The last day of summer

Meteorologically speaking, at least. I still subscribe to the old-fashioned version, that autumn doesn't start until September 21, and I hope today's reasonably nice weather lasts one more day, because I'm planning to go 'eye candy hunting', again, tomorrow afternoon. It's the last weekend of the school holidays, so some nice weather might bring the cuties out of hiding, with any luck. Vicarious thrills, as ever, but better than nothing.
I could do with a bit of cheering up, too - well, more than usual, I know I've been a relentlessly miserable sod for months - because another batch of divorce paperwork arrived yesterday. I'm becoming more resigned to the inevitability of the process than I was a few months ago, but I still hate every minute of it. In some ways, I wish I could make myself fall out of love with my wife, but I just can't. And, to judge by precedent, I never will. After all, I've never fallen out of love with anyone I've genuinely loved before, even the ones who've hurt me. This is the worst of all, though - I know it's all my fault, reaping the fruits of not being honest, even with myself, but losing what I've lost has broken my heart. The knowledge that there will never, in any reasonably conceivable circumstances, be anything to mitigate that loss just makes matters worse.
The last day of summer, but my emotional winter continues unabated.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tired, and tired. And an anniversary, sort of

Tired, in a fatigue sense, because I worked a twelve hour night shift on Monday, had a nominal day off yesterday, mostly spent up in London, then worked a twelve hour day shift today. I'll be off to bed shortly, I suspect.
Tired, almost heartsick, of the relentless stupidity and bigotry of some of those I work with. I was asked a few days ago, by a good friend, if I'd considered working elsewhere. Days like today make me want to apply for a hermit's job somewhere, preferably on a deserted island.
And it's six years, this week - I can't remember the exact day, but I definitely remember that it was the last week of August - that I saw DBJ for the first time. And not far from exactly two years since I last saw him. On the train back from work, I daydreamed about a 'parallel universe' where I'd have walked out of the station and into his arms. Not in this universe, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Discuss

Those kind enough to be regular visitors to my blog may notice a new addition today - a link to a page entitled 'An invitation to a discussion'. This follows on from a post of a few days ago, inviting anyone interested, and who is prepared to be civil and rational, to come here to talk about the issues raised by, and surrounding, boylove. I'm quite prepared to listen to, and respond to, anything from the most virulent criticism to unreserved support, as long as the opinions expressed are genuine and couched in respectful terms, and you can be assured that I will extend the same courtesy to anyone expressing their opinions in such a fashion, even if I totally disagree with their substance.
If anyone would like to enter the discussion, please either leave a comment on any of my posts, or e-mail me at the address shown in the sidebar and on the 'invitation' page. I look forward to hearing your opinions and questions.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Forlorn

There were some meteorological fireworks in London this afternoon, thunder and lightning accompanied by what, by UK standards, was torrential rain. I managed to evade most of it, by dint of sitting on a couple of buses, during the course of which I saw a breathtakingly cute boy, standing under a bus shelter with his family, wearing a t-shirt and jeans, and looking disappointedly at the deluge in front of him. Apart from empathising with him for having his day spoiled by the weather, my own woes were highlighted - I would have loved nothing more than to have whisked him away for some TLC, but that would never be an option, leaving me as forlorn as he had seemed to be. Yeah, I'm going around and around the closed circle in my head, achieving nothing, but that doesn't change the fact that I want a boy so much it hurts.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What's the point?

Of any of it, really? With one very honourable exception, no-one's got the slightest interest in any of this. It's all met with a wall of silence, of indifference. Even when I stick my neck out, no-one cares, for good or ill. And the fucking dog has arrived in Cornwall, to cement my place in history. Yeah, yeah, childish petulance, grow up, all of that. It's not easy being irrelevant.

I've lost everything, in search of an unrequitable dream. There is no point, anymore.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

This seems like a good idea at this time....

