What are your thoughts about my latest? I finally went off about what I wanted, see??? I want, I want, I want…

Feels very vulnerable to say those things out loud, especially seeing as I have no clue how to make any of them happen, and I’m expecting to get taken apart for voicing such exorbitant wishes.

Although I did hear immediately from Samira in LA…she and Ken haven’t left for Asia yet. She said “Join us!” and I said “How?”

“The world’s a hostile place, and I don’t count on anyone.” If that’s your honest take, please don’t read or comment on my latest! I’m not looking to be discouraged!

In brief, the use of the term “oppressive patriarchy” does prompt me to speak out. I’m not trying to say that whatever life obstacles you’ve encountered aren’t real: I’m simply saying that (to my observation and my thinking) that it’s inappropriate and unfair to characterize them as (necessarily) due to gender suppression. (I can go into more detail off-book since some of the points I make will have to invoke certain places and people I can tell you won’t want enumerated, if only for anonymity’s sake.)

As regards your painful intercourse problem: that’s really awful, and you should have been taken seriously. On the other hand, EVERYONE has horror stories about an incompetent or indifferent medical establishment. My own, which I can now look back on with humor, had to do with going to a highly-recommended doctor once I was on an insurance plan, to see about my occasional bouts of apnea–I’d stop breathing in my sleep, and wake up gasping for breath. My doctor didn’t know what to make of it, but really put me through the wringer about my drinking. I was losing hours of sleep a night, but he dismissed these episodes as anxiety attacks. Meanwhile, he was ordering up bloodwork, and wanted to ultrasound my liver–despite the fact that I wasn’t sick, never got hangovers, and wasn’t showing any outward signs of alcohol abuse. Fuck ‘im, I just went with another doctor. Ever hear the phrase, “I don’t suffer fools gladly”? For me, that sentence is one word too long.

Would you have been taken more seriously if you were male and had sexual complaints? Don’t be so sure, at least with your physician in question. A doctor that doesn’t listen is just that: a doctor that is unresponsive to the patient’s needs, and we’ve all met them. (In addition to my own doctors, I’ve had to arrange for doctors and specialists for both my parents, and I feel like I’ve been very lucky in comparison. Being a doctor is NO guarantee of intelligence, I’ve found out: it’s a job, just like any other, and there are ones who are good at it and others that seem to be doing little more than collecting a paycheck. And, of course, medical benefits….)

Think the medical establishment would attack a sexual function problem if it affected men? I suggest you take that up with anyone who’s had to undergo the indignity of prostate surgery, the consequences of which can include incontinence, erectile dysfunction/pain, or possible penile nerve damage (so even if they could get it up–which is difficult enough with all the hormone suppresants they put you on–it wouldn’t do them any good. Which is the *real* reason, truth be known, that Viagra and its cousins initially got covered by so many insurance formularies). And that’s if the surgery is considered a *success* (meaning the cancer is excised or driven into remission), and that there are no lingering complications.

Breast cancer strikes about one in four women. There’s a National Breast Cancer Awareness Month (October), pink ribbons year-round, posters all over this office for the Susan G Komen Race For the Cure (including a big push at today’s all-staff meeting), and Campbell’s soup changed the color scheme of their tomato soup cans from red-on-white to pink-on-white, in the interest of consciousness-raising.

Good and well: more power to the cause. Prostate cancer strikes nearly one in *two* men over the age of 50, almost twice the frequency that breast cancer does in women. Tell me honestly: do you know the color ribbon for prostate cancer? No Googling, now. Ask your friends if any of them know. Just saying.

Take your empowerment, and your support, where you can find it. The world’s a hostile place, and I don’t count on anyone. CATCH-22 is the book that changed my life: bad enough my enemies are trying to kill me, my friends are too. They’re all crazy, but they think I’m crazy. That sort of thing.

