Saturday 30 June 2012

Dyw genes, Kernow

Although I desperately, desperately hope it's only going to be au revoir. For all practical purposes, I've moved today, leaving Cornwall after twelve years, three weeks and a day. I said, a number of years ago, that if I was ever forced to leave Cornwall, I'd never go back, even for a day trip, because seeing what I'd lost would just be too painful, but the circumstances of my leaving haven't been anything like any I'd envisaged. I didn't look back as I was crossing 'the bridge' at around 2:15 this afternoon but that was largely because I was driving (my wife's car, en route to dropping my daughter off at her drama school, and me at the station to head up to Surrey). I did look in the rear view mirror, though, several times, seeing what I'd expected to be my home for the rest of my life disappearing like a mirage over the horizon.
Over the previous 24 hours, I'd done a round trip by car to my new 'home', moving a relatively small amount of stuff - I've left far more behind than I've taken, certainly, not least because I just haven't got the room to store very much. My daughter did the trip with me, ostensibly to give me a hand, but more for moral support, really, and that was the only saving grace I can draw from it.
The latter part of the train trip back had its own saving grace, though - I actually had a more than passably cute boy, 12/13-ish, sitting next to me, at least partially voluntarily, in that on the busy train we were on, there were alternative seats he could have chosen, albeit not many, for fifteen minutes or so until the crowds began to dissipate at the various stops en route and he moved to sit with his adult companion (grandfather, probably, given their relative ages) when a suitable space became available. And he even smiled and said 'thank you' when he got up! As if I would have turned him away!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 27 June 2012

Somewhere in Surrey....

....I've had a virtually solitary day. I ventured out to the local supermarket around midday, but that was about it. I did manage to concoct a new story out of the musings of yesterday, though, and it's now posted on Nephelokokkygia. It's something a bit different from anything I've written before, which was something I wanted to do, so, to that extent, I'm moderately pleased with it. I'm just debating whether to tinker with another story, albeit one that's more typical of my normal output, that's been sloshing around in draft for nearly two years. I would like to find a way of finishing it, because it's got at least one section that I think is as good as anything else I've written, but whether it will eventually see the light of day is still uncertain.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 26 June 2012

Scene of the crime

I keep going back there, despite its bad associations - the pub from where I made the call that culminated in my coming out to my wife. Tonight's visit there wasn't entirely accidental, though, because we had a particularly acrimonious conversation earlier in the day, probably the least civilised exchange that has taken place in the whole benighted almost four month process, leaving me with a distinct feeling of needing a drink. When the opening gambit of the conversation isn't 'How are you?', or even something anodyne like 'What's the weather like?', but 'When do you get paid?', the only way is down, frankly. I have no intention of shirking my responsibilities to my family, but I'm not a bloody walking cashpoint, either.
My second consecutive day in London wasn't entirely blighted by the ill-feeling, though. I might, in response to something I saw on a poster advertising a new film, have come across an idea for a new story, and one which, if I can build on the plot framework I concocted in my head, would be in a much-needed new genre - most of my stories, I have to admit, are different aspects of much the same theme. I could well undertake a 'writing day' tomorrow, to see if I can get into it.
And not only that, I saw the future! Well, maybe. I was meandering through inner suburban North West London as the schools were finishing for the day, when the bus I was on passed a gaggle of homegoing pupils, amongst whom were a pair of boys, almost certainly brothers, by their resemblance to each other, both of whom had beautiful hair, especially the younger. But with them was a forty-ish man, presumably their father. And he was bald! Poor little guys. Behold the future - of your hair, at least!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Monday 25 June 2012

Spare part

First day of my ten day break from work, and, despite being late to bed, I haven't been able to sleep in this morning. Which seems to accentuate the fact that this is the first time that I've been off work since my domestic world disintegrated, leaving me effectively homeless apart from my room here in Surrey. So rather than getting ready to catch the earliest westbound train and looking forward to a week and a half in Cornwall as I would have been hitherto, I'm sitting here wondering what, if anything, to do with myself. The fact that I'm not exactly awash with money doesn't help the situation, either. The weather forecast is, for once, reasonably encouraging today, though, and there is, indeed, quite a lot of blue sky in evidence as I look out of the window, so going out and about might well be an option. If I can garner enough enthusiasm to get ready and go, that is. If I do go, it will be London again, using my season ticket to get to my work station, then my Oyster card to cruise around on the bus network, I would guess. I might find some inspiration in the next couple of hours, who knows.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Sunday 24 June 2012