....but probably isn't. Still, it's late, after a busy but uncomplicated day at work, and I've been mellowed by a moderate amount of liquid anaesthetic, so, nothing ventured, nothing gained.
The last time I thought about this, I chickened out. Maybe, though, if I can help one person in a similar situation to my own, the risk of setting myself up as a target for all the haters and trolls out there might be worthwhile. As I said when I talked about this to my daughter when she was staying with me over the weekend, I'm absolutely certain I'm not the only boylover in cyberspace, even if only by the law of averages. From what I've seen, though, I'm one of the few in Blogland, at least, who's prepared to tell my side of the story, to try and encourage people to think beyond the caricature 'loser in a dirty mac' offering sweeties to little boys in the park, to see that there are real people, with a real dilemma, namely of living with desires that 'society' loathes and despises, behind the mask.
What I would like to propose is that anyone, pro-, anti-, or simply curious, who would like to talk, respectfully and civilly, about boylove and matters arising, is welcome to use my blog or my e-mail (sammyb50@gmail.com) to do so. Anonymous is fine, if that is your choice. I can only speak from my own experience and perspective, and I certainly don't have any easy answers, because I'd apply them to my own life if I did, but, given the almost total absence of any sort of forum where this issue can be discussed with any degree of rationality, I'd like to help if I can, and learn where I need to. By writing about my attractions as I have over the past two and a half years, I've taken risks, and maybe this is the biggest risk of all, but I really feel that the subject needs to be discussed without the usual kneejerk reactions. In that vein, flames will be cheerfully ignored (or held up to public ridicule, if appropriate).
I hope to hear from you soon.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fleeting moment

One second, two at the most. Not enough time even to react in any meaningful way. But, still, one of those interactions that has the power to evoke strong but seemingly incompatible reactions. He was 11, maybe 12 at most. He'd just got off of my train back from work, at one of the intermediate stations, earlier this evening, from the carriage behind mine, with his family. He was just lovely. As the train began to move off, he began 'play chasing' his little brother along the platform, using the high, exaggerated steps kids use when they want to look like they're running in slow motion, and I couldn't help but watch and smile. Then he looked up at the train - and smiled and waved. At me. Without a doubt, at me. It could, I suppose, have been sarcastic, but it certainly looked genuinely happy and friendly. Then, as the train accelerated away, he was gone. Then the dichotomous emotions kicked in. A moment of near elation, delight at the apparent connection. A few seconds later, almost diametrically opposite deflation, as the hopelessness of my situation asserted itself, the knowledge that it's vanishingly unlikely that I'd ever see him again, and even if I did, it's equally unlikely that anything would come of it. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, anyway - the haters call this, this torture, a choice?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Summer in the City

The name of the YouTuber gathering my daughter has come up to visit this weekend, staying with me until Sunday. And also where I've been today, while she was at the aforementioned gathering, since I actually had a day off today. Not that I did anything very inspired while I was there, just my usual bus-borne meandering and eye candy spotting. There were a few examples of the genre, too, most notably three boys together, with a couple of adults, I saw just after lunch, probably brothers, because they all looked relatively alike. The eldest was around 12, the cutest by some margin, and very desirable, from my perspective, while the other boys were around 9 and 6 respectively, too young, of course, but very nice to look at. Thinking about it later, it was a bit like Optimal incarnate, my ultimate fantasy, the cute boy with the cute younger brother - and the cute even younger brother! Far too much for my hiccuping heart to cope with, even in the infinitesimally unlikely event of anything like it happening in real life!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Whither goest thou?

This will probably sound like a continuation of yesterday's post, but it isn't, really. I was in the kitchen at my accommodation a short while ago, when the thought struck me that I simply don't want to carry on doing the job that I'm doing. It was odd, more like the realisation of the end of a relationship than a career issue, a sort of 'I've fallen out of love' moment. The practicalities aren't so straightforward, though. The obvious main issue is money. If I do pull the plug on what I've been doing since I was a teenager, how am I going to live? Is it possible for someone to reinvent themselves at 52, with virtually no experience of doing anything other than working in the industry that I do? The idea of writing appeals to me, but given the response, or perhaps more accurately, the almost total lack of response to Nephelokokkygia, it seems that I would be the only one the idea would appeal to. OK, I'm well aware that much of the stuff I've posted in the other blog concentrates on a subject area the vast majority of people find outrightly offensive, and that even the few who might be slightly more receptive wouldn't want to make that receptiveness public, for their own safety, if nothing else. I've tried from time to time to venture into other topics, other genres, but the boys are always in the forefront of my mind, waiting to entice me back to telling their stories, and, to some extent mine, if only in a fantasy context. 'All fiction is autobiography' is a bit of a cliché, but something being a cliché doesn't necessarily make it untrue. That said, to have any realistic expectation of publishing anything I write, I would have to find a way to come up with a different kind of story. And that, hitherto, is where it has largely fallen down.
So, where from here? In the short term, back to work tomorrow morning, I guess, but I have had a look online to see if a more congenial place might be available, at least in terms of somewhere to live - I found a really nice furnished one bedroom flat with a super view over a very nice bit of South East Cornwall, in the place I identified, right at the start of the disintegration of my life nearly six months ago, as the one I'd feel most at home in. Maybe....but, given my lack of adventurousness, maybe not.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

I want out!