You couldn’t handle the Seattle *weather*? It’s got to be a hell of lot more clement than that Rocky Mountain climate. Leaving me to conclude that it’s rather my disputational nature that argues against this fair city. Not that I take that personally–I just read what My Crazy Roommate had to say about being back with her family in Baltimore; if that’s what she prefers, I must have been worse than I realized.

I thought Albert’s latest series was fantastic.

Nice to see you bm3. I never meant to imply you were ignorant, although I realize that that veiled nose-punching threat seemed to be directed right at you. :O

You just can’t pry certain things out of my hands until I’m cold and dead…in a manner of speaking. Like with Charlton Heston and his gun.

Do you have a foldout couch in your living room?

How are you doing, AB? I don’t feel like impersonating your mother today, and I have no advice in the bags…
Hm…wait, maybe…let me look…no, just kidding

Did you see the recent post from UrbanMonk about the topic of unwanted advice? (Obstacles to Mature Love, Part 3) I just see that now part 4 is available…
I don’t like the role of some ignorant stressed out male…Maybe it was countertransference or something similar?

Endure/enjoy your weightless floating…you may reach another planet at some point…or maybe an alien spaceship will pick you up. But always remember: On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you.

I was thinking, it’s taken me 40-odd years to find my voice…and use it. Along the way I’ve struggled painfully through and over a lot of obstacles that nearly did me in. Some familial, some religious, some cultural, and some that pertain to my gender and its traditional orientation in the world. It hasn’t been a picnic, and I’ve doubted myself much of the way. So when somebody says, “that obstacle doesn’t exist,” after many bashing encounters from early childhood on with the attitudes of parents, teachers, doctors, trusted adults, strangers, etc, I’m gonna REACT! Some of my fellow Caucasians insist that racism no longer exists in this country. I don’t agree. That’s why I was waiting for some WITNESSES. Just WITNESSES, for God’s sake. Like the people who sat in Wright’s church and said “Amen.” Can I get a WITNESS?

Men like Warren Farrell (along with feminists Carol Gilligan and Susan Faludi) assert that the status quo hurts men too. Patriarchy is one commonly used name for the status quo we’re talking about, but I think the word itself is causing a reaction. It’s largely about what qualities and ways of being are valued in the culture, and which are denigrated. (But I also tend to believe that if a man had agonizing penile pain every time he tried to do the deed, doctors would bend over backwards to find a cure somehow, and it wouldn’t take ten years for them to even believe him, and then they wouldn’t tell him that insurance didn’t cover the surgery he needed because it was considered “cosmetic!!!”)

Russ, I’m sorry to edit you, but that was TMI cuz I didn’t want to go over the details here. Once upon a time that kind of scenario might have been enough…lord knows I miss that body…but what I realized is, it’s not some trip about ownership, it’s about deserving to be cherished just as much as I cherish. Not “selfishness,” but loving myself.

Seattle is a good town, but I don’t think I could take the weather. Or us arguing over every damn little thing.

If things with Sonny have run their course, then there’s not much you can do. But, if there’s nothing left to lose at this point, perhaps you could try a direct approach.

You thinking about skipping town? If you want to give Seattle a try for a while, I know a place you could stay…full amenities, easy public transportation, great view.

I think the boy is history, Russman. I wish it weren’t so…every morning consciousness is like a sucker punch in the stomach. I alternate between vast, incredulous grief and intense anxiety about a fraught and scarce future. Yay! At the moment I feel like an astronaut floating in space, disconnected from the shuttle and all (of my former) human contact, terrifyingly lost but at the same time strangely free. (Ground control to Major Tom…)

Maybe I’ll leave the state…or the country. Things here in the US are such a mess. Maybe I should unload my few worldly goods and go schlepping in search of my artistic hero, like some character in a movie I can’t remember the name of. My old friend Tara had been living in Dublin and once urged me to come…

Richard Bach said “Anyone desperate enough for suicide should be desperate enough to go to creative extremes to solve problems…stow away on the boat to New Zealand and start over, do what they always wanted to do but were afraid to try.”

I’m getting close to that desperate.