Above the parapet (part 2)

Fifteen hours or thereabouts later, I'll try and pick up the thread of what I said earlier. It might well be seen as controversial, or even indefensible in some eyes, and make me liable to be shot at, but I intend to follow my consistent policy of being honest and true to myself in this blog.
As I said before, Sandusky the rapist completely deserves the full measure of punishment the law allows. Some of the offences he stood accused of, though, I would argue shouldn't be crimes at all. What I'm getting at is the whole vexed question of consent. 'The age of consent', as far as I'm concerned, is purely a cultural construct. If it was a biological, a physiological absolute, then the age of consent would be standard everywhere. But that is patently not the case. Within Europe alone, it ranges between 13 and 18. What I am searching for in my life, and I'm sure I'm not the only one, is a loving, caring, consensual relationship. I fail to see how the law can say that an individual can say 'yes' to such a relationship only after a specific, arbitrary day, in the case of the UK, their 16th birthday, whereas the previous day, they were considered to be clueless children. And the same young person in this country, had they chanced to have been born Spanish instead, would have been able to make that decision for themselves three whole years earlier. The whole thing is completely lacking a logical basis, as far as I'm concerned. I fully accept that there have to be laws to protect the vulnerable, of any age, those who are for whatever reason unable to give informed consent, but why there should be a draconian, 'tablets of stone' approach to the subject escapes me. Unless, of course, it's not about 'protection' at all, but about control, the powers-that-be, spiritual and temporal, arrogating to themselves the right to dispense a desirable commodity, in this case a pleasurable physical experience, as they see fit, to help them to maintain their unjustified position of power and influence.
Which leads me on to another aspect of the subject. The often-quoted 'power imbalance' in cross-generational relationships, the assumption that the older person always imposes their will on the younger. In my opinion, that is a ridiculously easy 'problem' to solve. Allow the younger person to take charge, let them set the agenda, to allow as much or as little as they themselves are comfortable with to take place. I can speak from my own experience here, in the shape of the relationship I had with my cousin when he was in his early teens and I was in my early twenties. I would have loved to have gone to bed with him, and he knew it, but it didn't happen, because he didn't want it to happen, because he wasn't prepared to go that far. He allowed a small amount of affectionate physical contact, at an 'arm around the shoulder' level, but that was as much as he was comfortable with, so that was as far as I went. It's a simple matter of communication, like any other close relationship should be. Listen, understand, don't transgress the boundaries. The younger person may, in time, allow something more, or they may not, as in the case of my cousin. Whatever that decision is, the older person should always respect it.
But that respect, that reciprocity, is not extended by society. Even if a relationship between a man and a boy is fully consensual, its coming to light in today's world, in the vast majority of cases, sets off an avalanche of negative consequences, with the almost ubiquitous hysterical reaction from 'authority' figures, parents, schools, social services, law enforcement, often causing far more damage to the young person than anything that could ever have happened within the relationship itself. The assumption that the younger person, the 'victim', is always 'damaged goods' as a result of any such relationship all too often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Even in the face of such negativity, though, I still believe that there could be circumstances where someone like me could be a partner in a mutually satisfying and beneficial relationship with a boy. I seriously doubt that it will ever happen, not least because part of my strategy for coping with my attractions is to stay as far away from boys as I can, certainly emotionally, and even in terms of physical proximity, to the extent that's possible, but what I don't doubt is that it could happen. Love is love, caring is caring. Put the other first, always, and accept what is offered in return with gratitude. Maybe one day. Just maybe.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Above the parapet

