Magnum opus?

I've been prone to false dawns before when it comes to my fiction writing, but maybe, this time, I've found a way to get into a story that's been gestating for longer than the blog has been in existence. It's a kind of John Wyndham-esque, post-apocalyptic plot, but finding a way to flesh out the bones has proved an insoluble problem for more than a year now. However, I've written more this afternoon and early evening than in all the rest of the time that the story has been around, so I'm hopeful that this might just be the start of something worthwhile. It also meets a criterion I've wanted to fulfil for some time, a story in a different genre than the things I've posted hitherto, which have, I'll admit, centred around boys for the most part, no more so than my last effort, which, as I perhaps should have expected, given the subject matter, seems to have appealed to no-one but me.
One beneficial side effect of my excursion into authorship today has been to take my mind off of the stressors which have caused an exacerbation of my arrhythmic symptoms in recent days. I haven't been able to get an appointment to see my doctor until Wednesday, so I won't be back at work until Thursday at the earliest - with the best will in the world, I can't do my job, being classed as safety-critical as it is, while I'm feeling so disturbed, literally and metaphorically. Even sitting here now, doing nothing more strenuous than typing, there's still a fluttery hiccup in my chest now and again, which doesn't do much for my equilibrium, as may be imagined. Hopefully the doctor will be able to suggest a tweak to my medication which might stop this kind of thing happening again, because I really can't afford to spend weeks on the sick list as I did last year.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A letter (that will never be sent)

Dear ****
Things have been difficult between us for quite a while now, not all the time, but too much of the time. Many of the reasons are all too obvious, our finances in particular, but also my health, my job, your health, your parent's health, all piling on the pressure, and we're also divided by different interests and opinions, not that we ever had a huge amount in common, right back to when we first met. It sounds like a litany of woe, and maybe, sometimes, we allow it to push us that way, making me less kind than I might be, and you less caring towards me. You've said, more than once, that you don't know why we bother to carry on, and I must admit to having felt the same on occasions. We've got a daughter we both love, in our different ways, and, for all the ups and downs, we've still got each other. But is it what either of us want any more? I can only speak for myself, and my thoughts on this subject are where my difficulties really begin, because I could only talk to you from the perspective of my superficial, 'public' self, which is probably only half of the real me, if that. I can only speak to you using my public face, because I'm as convinced as I could be, 99% certain at least, that you'd react badly to any revelation of the 'real' me. One of the accusations you've made against me, when we've had our differences of opinion, is that I tell you what you're thinking, making unwarranted assumptions about you. In this area, though, my 99% certainty is based purely on things that you've said, on how you've reacted to news items, on how you reacted to the perceived threat from the person you had to deal with through your work. The last news item you commented on, just a few days ago, you described people like me, 'paedophiles', as you would say, as 'bastards', not a word that has often passed your lips, in my experience. When we were shopping earlier today, you didn't know that I was hurrying when we left the shop not because I was feeling unwell, although I was, but because I wanted desperately to see more of a jawdroppingly lovely boy, 11 years old, or thereabouts, looking more than a little like DBJ, who'd left the shop with his family just before us. I could just imagine your reaction if you discovered that your husband was one of those 'bastards' you so despise. I've never lied to you about this, it's just that you've never asked - if you asked the specific question, I'd tell you the truth, I'd have no choice, I couldn't lie to you in that way. Is my silence on this matter deception in itself? Probably, but it's not a deception with purely selfish motivations - despite the difficulties in our relationship of late, I've always loved you, ever since we met, and wouldn't want to do anything to knowingly hurt you. Our daughter would be hurt as well, no doubt, if we split up, although I know already she wouldn't be hurt by the revelation, as she's known about me for getting on for a year. That would probably be another unforgivable deception in your eyes, that I trusted our daughter more than I trusted you, but that's only a function of her personality and mine, how similar we are in many ways - you're fond of saying we're 'two peas in a pod' - I think it's fair to say I've got more in common with her, which, genetically at least, is true, of course.
So, to address your question, why carry on? You tell me.

Your loving husband

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

I'm sorry, but you have got to be joking!

Since last week's news about the probable demise of her job, my wife has made some minimal efforts to think about what she might do instead. She came up with something this afternoon, however, the very idea of which sent me into a panic, the more so because I couldn't possibly discuss my reasons for panicking - she suggested that we could become foster parents. I can imagine almost nothing that could cause me more sleepless nights - having what could be a good-looking, or even not so good-looking boy, within my age of attraction, potentially from a background that might have left him emotionally needy, in my house 7 days a week. It sounds like the ultimate recipe for disaster, however good my self-control might be. Present me with a 'go directly to jail, do not pass Go, etc' card, why don't you? At least my wife picked up on my utter lack of enthusiasm, although I suspect she thinks it's down to my legendary lack of people skills, saying 'it might cause you a few problems'. Too bloody right, just not the kind of problems you're envisaging.
The stresses of our immediate situation have continued almost unabated today, with predictable results on my hiccuping heart, which has broken through the effects of my medication again. If it doesn't improve in the next 24 hours, I'll be heading for the doctor's, rather than back to work on Monday.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What I want to do, and what I have to do