There are days when early retirement not only seems like the best option, but the only psychologically sustainable option, and today is, assuredly, one of those days. I found myself in my manager's office this morning, being patronisingly lectured, as though I was a fractious infant school child, over something that happened at the end of last week. And no, it wasn't the spat with the shift manager on Saturday, either. This was over something that happened just over 24 hours earlier. The sector of the company I work for has recently entered a 'strategic alliance' with what, in business parlance, would be considered our 'principal customer'. What it has meant in practice is that the 'customer' now seems to think that they're in total charge of everything, and my colleagues and I are just there to accommodate their every whim, no matter how stupid. When things were disrupted on Friday evening, I had a telephone conversation with one of their staff, during which I wasn't rude or offensive, but, as my manager himself conceded this morning, simply assertive, making it clear that I would be undertaking my part of the overall job in as close to a normal way as circumstances allowed, rather than in what I saw as the random fashion he thought it ought to be done, which led to him putting in an official complaint about my 'attitude'. The irony of it all was that the disruption had been caused by one of our 'customer's' customers getting into an altercation with one of their staff, doing something idiotically dangerous and getting themselves seriously injured. If this 'alliance', and its apparent consequences, are the future of our industry, the sooner pre-privatisation 'deadwood' like me can get out, the better. I've already done the sums, and I could, if I'm frugal, eke out my pension for three or four years while still meeting the financial commitment I've made in respect of my daughter as part of the ongoing divorce proceedings. It's an appealing prospect, especially after today - go and rent a bedsit in Cornwall, and give myself three years to write my bestseller. Well, probably abjectly fail to write my bestseller, and die starving in my garret, but I can daydream.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Always something there to remind me

As the old song goes. It's happened again this afternoon, sitting on a bus in one of the less salubrious parts, with all due respect, of South London. The souless recorded voice announcing the name of the next bus stop came out with a road named after a place, a very small village, in South East Cornwall. The village where my daughter's best friend in her primary school days lives, and a village where a house was for sale a few years back, a house which, had my life been a few percentage points different, I could've afforded to buy. But instead, I'm in this nexus of desolation. Butterflies and hurricanes?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Trying my best....

....to out myself in front of a room full of my work colleagues yesterday evening, that is. I contrived to have a stand-up row with the shift manager, who's a vile, ignorant bigot, and spectacularly stupid, to boot. The subject matter of the argument, though, was what might have raised a few eyebrows - he made a sneering remark about Tom Daley being a 'gay boy', the implication being that anything he achieves is worthless as a result of his supposed sexuality, during the coverage of last night's diving event, which was on in our rest room. I completely went off at him, in a way that has threatened on innumerable previous occasions, but never actually come about through much gritting of teeth and biting of tongue. I've absolutely no idea whether Tom Daley is gay or not, and I couldn't care less either way, but I just couldn't stand there and listen to such claptrap from a man whose only chance of making the Olympics would be if they made talking out of your arse a medal event - in that case, he could start packing his bags for Rio 2016 right now!
My daughter's visit earlier in the week was good - for her, at least. She enjoyed the gig she went to, having looked forward to it for months, and met up with a number of cyberfriends in person for the first time. I had mixed feelings, though. It was lovely to see her, for the first time in six weeks, or thereabouts, and we did have a couple of hours together, going out for lunch, but once she started getting together with her 'crew', I was immediately consigned to irrelevance, apart from being the 'guide' that got them to where they needed to be. I guess it's something every parent of a teenager has to come to terms with, that increasingly large parts of their lives won't be shared with you. And, looking at it dispassionately, that's exactly as it should be - part of the 'art of parenthood', if there is such a thing, is helping your children to become independent - and knowing when to let go. She's coming up again next weekend, though, for three days, so I'm hoping to spend a bit more time with her this time round.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Right on the edge

Maybe I shouldn't be surprised, given the disintegration of my life in the last few months, but surprised I was. I was in for yet another twelve hour shift at work today, and for the most part, it was routine, if seemingly interminable. The last half hour, though, led to me leaving the building absolutely seething, and, on the journey back, I was really questioning whether I ever want to set foot in the place again. And I didn't even do anything wrong, but simply did something someone else didn't like, and decided to react to. Sounds familiar. Sounds just like my marriage, or its demise. It underlined to me how close to the edge I am, how little it might take to induce me to just walk away from everything. Life included.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

