only the thighs and shins were supposed to move.

When I came out, I managed to undo some of that conditioning. I even got a little funky on the dance floor. But my default behavior is the Guy Walk.

So it came as a bit of a surprise to me, to find myself bouncing down the sidewalk like a young John Travolta with Saturday Night Fever. All I can figure is that... I was happy. Not completely care free, but relaxed enough and cheerful enough to loosen up the hips and let them move. Which was fun. I guess life is pretty good when a man can spontaneously sashay down the street.

I work at a college, which is at once both entertaining and a little frustrating, because a fairly high percentage of the people around me on a day-to-day basis are about 20 years old, give or take. Naturally they don't pay me much attention, unless they need my help with something. So there's a lot of looking-but-not-touching in my life. Better than not-looking-at-all, though. I don't mind the distraction. I'm certainly not complaining.

It gets a little different in this part of the summer, when the school offers a bunch of not-for-credit classes. This attracts a lot of noisy and annoying little kids, and sometimes-noisy and sometimes-annoying teenagers. Not exactly what I signed up for. I don't complain, but that's just because it'd be pointless.

The thing is, one of those teenagers seems to have taking a liking to me. My office door is usually opened, so he asked me for directions and I helped him find his classroom the first day, and I was my usually-pleasant self* in the process. Nothing special. But since then, he keeps wandering into my office for no apparent reason, during breaks or on his way in/out. He mostly just asks me goofy questions and tells me stories, and I don't think there's anything more to it than being friendly.

But I'd be lying if I said I didn't find him cute... and I don't mean in the puppy-dog sense of the word. If only I weren't old enough to be his father... and he weren't young enough that he still needs his father's signature to consent to anything. Not that even his father would be allowed to consent to what I'm thinking.

I know many people would freak out over such feelings, fearing that they've committed some mortal sin or that they have some pathological perversion. I've learned not to fret over what happens to push my buttons. But I'm also sane and ethical enough that I'd never actually do anything immoral or illegal in response to this particular kind of button-pushing, so there's no danger of anything like that. I haven't even flirted with him. He's just less annoying and more distracting than I'm used to. Which really isn't anything to complain about, either.

*Yes, at work I'm usually pleasant. Imagine that. And I'm not even faking it, because I like being able to help people like I do at work. It's dealing with insufferable idiots and malicious ghouls online that makes me unpleasant.

I've been reminded that the so-called "health care" industry in the United States is run by people who really don't care about anyone's health. They're not allowed to. It's a mis-managed bureaucy that's gone so far down the rabbit hole that its rules don't even make sense from a money-focused perspective.

Case in point: I go to my primary care physician (or PCP, coincidentally the abbreviation for a pneumonia responsible for killing countless AIDS patients, and for a lethal recreational drug) and tell him about some knee pain I've been having. So he refers me to the specialist who did surgery on it a couple years ago. Everything's good so far, and my insurance covers everything except some affordable office-visit co-pays. Then the specialist refers me to get physical therapy, and they start helping me get my knee in shape so it won't hurt. Then things go haywire. Two weeks into PT, I get a call from the PCP telling me that the specialists referral to the physical therapist is no good. That means I have to pay for it myself. Instead, the PCP wants me to go to a different physical therapist.

Understand: the issue isn't that my insurance isn't accepted by the PT place; they do billing with (let's call them) Indigo Cross all the time. And it's not that my insurance policy doesn't cover PT; it does, without even a co-pay. It isn't that this is some (in the opinion of the insurance company) quack pseudo-medical facility; like I said, Indigo Cross deals with them routinely. It isn't even about money; if the place I was going charged more than the insurance company was willing to pay, they could demand that I make up the difference, but that's not what happened.

The issue is that my PCP is part of a "network" that serves to channel patients to each other rather than to non-members. And they'll screw over a patient (making me cough up money I can't afford to part with, and then start over with a different therapist) to enforce that.

This is insane. Or at the least, it's unethical. But it's how the American medical-services industry works. I might point out that nothing like this would happen with a single-payer health insurance system. If the physical therapist is certified, and the treatment is properly judged by medical experts to be necessary, it'd be covered.

The people who defend this system (mostly Republicans, but the blame is shared by the other party in power as well) claim it's a free-market system, and that's the only acceptable solution. But it's not... free-market or acceptable. It's more like a RICO ("Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization") case or perhaps less stridently, a good old-fashioned trade-restraining "trust". I admit I'm not the biggest fan of the economic darwinism of the market system. But it's fairly benign as long as it's a true market, in which providers work to supply consumers' demand for something. But this isn't that kind of market. The customers aren't the patients; the customers are the insurance companies. The insurance companies have customers too, of course, but those still aren't the patients... for the most part, they're employers. And it's only in the most reality-distorting sense of the word that employees are "customers" of their employers. (Even when someone - like me - resorts to buying insurance for themselves, they pretty much have to settle for the worst policies the industry knows how to write, which are themselves just cut-back versions of the ones that employer's sign up for, because they can't afford anything better. The notion that I can "shot around" for a better insurance policy is laughable.)