Much of my day has been taken up by doing something I want to do, while evading something I need to do. The 'want' has been finishing and publishing a story on 'Cuckoos' that I've been working on since before Christmas - I started it on December 19, added bits to it, deleted bits from it, went back and revised other bits, and finally seriously set about trying to finish it two days ago, achieving that aim today. It won't be to everyone's taste, I'm sure - in fact, it may not be to anyone's taste, apart from mine - but it is the product of a goodly amount of work, so that may be to its credit, if nothing else is.
The 'need' was a number of phone calls I should've made, and told my wife I would make, in connection with our ailing finances. Sadly, I got thoroughly stressed out about the prospect, to the extent that the pressure broke through my medication, the first time that's happened since the weekend of my falling out with the feral teens of Cornwall last April, leaving me with my heart banging away nineteen to the dozen, and feeling incapable of dealing with anything at all, never mind anything of pressing import. Situations like this leave me feeling totally useless and inadequate, and ashamed of myself, but there are limits to what I can cope with, limits I'm close to reaching just now.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How time flies when you're having....fun?

It was exactly a year ago today that I first dipped my toe into the blogsphere ocean, with my first post on what was then 'Sammy B's Semicentennial'. Now here I am, 273 posts later, but where is here?
I've been reading a few of my early posts over the past 24 hours, trying to compare my situation now with then, and what, if anything, has changed. When I started the blog, I guess I was just about coming to terms with the fact that my long-standing attraction to boys had definitively resurfaced over the previous few months, largely because I'd fallen helplessly for one particular boy, the young man known in the blog as 'DBJ'. I'd been seeing him regularly since 2006, when he was about 9 and a pretty little boy in his primary school uniform, but by the time he was around 13 at the end of last summer, when I left my old job and any realistic prospect of seeing him again, he'd grown to the very cusp of puberty, and into just the most attractive person, from my perspective, that I'd ever seen, certainly anyone I'd seen on a long-term basis. He's gone from my life now, not, realistically, that he was ever really in it in any meaningful way - I never even properly spoke to him, doing little more than gazing at him from my workplace window like some lovesick teenager, and writing about him at some length, here and as the inspiration for at least five fictional/fictionalised pieces in my other blog.
DBJ may have gone, but my attraction to boys certainly hasn't. Where it came from originally, I've no idea, because nothing specific happened in my childhood or youth that I can pin any sort of explanation on, but it has been there, certainly since my very early teens, if not before, and over the last year, probably because I've been more honest with myself about my desires, I've noticed far more attractive boys than I can ever remember in the past. That's not to say that I'm going to rush out and start molesting anyone, because I've also come to realise that whatever else I might be, I'm no rapist - the very thought of hurting someone in that way fills me with horror. That realisation has been crystallised through my association with blogland, in that I've read a number of accounts of those who have been hurt, physically, emotionally or both, by non-consensual sex, and I'm absolutely certain there's no way I want to inflict that kind of pain on anyone, for any reason.
The other big difficulty that the turn of my attention back towards boys has caused is the problems it's caused me in how I relate to my family, and my wife in particular. I don't feel especially guilty about my attraction to boys, most of the time, anyway, because it just is, is part of my makeup, that's to say, but I do often feel guilty and frustrated about having to live a lie for so much of my life. Blogland is perhaps the only place I can really be myself in any organised sense, but whether that's a positive or a negative is difficult to assess - if I didn't have this place where I can express myself, would I have continued to bury and suppress my desires, as I'd largely managed to do for many, many years, or would the pressure have built to the point where it erupted into my doing something damaging, to myself or, far worse, to others? There have been occasions in the past year where I have come close to saying something to my wife that either directly or indirectly could have exposed my 'secret', not helped by other stresses in our lives, finances for both of us, work for me and her parents' health for my wife, and I do sometimes wonder whether she'd be better off without me, and even, occasionally, whether I'd be better off on my own, but we are coming up for twenty years of being together, so I guess that must say something about the foundation our relationship is built on, even if I feel to some extent that my deceit undermines that foundation. One aspect that has been an undoubted positive has been my closeness with my daughter, even after I accidentally 'came out' to her last summer. For someone who's only a matter of days into her teens, her love and support towards me has been so important. I have no doubt that many people would say she's been burdened with an issue that's beyond her life experience to cope with, but she really does seem to have handled it with a maturity way beyond her years.
Another massive change that has come about during the lifetime of my blog is in my job, and the upheaval to my lifestyle that's entailed. I knew I needed to escape from my previous job in some fashion, because it wasn't doing anything for me personally or for my family financially. I'd worked away from home before, between 2002 and 2006, so applying for, and eventually being successfully appointed to a much better paying job in the London area didn't, on the face of it, look like it was going to throw up any insurmountable problems. Now that I've made the move, though, it seems that I've changed more than I thought during the four and a half years that I was in my job here in Cornwall. I really have found it much more difficult to cope with the time I've had to spend away from home than I did the first time round, and even after the best part of 5 months, I'm still not entirely convinced that it's something I can continue to do for any length of time. The problem is that if I can't find a way to cope, and have to give the job up, it will more or less instantly tip us into bankruptcy. No pressure there, then. I really wouldn't want to predict, just at the moment, which way this issue will fall.
What about the blogging experience itself? To say that there have been ups and downs is a considerable understatement. Probably the biggest 'down' so far has been the 'Yacky Box' affair and its aftermath. I mentioned 'Yacky Box' in my very first post as one of the things that had inspired me to start blogging myself, but it eventually proved to be a salutary lesson in the fact that not everything online should be taken at face value. Personally, I didn't suffer anything beyond a little embarrassment at having been duped, but there were others, including people I've come to care about, who suffered far more hurt, and, on top of that, there was an almost palpable sense of trust being lost, a trust which I don't think has come anywhere close to having been restored, even several months after the event. It's a characteristic of online transactions and interactions that people have to take what they're told on trust, whether it's buying something on Ebay, or whether it's befriending someone through Blogger or any other social network who you're never likely to meet in real life, and when that trust is breached, it can be very difficult to come to terms with. That being said, one of the highest 'ups' of my year in Blogland has been the friendship and support I've found here. I've 'met' some people, some in my own country, some in far-flung locations across the world, who have definitely enhanced my life, and if I've been able to give 1% of what I've received over the last year, I'd take that as grounds to be proud of myself. With the rewards of getting to know people in Blogland come responsibilities as well, so I've always tried to be honest and not to deceive anyone, and also to help in any way I'm able to within the confines that cyberspace entails. I'm aware that anyone who reads this, or anything else I've written, only has the evidence of my words to support my assertion of truthfulness, but what you see, or read, is what you get in my case, beyond the pseudonymity I've chosen to use, which, as I've said several times, is for the protection of my family rather than myself.
So, where does my blog go from here? In the short term, at least, nowhere it hasn't been before. Despite the aforementioned ups and downs, and periodic doubts about the wisdom of continuing, I still find more pros than cons in my blogging experience, and as long as that perception continues, I'll be around. Will I still be here for a second 'blogaversary'? Who knows? Certainly not me. What I am certain of, though, is my continuing gratitude to everyone who follows, comments on and reads my blog - I wouldn't necessarily say I wouldn't be here at all without you, but I definitely wouldn't enjoy it as much. Thank you all very much.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Episodic dreaming - and relentless real life