First payday

Reading Jay's latest post this morning reminded me of the first 'job' I ever had, certainly the first time I ever earned any money by my own efforts. It was the school summer holidays, and I was either 8 or 9, I can't remember which. A new block of flats was being built just across from our house, and at the front, by the main road, the construction plans evidently called for a low wall. What purpose it was supposed to serve, I don't know, because it was only about two feet high, running the length of the building midway between the pavement and the structure itself. I can only imagine it was supposed to be decorative, in some shape or form. That week, obviously not having anything better to do, I spent quite a bit of time watching the two bricklayers who were building the wall, and, before long, I was chattering away to them, and fetching and carrying a few small things for them. They even let me have a go at laying a few bricks myself - the wall is still there, forty-odd years on, so my handiwork is still on view, although I wouldn't even be able to find the relevant section myself now - and, on the Friday, when the job was finished, one of the workmen gave me two shillings, or half a crown (we were still using 'old money' then), something like that, as my 'wages' for the week. I was thrilled to bits, needless to say, rushing home to tell my mum all about it. These days, men fraternising with a young boy in such circumstances would no doubt attract, at the very least, parental suspicion, if not worse, but I guess they were, as the saying goes, more innocent times. And I effectively had my pocket money doubled that week, my first introduction to 'capitalism', I suppose.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Second fiddle to a dog - again

They say virtue is its own reward, but there are times when a little more would be nice. I travelled up to 'work town' three hours early, so I could meet up with my brother and his family and make sure they got parked up in our staff car park in good time to head to their Olympic venue. I did spend an hour with them (in Starbucks, of all places) before they headed off to catch their Tube, the plan being that they would meet up with me for a drink this evening on their way back. I should have seen the signs, though, because my sister-in-law was having the vapours about their dog at 11:00 this morning - the animal had been left 'home alone', but they'd arranged for someone to check on it during the day, and, in any case, it gets left for hours when they're working. When I got a text about an hour before I finished work saying they were 'too tired' to wait for me, and were going straight home, I'd have been prepared to bet a pound to a pinch of canine excrement that the dog was the real reason. I suppose it could be said, given my brother's generous hospitality in the past, that I'm being churlish to complain about being left high and dry this evening, but sometimes it's hard to hide your disappointment.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Knowing where you stand

In my case, traded in for a dog. Of all the compromises I made, having a dog was one I refused, because I really don't like dogs at all, and never have. Now that I'm gone, and after the cat's untimely demise, a dog will be moving in. It's not my house, it's none of my business. But I can't help feeling it's all part of my rejection.
So I lost myself again in a pair of eyes. Pathetic, I know, but there really isn't much else left.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

1/8/12

0845: On my way into work, having been called in for a 12 hour shift - my phone rang literally two minutes after I'd woken up, so I was a bit bleary, to say the least. In all honesty, I still feel half asleep now, even after a shower and walk to the station.
Something I heard on the radio news at 8:00 did make an impression on my befogged mind, though - a report has found that the number of children in the UK allowed to play outside without supervision has fallen drastically in the past 30 or 40 years. 'Over-protective parents' are blamed, but what about the sensationalist reporting of the undoubtedly sad, but very rare cases where children have been abducted and abused, but which has convinced parents that there's a 'paedo' on every street corner? The media have, as is often the case, much to answer for.
1140: That picture. I spent a good 20 minutes last night just gazing at it, not upset or elated, just lost in a web of memory and beauty. And it's not even a picture of the boy himself, just a lookalike, albeit a close match. Was it love, or just superficial infatuation? I'd like to think it's the former, given the avalanche of consequences that have ensued, the first tremor on that late summer day almost six years ago, when I first saw him, helping his family take their boat down to the river. I thought they were just tourists, it wasn't until the school term started a week or so later that I realised that he lived locally, as he walked past my workplace with his mother and sister on the way to the local primary school, a pretty little boy in his uniform red sweatshirt and grey trousers. Memories, memories.

1610: Some time in the past few hours, while I've been working away here in West London, 200-odd miles away, our house has been formally repossessed. I feel, somehow, that I ought to be more upset than I am, but I can't bring myself to grieve over what, even if I was still living there, wouldn't really be a home any longer. Everything that made it 'home' was effectively lost in that hour on February 29. Still, the bankers and their minions will doubtless get their bonuses. I can hardly restrain my joy at the thought.
2130: Back at base again, after a long, reasonably intense, but relatively unproblematic day at work. I've just spoken, fairly briefly, to my brother, who's coming up to London on Saturday with my sister-in-law to have their taste of the Olympics - they've got tickets for the volleyball at Earls Court. I'm going to meet up with them for an hour or so before work, and I've arranged that they can leave their car in our staff car park while they go to the event on the Tube. It'll be good to catch up with them again.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B