The system might work fine as long as the best interests of the patient and of the customer coincide. But when they disagree, "the customer is always right", so the patient loses.

Over the several decades that I've been doing this blog, I've occasionally talked about comics and even reviewed a couple. I actually used to do quite a bit of that, and I'm thinking of doing more of it in the future. I'll be contributing to the newly-revived GraphicNovels.info, a site dedicated to information about graphic novels and similar beasties.

Just thought you and the search engines might like to know about it.

I saw a physical therapist today, to see if there's anything they can do about the pain I've been having in my knee (which I had surgery on a couple years ago). She wasn't nearly as impressed with my physical fitness as I would have hoped (I mean, jeez, I'm in better shape than most of my friends), and was especially dismissive of my flexibility. Yeah, I know I'm not very flexible, but it goes with my personality, OK? And at least I can - and do - ride my bike and climb stairs at work. And when she started telling me that I'm very tense and don't relax very well... that was a bit more too much like hearing my former boyfriend (the massage therapy student) talk, and got me a bit gloomy that I don't have him around to tell me these things (and to help me with therapy).

Anyway, she did have some encouraging things to say about fixing my knee. It turns out there's one muscle group that's weak (probably from avoiding the use of it back when the knee was injured), and it's causing things to get out of alignment, rub together, and get an early start on falling apart. The good news is that it's just a single problem, and there are exercises I can do to re-develop strength in those muscles. With luck, I'll get rid of the pain and get another 20-30 years of normal functioning out of it. The bad news is that to accomplish this, I have to do various sets of exercises every hour, every 2 hours, 3-5 times per day, and twice a day. None of them are very strenuous, but they're a major nuisance. At least things have been dull at work (and are typically dull at home), so I can at least find time for them. And I can hide in the server room (which mercifully has carpeting) to do the less dignified routines.

Another thing that I don't mind is that the diagrams demonstrating the exercises are illustrated with drawings of a fairly handsome-looking young man in shorts (or I prefer to think of them as boxers). I would've drawn him a bit more muscular, but I wouldn't kick him off the bench (or whatever he's reclining on). So as I'm reading the instructions, making sure I'm doing them right and doing the right number of repetitions, I at least get to look at something nice for reference.

Today was the annual Pride 5K run, put on by the local Frontrunners group. It was not my best performance. In fact, it was my worst.

This was the 11th annual run, and I've participated in all of them... except one, when I was about to have knee surgery to fix a torn meniscus and I kinda figured I should sit that one out. For the first few years, my time hovered around 26 minutes, then gradually improved until 2001, when I came in just under 24 minutes. That works out to about 7:45 per mile, which is hardly Olympic-level running, but not too bad for someone in his mid-30s.

Since then, however, my total time has increased by roughly 1 minute each year. Including the year I missed. This year I just barely managed to finish in less then 28 minutes, which is nearly 9 minutes per mile. Last year, when I scored a new "personal worst" (higher than any of those first few years' efforts), I put it down to the fact that I'd just had surgery the year before. I'd spent some months trying to stay off my bad knee, and there was no denying that I'd put on weight. At over 200 pounds, some organised runs would have put me in the special "Clydesdale" weight category, recognising that I was doing a lot more work than the 125-pounders who could run circles around me.

But this year, I really expected to do better than last. I've lost a little over 10 pounds, which is certainly a good thing. For the past year (not counting the snowy season) I've ridden my bike to work (4 miles round trip) five days a week. And I just got the news from my doctor that my cholesterol has improved substantially since last year: not quite in the "nothing to worry about" range on a couple of the scores, but close enough for just a "keep up the good work" instead of prescribing medication or working on a better diet and exercise plan. My knee's been giving me a little pain lately, but nothing that would interfere with a run like this. I had every reason to think I'd improve my time. Instead, I managed a new "personal worst". By another whole damn minute.

It's hard not to look at this and read some handwriting on the wall. It says, "You're over the hill." I've reached the point where - short of going all-out into training - I'm never going to get any faster/stronger/etc than I am now. Heck, I'm already making a better effort at physical fitness than most people I know. Not only do I ride my bike instead of driving the car (not just to work, on any trips that the bike will work for), I carry equipment places at work instead of putting it on a cart, and take the stairs instead of the elevator (unless I'm carrying something especially heavy). I'm taking what practical steps I can to stay fit. And here I am doing 9-minute miles.

I guess it makes sense biologically. A natural human lifespan is about 70 years, and from an evolutionary standpoint, there isn't much point in engineering a physiology that outlasts the standard reproductive years by very long. So if I'm not going to be chasing females to mate with, why would I need to keep up my running speed? At that point, an individual's main biological objective is simply to keep from becoming a burden on their tribe. I'm still a long way from not being able to feed and care for myself, so I guess I'm doing OK.

I had my first colonoscopy today. To allay any suspense, the results were good. I'm healthy.