I've had something of a lie-in, at least by my standards, in that I didn't get up until almost 9:00. I had woken a couple of times rather earlier than that, but, unusually, managed to get back to sleep again. In between the moments of wakefulness, I had a very rare experience for me, a dream where I went back almost to where I'd left off before waking up, like an episodic drama. The subject matter of the dream was a little unusual as well, as it centred around one of my daughter's schoolfriends, who I've known since she was six years old, is almost terrifyingly intelligent, and who is, as an aside from my perspective, developing into a very attractive young woman - I'd certainly be drooling over her if she was a boy!
There's been a half hour break between the previous paragraph and this one, and, after the earlier discussion of a dream world, reality has intervened in all its dubious glory. My wife and daughter arrived back from their trip yesterday evening - there was initially talk of them having two nights away, but, in the event, it was only one - and my wife got up at around 10:00, being off work herself this week. As soon as she made it as far as the kitchen, it was clear that I hadn't come up to scratch - 'Have you fed the cat?' was the first thing out of her mouth, not 'Good morning' or anything vaguely civilised like that. She then hung around, waiting, in her inimitable fashion, for me to volunteer to make tea and toast - no likelihood of her actually doing it herself. I'm sorry if I sound bitter, twisted and sulkily hard done by, but there are times when, for all I like being at home, I feel like I'm seen as the scullion. I'll get over it, no doubt.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Here's an interesting first!

My wife and daughter have gone off to the Midlands to visit the 'in-laws' today, and I gave them a lift to the station this morning. En route, my daughter, who was in 'teenager' mode, with her IPod and headphones, suddenly let out a 'Whoa!' from the back seat of the car. We asked her the reason for her expostulation, although I had a pretty good idea already. 'Fit lad' was the reply. I was right in my guess as to who/what she'd seen, because I'd spotted him as well. The thing is, I'd looked and thought 'No, too old' - he was about 15, at a guess, and, while he was good looking, he was too much youth and not enough boy for my tastes. So, the first time, to my knowledge, that my daughter has begun to 'outgrow' me! At least we won't be fighting over the likes of him, anyway!
Being on my own at home, I've taken the opportunity to have a thoroughly chilled out day. The most 'strenuous' thing I've done is to finish my new story for 'Cuckoos' - it's another novelty, to a degree, both in terms of its genesis, as I said the other day, and its format. I'm quite pleased with it, overall.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Taking the safety catch off?

I've just been on a mini shopping trip to our local (expensive) supermarket, buying something for dinner today and some Chardonnay for later, largely, because my wife and daughter are probably off on a trip to the Midlands tomorrow, although it's not quite finalised yet. More than many such trips of late, it turned into a bit of a boy-spotting exercise - if there are boys about, I can't help but look, compare and contrast, and there were certainly a few about this afternoon. I've always told myself that I'm only attracted to the good-looking ones, no more than 10% of the total, a kind of extra layer of safety, in an odd sort of way, in that the good-looking ones are more likely to have girlfriends (or, less plausibly, boyfriends) already, and thus be securely unavailable to the likes of me. What this afternoon has made me realise, though, is that this particular 'safety catch' is completely illusory - if the opportunity arose for me to become involved with any sort of boy who was willing and able, I'd take it. Looks are irrelevant. There was one boy in particular, walking around the shop with his family, about 14-ish, who was in no way blessed with 'model' looks (but then, there are few people who are less blessed than me in that regard), but who, to put it crudely, I certainly wouldn't have had any hesitation in taking to bed, as long as he assented. Sad, but true.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Interesting process

I've managed to get back into a bit of writing today, working on a story in 'Cuckoos'. This particular story, which isn't finished yet, but is coming along nicely, has evolved in an unusual way. It began over a month ago with a single word which I found on a website dedicated to unusual words (The Phrontistery) and which I decided would make a good title - the word is quaesitum, meaning 'that which is sought for; an object of search; the answer to a problem'. I wrote one paragraph the same day, but then couldn't see where to go next, hardly surprising given that there was no plot at that stage, and didn't return to the draft until a couple of days ago. Then, for whatever reason, I found a way forward, and have made steady progress since. It's almost turning my usual writing method inside out, where the plot comes to me fully formed, and I then just need to hang words onto a ready-made foundation. It's nice to know, I suppose, that there's more than one way to skin the proverbial cat.
As far as the object of my current search, a solution to the mess which seems to constitute my life at the moment, goes, today has been pretty neutral. Things haven't deteriorated noticeably, but nothing has miraculously repaired itself, either. At least one aspect of the last couple of days has been easily evaded - I've assiduously stayed away from reading any more sad (from my perspective) online stories. There's quite enough going on without gratuitously shooting myself in the foot.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Quo vadis?

OK, so the sky hasn't fallen - yet, anyway - so where do I go from here? There hasn't been much in the way of meaningful dialogue, but there hasn't been any repetition of this morning's recriminations, either. Maybe a retreat into platitudes is what's required at the moment - remain civilised while things calm down, and then try to rebuild the bridges.
Emotionally, as well, I've been rather calmer today - I was still feeling a bit volatile earlier on, as though it wouldn't have taken much to bring last night's brink of tears frustrations back to the surface, but that, fortunately, didn't last too long.
I've been lucky enough to have a couple of pieces of feedback, one by e-mail in response to one of my posts, and one in a reply to a comment I left on another blog, which have helped me to be able to learn something from the rollercoaster of the last 24 hours. When all's said and done, for all I feel awful from time to time about what I am, and what I want, I have managed to control myself over the years, and managed to avoid hurting anyone, except myself, perhaps. How much of that is through virtue, and how much through fear is a moot point, but if the 'correct' outcome is the ultimate result, then maybe the route to that outcome isn't so important. I'm not anywhere close to being able to love myself, but if I can rein in my propensity to hate myself, it would undoubtedly be a positive step.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Keep piling on the pressure....

....and something will inevitably break. After this morning, that something might well be my marriage. The lines of communication seem to be fraying by the day - the conversation we had this morning, before my wife went to work, was pretty painful, for both of us, common ground is scant at best at the moment. From my perspective, of course, I'm not helped by my need to keep so much hidden - if things are nearly falling apart without an outbreak of total honesty on my part, it's not hard to predict where things would go if I told my wife what I really feel, what I really want. It appears that my hopes of having reached the lowest ebb last night were misplaced - there is further to fall, after all.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Why?