You could say that I didn't see it coming, because it all happened pretty quickly. I went in for my annual physical on Tuesday morning, which included a "digital" (as in "finger", the old-fashioned sense of the word) prostate exam. But he felt a tiny nodule of some kind in or on the rectum wall. It was probably just a harmless "thing" of some kind (our bodies are full of lumps and irregularities), but he figured it was better to be thorough and find out for sure. Especially since there's a history of colon cancer in my family, and at the age of 40, it's time to start taking all of those "as we get older" health risks seriously.

So my doc refers me to a gastroenterologist, who turns out to have an opening for a consult the next day due to a cancellation, and then happens to have an opening for the procedure itself a day and a half later, first thing Friday morning. Which turns out to be the minimum amount of prep time for a colonoscopy. That's because you need to completely clear out your large intestine first. Phase one is to stop eating nuts, raw veggies, and anything else that takes a few days to digest. Phase two is to stop eating solid food altogether, for a full day before the procedure. Phase three is taking some strong laxatives. All the while, you're encouraged to drink lots of clear fluids (especially sports energy drinks), because you'll be flushing a lot of fluid out through your bowel.

Here's a tip that I wish someone had suggested to me, rather than me thinking it up after I started having problems. Rather than wiping your ass with toilet paper after every squirt session - which is going to rub you raw even if you use the softest TP available - use your bathtub as a bidet. A proper bidet is a little fountain that squirts up from your seat to wash your butt clean. Lacking one of those, just turn on the water in your tub, adjust it to a comfy temperature, turn your back to the faucet, squat, and wipe yourself off. Don't fret about getting shit on your hand; just use soap and it's as sanitary as you could want. When you're done, blot yourself dry with a nice plush towel.

Believe it or not, the pre-exam shitting is the worst part of the whole experience. That's because they drug you up for the procedure itself, not enough to put you to sleep, but enough that you're relaxed and cooperative... and you won't remember a thing afterward. Kind of like taking a date rape drug, but with signed consent forms. I suppose for some people it's a little psychologically traumatic, but I'm neither the kind of person who'd punch a guy out for poking around in his ass, nor the kind who'd feel a need to send him flowers afterward. It's just an orifice, and I'd rather have them sticking a little camera through it than have them cut a new hole somewhere else to get an inside view of something else (like I had done with my knee a couple years ago). By comparison it's pretty non-invasive.

As I said, my results were good. The nodule by my prostate was harmless. They did find a little polyp in my ascending colon (that's the part that a mere sygmoidoscopy doesn't get to; demand the full colonoscopy), which they removed. If a biopsy indicates that it was pre-cancerous, I'll get another 'scope in 5 years; otherwise it's just another one of those harmless "things" and I'm good for another 10 before they'll want to check me again.

Some people might be annoyed at going to all this trouble (missing most of last night's sleep getting up to shit, and a full day's pay for not being at work today) for "nothing". Plus the cramps and a slightly raw anus. To say nothing of the 25% of the cost that my lousy insurance will require me to contribute. But the peace of mind of knowing that there's nothing seriously amiss in that whole stretch between my appendix and my sphincter, is worth it. And if there is something wrong in there, it's definitely worth going through, because catching it early is the best way to stop it. My mom didn't catch hers until it was making her anemic and weak; she survived, but it cost her a foot of bowel and a bunch of chemo. No point in going through that, if all I have to do is this every 5-10 years.

A year ago, I wrote about the fact that I was graduating from college (again, this time from art school), and how at first I was melancholy about that fact, but later it turned out to be not so bad, because I'd received an offer for a job on the tech support staff there.

Today was Graduation Day again... not for me, but for this year's seniors. I went to the ceremony, this time as a staff member. In part it was to support some of the students I'm aquainted with, to see them off as it were. Mostly it was for the shows.

The week between the end of classes and graudation, is the Student Exhibition. Every graduating senior gets a spot in the building to present a sample of their work. The illustrators show off their cartoons and portraits, the interior design students pin up a punch of floor plans and swatches, the industrial designers and furniture designers display their plans and models, the digital media people run their DVDs and web sites, the graphic designers put up their posters and packages, and the painters and sculptors and photographers present their paintings and sculptures and photographs. There's always a lot of great art to see, and I've always tried to see it all. Even though I was in the building all last week, I didn't have time to see much of, because I was busy with other things. So I went down early before the commencement ceremony to give myself a tour.

The other show is the commencement ceremony itself. The college has a wonderful tradition of allowing (requiring, actually) each graduating senior to submit an image of their work to be projected on a huge screen at the front of the church auditorium as they receive their diploma. It's even harder on the students than their exhibition space is, because they have to pick just one. But it means that the bulk of the ceremony (an hour and a half total) is devoted to a slide show of really good art.

In some ways, this year it was a bit more hectic than last, because I was responsible for providing all of the technological gear and making it work, for the Student Exhibition. (They hire professionals to handle the display at the ceremony.) So it wasn't just one multimedia presentation (my own) like last year, but a few dozen. But I enjoyed it more, because this time my "day job" was one that I actually like, and my boss, several faculty, and even a couple students had told me how much they appreciated what I was doing.