What the fuck is wrong with me? Having just expatiated about my problems, I then do no more than to go back to the same bloody story I was reading earlier on, and screw myself up all over again by reading the next chapter. What compulsion is it that I have that makes me want to torture myself, over and over, by reading stories about what I've never had, can't have, will never have? I must have a self-destructive streak a mile wide. Absolute stupidity.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Happy holiday....or not, as the case may be

From the outset, I want to say that I'm not looking for any sympathy here. I feel I need to say that, because this post is probably going to be a litany of woe, published here with the sole motive of getting it off of my chest, to avoid, hopefully, the possibility of an eruption in an inappropriate direction.
I feel I'm in the throes of what could become a 'perfect storm' of the difficulties in my life, flowing together in a cumulative way and with the potential to drown my spirit, which could lead to all sorts of negative consequences. The news of yesterday, with its likely financial fallout, is still uppermost in my mind. The prospect of losing all we've worked for over the years, just to pay the bankers' bonuses, is almost too much to bear in itself, but when all the other stuff is piled on top, my resilience, which is one of my strong points usually, might not be enough to cope. Not for the first time, my physical health seems to have been put under pressure by the psychological stress I'm under - in the last 24 hours, I've succumbed to the beginnings of a cold, and, more significantly, a dose of gout, my first for some months. It's almost as though that now I'm on holiday, my immune system is having an outage as well, knowing it can afford to relax and not have to keep me fit for work. Mind over matter again, apparently.
Another issue, and one that could be convincingly argued to be a self-inflicted wound, is once again my propensity to read online stories that reinforce my sense of not being able to be in the sort of emotional space that I feel would suit me best. Or, to put it in words of one syllable - I want a boy. Wanting on its own, of course, doesn't achieve anything except frustration, and that frustration has had me on the edge of tears more than once in the last few hours, the more so because I know this particular problem is insoluble - boys are just not accessible in any way that is psychologically supportable to me. I'm not just saying this for effect, but I'm really not a rapist/molester - desperate as I am to find someone, I'm not so desperate as to resort to coercion of any sort.
I'm sorry to have dipped towards self-pity this evening, but I've always tried my best to be truthful in this blog, and what I've written reflects how I feel at the moment. Maybe this is the bottom of the trough which opened up yesterday - I certainly hope so.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How long does it take?

How long for my holiday to be thrown into disarray? From the time I walked through the door of my house, about two and three-quarter hours. My wife came home from work, and after a few pleasantries, announced that she'd had some news from work. My immediate premonitions of disaster weren't misplaced - basically, she's out of a job from the end of June, unless she gets one of the few jobs that her organisation will have available after that point, in which case she'll have to take a pay cut which will almost completely offset the pay increase I've gained by moving to London. The phrase 'fucking marvelous' springs most readily to mind. Maybe there will be a silver lining within this very dark cloud, but if so, it's remarkably well hidden at the moment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Oh no - there's a teenager in the house!

It's my daughter's 13th birthday today, so if I'm to believe the stereotypes, she should have turned into a surly, monosyllabic malcontent overnight! In fact, almost the first thing she said to me when I spoke to her on the phone this morning was that she didn't feel any different from yesterday, which pretty much mirrors the feelings I've always had about birthdays - they are, ultimately, just another day, and there's nothing about any of them that will magically change you into someone or something else. It's the first time I've missed my daughter's birthday for several years, so it's a bit disappointing, but, unless something totally unforeseen happens, I'll be back at home by mid-afternoon tomorrow, so I'll only be a day late for the festivities.
I've swapped the hobbit hole for a Travelodge this evening - they're motel-ish sort of places, for the benefit of my non-UK readers - because I have to be at work at 4:30 in the morning for another of my series of competence assessments, and it seemed to me that it would be easier to check out of one of these places at 'stupid o'clock' than it would from a hotel or B & B. The swap means that my accommodation is substantially more salubrious than the past two nights, but also rather further away from work, so it's an 'early to bed and very early to rise' experience I've got to look forward to, if 'looking forward' is the right concept. Still, no pain, no gain, as yet another cliche goes - after tomorrow, I'm on holiday for 10 days. I can hardly wait!

Love & bet wishes to all
Sammy B

There's nothing like healthy eating....

....and that was nothing like it! I'm back in the hobbit hole, albeit only for a couple of nights, and the nearest eaterie is a kebab shop. On the basis that, as Oscar Wilde memorably said, I can resist anything except temptation, I'm afraid I've just indulged in a cholesterol-laden mixed doner by way of my evening meal - and very nice it was too. Heart attack on a plate, and all that, but is this the face of a worried man? I don't think so.
Actually, my usual diet isn't too bad, although anyone who met me on the street would probably assume that I eat meals like this evening's on a regular basis, because there's rather more of me than is really advisable. It just seems that I'm one of those proverbial people who only have to look at a plate of fattening food to put on several pounds, but I've lived this long with my metabolism, and as I've no intention of dieting for the rest of my life, I'm stuck with what I've got for the foreseeable future.
Work-wise, I had a particularly easy day today, in that I was on one of our periodic briefing sessions. Apart from answering a few computerised pages of multiple choice questions relating to my job, which I managed to get through without too many alarms, it was just a case of sitting through a 'death by Powerpoint' session telling me numerous things I already knew. The object of the exercise, as far as my cynical outlook would have it, is that someone somewhere can put a tick in a bureaucratic box indicating that I've been briefed according to the company standards. It keeps the dole queues down, I suppose.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Divided by a common language?

There are times when talking to my wife can seem like a thousand mile hike through treacle while trying to hold a conversation with someone who not only can't understand English, but can't understand any terrestrial language at all. I'm stuck up here in London, trying to earn the proverbial crust - I even ended up working 4 hours overtime today, to cover for a rostering faux pas - so I was less than impressed when I rang home to be greeted by moans and groans about our, admittedly ailing, finances, revolving around how my wife wanted to dole out a pile of money we haven't got to our daughter so she can go out to the cinema in the week with some friends. I don't want to seem as though I'm putting my 'Scrooge' hat on, but my daughter has hundreds of pounds in her bank account, put there by us in lieu of pocket money, while my wife still seems to think that we're being neglectful parents if we don't hand over even more cash for outings like the one that's been planned. I think a dose of realistic expectation, probably more on my wife's part than my daughter's, might be useful at this point.
The phone call was made during my mid-shift meal break, and after it ended, I wandered the few minutes to the local supermarket (where I saw 12/10 boy recently), only to trip over another grade one cutie, this one probably pretty close to being of legal age, unusually for me - he must've been 14 or 15, tall and blond but still very boyish looking facially. A sweet antidote to a rather sour conversation.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Conventionality

Following on, at least tangentially, from yesterday's post, I came across an interesting example of how people find it much easier to trot out the kneejerk reaction than to actually think about the issues involved, while I was at work the other night. One of my colleagues cultivates the image of being the workplace 'eccentric', saying things, most of which would fall into the category of innuendo, I guess, which might lead to a superficial view that he has 'unusual' tastes (though probably not as unusual as me, to be fair). During one of the quiet periods of the night shift concerned, he and a couple of my other colleagues were talking - I wasn't involved in the conversation, but I was sitting close enough to hear what was being said - when discussion turned to someone who left my new workplace some years ago, and who has apparently recently been convicted of sex offences. The 'eccentric' came out with a description of the person concerned which left no doubt that, for all his outward oddness, his opinions were strictly, unthinkingly conventional, both in the phraseology he used and in the vehemence with which he spoke. It could have been regurgitated directly from the most lurid, hackneyed tabloid journalism which these cases attract, no thoughts of how or why the situation arose, or even of what actually happened, just the reflex condemnation. It didn't seem as though the higher brain centres were involved at all. I don't want to give the impression that I condone abuse, because I don't - those who coerce others into sexual activity that they are unwilling or unable to consent to deserve punishment - but for every case to be viewed in such prejudicially black and white terms I find depressing.

Love & bet wishes to all
Sammy B

Censorship

After what I consider to be thoroughly disturbing developments in blogland, or perhaps more accurately Blogger-land yesterday, I'm more than a little relieved to find I've still got a blog this morning. Blogger have removed a number of blogs with GLBT themes, and while this is nothing new, particularly in the case of picture blogs (even those that come nowhere close to any rational definition of 'pornography'), the difference in this case is that at least one strictly news and opinion based site, 'It's Getting Better', has been targeted. Have we reached the stage whereby saying anything positive about GLBT issues is seen as unacceptable and grounds for a blog to be deleted? What's being suggested here? That if anyone says anything that runs counter to the 'party line' of homosexuality, bisexuality et al being 'evil', 'unnatural', or whatever other epithet might be chosen, there's suddenly going to be a mass exodus from the ranks of the 'straight', or that the fabric of society is going to collapse overnight? I doubt it, somehow. It seems to be utterly beyond the wit and understanding of the 'haters' that being gay, bi, or even a boylover like me, isn't some sort of lifestyle choice that's made to be deliberately provocative or rebellious, it's something that comes from within. No-one, I hope, in this day and age would seriously suggest that all left-handed people should be forcibly converted to being right-handed, so what, can anyone tell me, is the difference between that nonsensical scenario and trying to bully and censor people out of their innate sexual orientation? I'm well aware that my blog, in part at least, addresses a controversial issue, in that I'm open about my status as a (celibate) boylover and how that status impacts on my life, so does that mean I can expect my blog to be deleted? If that is the case, I'm afraid the 'thought police' are going to be kept busy, because I'm not prepared to supinely accept that kind of censorship. My blog is backed up regularly, and I'm willing to relaunch it as often as necessary to exercise what I consider to be my freedom of speech, as long as I remain within the law. If I had any doubts about whether I should leave blogland after recent events, yesterday's heavy-handed attempt at repression has convinced me to stay and fight my corner.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Blast from the past

I'm staying at my brother's this week, but commuting by train to work to keep the costs down. Being on nights, I'm getting back to the local station during 'school run' time, and something I saw driving back to my brother's house took me back 34 years, give or take, in an instant. A young, dark-haired boy - that was all I could see of him, at the distance concerned - was walking the way I used to walk to school when I had just started in the sixth form, and began to meet up with R every day en route. Who was R? The first boy I ever fell in love with. I have mentioned him before somewhere in the blog, and written a fictionalised version of my relationship with him in 'Cuckoos'. He's only 3 years younger than me, so he'll be middle-aged now - seeing the boy this morning just made me wonder where he is and what he's doing, and whether he'd look at me with the same visceral hatred that was in his eyes the last time I saw him, nearly thirty years ago, if we happened to meet by chance in the street today.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

On reflection....

....and after a few hours sleep, I still feel really down. This feeling, though, is much more to do with internal, rather than external things, the news about DJ is more a focus for sadness and discontent that was already there than the cause of any problems.
To me, DJ isn't just another blogger who's come and gone, but that's certainly no fault of his - I'm the one who's managed to get myself overly attached to the young man, and I'm the one who needs to deal with it.
Perhaps it's time for me to go, and concentrate on issues in my and my family's life that I might actually be able to have some substantive impact on, rather than sitting and moping. I certainly need to seriously assess whether my staying in blogland will do more harm than good, for me and for others.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

T_T

DJ's gone. Maybe it's because I've been up for over 24 hours, and I'm being selfish, but the only thing I can say at the moment is that I'm absolutely gutted.

Love & best wishes to all, and most of all to DJ
Sammy B

Words, and their effects

Since talking about the 'mechanics' of writing a little yesterday, the building blocks, the words themselves, have impressed themselves on my attention. I've always liked words, for as long as I can remember - I recall being called 'big headed' when I was only around 7 or 8, by a girl at primary school who seemed to have an issue with the vocabulary I used, an early illustration of the power of words, perhaps. At that time, my reading age was something like 13 or 14, so I just used the words that I knew, without any pretension - I was far too young to have thought of self-aggrandisement in that fashion, and, even subsequently, I've rarely used my facility with words as an 'offensive weapon', although, equally, I tend not to deliberately 'dumb down' my language, so maybe some people might get the impression I'm trying to make them look less intelligent than me, even when I have no such intention.
One of the things I like about words is that there always seems to be something new to learn, new backwaters of the English language to explore. I found a couple of new words yesterday during my peregrinations around cyberspace. One was a slightly obsolete word, chevisance, meaning an achievement or deed, but the other, which I came across twice yesterday after never having seen it before, was kleptocracy, meaning government by thieves, which seems to me to be a pretty good description of much of 'Western' society at the moment, given the propensity of politicians, bankers and their ilk to award themselves obscene amounts of money while the rest of us bump along the bottom, paying for it all.
The way words are put together, into, for example, fiction, can have marked effects, too, of course. I've spent a fair chunk of this morning reading, and given that what I've been reading was to be found on a website well-known for erotic fiction - OK, Nifty! - there has been a distinct physiological effect. Too much information, doubtless, but enjoyable for me to experience, even if not for others to read about!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Writing

Writing is an odd pursuit, somehow. People do it all the time, in a utilitarian way, without giving it too much thought, but when you try to do it 'seriously', it doesn't seem nearly as straightforward. Not for the first time recently, I've been looking through the numerous drafts I've accumulated in the list of posts of my other blog, reading what I've written and trying to assess which, if any, have got any future. There are various fragmentary bits of stories, some little more than a couple of sentences, some of which seem reasonably good ideas, but none of which seem to want to fall into place as anything substantive. It's a bit frustrating, really. The only story that I'm making any progress with at all is something explicitly sexual, probably fit only for somewhere like Nifty, which, on the whole, people don't tend to peruse for literary merit. I suppose it's difficult to write about subjects you know little or nothing about, but, on that basis, it seems that I don't know anything about anything, apart from my interior monologue about boys and how interactions with them or between them might play out. Even that is only my overheated imagination in that particular area kicking in, I suspect, because I doubt that any of the scenarios I've written about have much, if any, connection with real life. What I need to do, I think, is to find a way of writing and, more importantly, completing a story of a different kind than those that have found their way into 'Cuckoos' so far, if only to prove to myself that I have the capacity to do it. There's certainly more to being a writer than arranging words in a syntactically correct order, not that I ever doubted that was the case.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Truth - do I dare?

Almost certainly not, but it was pretty hard to explain to my wife why I was so down this morning, despite being back at home. All I could talk about was our ongoing financial travails, and how much I'm struggling with being away. That, of course, is only half, if that, of the problem, and I was close to tears of frustration at one point, knowing I couldn't break through the wall of pretence to say what I really feel, without bringing the whole edifice crashing down. I'm starting to come back to some kind of equilibrium now, four or five hours later, but only through the usual coping mechanisms, rather than any resolution of the underlying issues.
It doesn't help unduly when I so often seem to come across those who pique my unachievable longings - I called into our local supermarket on the way back from dropping my daughter off at her regular Saturday afternoon activity, to be confronted by a boy who, while he wasn't in the stunningly good looking category of the boy I saw yesterday, although he was attractive enough, was eye-catching in a different way, in that he moved with such grace and fluidity, even just walking around the shop. It probably sounds stupid that the way a boy walks should have any effect at all on anyone, even a boylover, but grace of movement was one of the elements that made DBJ such a delight to my eye over the years that I was lucky enough to be able to see him regularly. Sad, obsessive, incorrigible - yes, I'm probably all that, and more.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

12 at 12 at 12

Staying where I have and travelling at the times I have in recent days, it's been a virtually boy-free week for me - until about an hour ago, that is. I called into a supermarket close to my workplace to get some food to take into work, where, as I was going in, a mother and son (presumably) were leaving. The boy was about 12-ish, and to call him an absolute screaming cutie is a considerable understatement - he was utterly gorgeous. Better still, I got to look straight at him for all the time he was in my eyeline, because they were quite 'posh' and didn't deign to look around at what the peasantry like me were up to, so I didn't even run the risk of being 'caught looking'. This all happened more or less at midday, and the third '12'? - 12/10! (Yeah, I know it's an arithmetical impossibility, but allow me a litlle bit of literary license, please!)

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

To leave or not to leave

Early to bed and early to rise overnight - I was pretty shattered last night, and crashed out, but that, in turn, has led me to be up and about early, if not especially bright, this morning. I need to check out of Hobbiton by 10:00, anyway, so I'll be getting ready to do that fairly soon.
One of the posts that appeared while I was slumbering was from someone who has been a 'cyberfriend' for some time, generous with care and support. Unless I've misconstrued what he's written, it seems, sadly, that he's intending to leave blogland, which has made me think again about my future here.
I suppose for anyone to undertake any enterprise, there has to be a 'cost-benefit analysis', even if only a subconscious one - is there more to gain or to lose by doing what I'm doing? That's not to say that many people don't make sacrifices to their own ideal of well-being for the benefit of others, but there's still a net benefit. In my case, I've thought on occasions that in writing my blog as I do, I lay myself open to risk in a number of ways - if my blog is linked to my real life identity, I could potentially lose my job, my marriage, even, thinking of a worst case scenario, my life - vigilantism is out there - while if I think about my internal life, it could be argued that I'm not doing my psyche any favours by wallowing in the issues that have weighed me down for so many years, most notably, of course, my attraction to boys and all the deceit and subterfuge that entails. On the credit side, however, there has been a therapeutic, if not quite cathartic (yet) effect in writing about those issues, and, most importantly, I've had the good fortune to have come into contact with a number of good people who have been kind enough to help, encourage and support me with their comments and friendship - without them, I'd still be brooding about my 'problems', no doubt, but alone.
On balance, then, I still feel I have more to gain than to lose by continuing my association with blogland, both in terms of keeping my blog and in reading others, at least as things stand at the moment. There may come a time when I feel the balance has tipped too far towards the debit side, and then I'll need to reassess, but, for the moment, I'll still be here.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fiat Lux

The motto of my old school - 'Let there be light'. And there is, for the moment at least, two and a bit hours on, although I overheard one of the workmen saying he didn't know whether it would hold. Sounds like my fragile mood at the moment, too.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's getting a bit difficult

I've recently got back to the hobbit hole to find the place in darkness, and workmen digging a hole about fifteen feet away (presumably in connection with the power outage). I wasn't exactly in a sparkling mood to start with, and given that I'm liable to be without my laptop when the battery dies in an hour or so, my last link with sanity and civilisation will be lost. It's not going to take a lot more to see me head back to work, pick the car up and run back to Cornwall, never to return. And that's assuming I don't do anything even more quixotic. What makes me more worried about how I'm feeling at the moment is that there's little emotion involved - I'm feeling cold and flat, but still on the edge. I know I've got responsibilities, and people who need me to be strong, but, ultimately, if I can't justify all this crap to myself, it's not going to work. It's certainly not working just now.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A bit of a nothing day

Not that I'm the sort of person that needs constant drama in their life before I'm happy, but today has been at the other end of the scale entirely. Got up, fairly late by my standards, got ready, wandered around the corner from the hotel to Sainsburys to pick up a few odds and sods, went to work, straightforward shift, came back to the hotel, went online, and that's really about it. I can't even say 'the most exciting thing that happened today was....', because not even anything exciting enough to fall into the category of being appropriate to be added to that unexciting phrase has happened. I suppose most, if not all people have days like mine has been today, totally forgettable. Except, of course, I've memorialised its mundanity by writing about it here. There's probably some irony there somewhere, but I haven't got the mental wherewithal at this time of night to look for it!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B