I've got about twenty minutes to try and write this post before I have to go to work, so I'll try and keep it coherent. I want to write this stuff while it's fresh in my mind, though.
Just before I gave in to total exhaustion shortly after 9:00 last night (seven consecutive early turns taking their toll), I read something online which managed what I would have considered to be the impossible task of keeping me awake for another almost half hour, as I lay in bed with thoughts churning in my mind. I read that the Jerry Sandusky/Penn State trial in the US had ended, with Sandusky found guilty of virtually all of the charges he faced. I read a handful of comments on one post on perhaps the most sceptical and liberal site of all those I've come across, and even there, comment no.2 (of 305) came out with the 'I hope he gets raped in prison' meme. I haven't ventured elsewhere, but I have no doubt at all that the same sentiment, and far, far worse, will be repeated all over the net, and that another kneejerk assumption, that all boylovers are rapists, will be close behind in 'popularity'.
I'm a boylover, and have been, to all intents and purposes, for 40 years. I've made no secret of that on this blog for getting on for two and a half years. In those four decades, I can assure anyone reading this, who might want to suggest that the only difference between me and Jerry Sandusky is that I haven't been caught yet, that:
a) I've never raped anyone
b) I've never remotely wanted to.
Rape, as I've said before here, is a crime that fills me with horror, the ultimate 'fate worse than death' for a victim, because while a murder victim might suffer the same feelings of violation and powerlessness, they don't, and I say this at the risk of sounding dreadfully callous, have to live with the psychological consequences in the aftermath. And, because of my own feelings about and towards boys, the idea of the rape of a boy horrifies me most of all. If Sandusky is a rapist, and the jury, on the basis of the evidence have concluded that he is, then he fully deserves to be punished. But punished as a rapist, on the same terms and at the same level of societal opprobrium as any other rapist. There has been much made of his abuse of his position to gain access to boys, but would the moral position of a senior manager in a large company who coerced junior employees (of legal age) into sex and intimidated subordinates into keeping quiet about it be any different? I wouldn't say so.
I've run out of time for the moment, work calls. I'll return with more later.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Wednesday 20 June 2012

I can't help myself, it seems

Yesterday's post was just the sort of thing which led me to pull the plug on the blog - temporarily, as it's proven - at the end of March. Public exhibitions of worthless self-pity. I really wanted to avoid returning to that kind of behaviour, but it seems that I can't resist. I'll have to redouble my efforts to restrain myself. Please don't hesitate to admonish me if I do it again.
If I let self-pity become my ruling emotion, I'm going to end up either bitter, twisted and even more unpleasant to know than hitherto, or I'm going to end up spiralling down to doing something stupidly self-destructive. I genuinely want - at least, I think and hope I do - to avoid those eventualities, to find a way to pull something from the wreckage of my previous life, to find a way forward, even if I haven't yet got much of an idea of how I could do that. It is worth the effort, though, I have to believe that, or I'll be consumed by despair.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 19 June 2012

The wanting

It doesn't go away, even when the rest of the world is collapsing about your ears. There have been two in the past three days, quite similar in age and looks, 13/14, fair/light brown hair, well into puberty. Of legal age in some countries, albeit not this one. But utterly untouchable, unreachable, for the likes of me.
Frustration, desperation. Why does my life have to be like this?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 16 June 2012

There are shades of grey, after all

I've had an interesting exchange of e-mails over the past few days, with a friend of mine, someone I used to work with a dozen or so years ago, and who had visited us a few times during our early days in Cornwall, but who I'd rather lost touch with in recent times. His initial e-mail was an invitation to his Facebook page, but I've never been involved with Facebook, and have no intention of changing that situation - I'm more than happy to keep my real life and 'cyberlife' strictly separate. In my reply, I apologetically mentioned my aversion to my real self appearing online, and also took the opportunity to tell him about the demise of my marriage - he'd always got on well with my wife, and particularly with my daughter. I made a comment to the effect that I wasn't going to discuss the reasons for the parting of the ways, because I felt he would find it hard to come to terms with.
Why would I say such a thing? Because he was, in his younger days, avowedly and rather virulently homophobic. I sent the e-mail, expecting that to be the end of that. To my considerable surprise, he not only replied, but having picked up on the whys and wherefores of the situation from the clue I'd given him, has proven to be quite accepting of 'the new me' - well, the 'me' that's always been, but has been hidden hitherto. He's 'mellowed', he said, and I'm quite happy to find that I was wrong in my assessment of how he'd react. He was always someone who was very 'black and white' in his opinions, not just in his attitude to gays, but maybe his own, sadly, not very happy personal life over the past few years - he's gone through divorce himself - has brought him to see that there are two (or more) sides to many stories, and that there are few absolutes in life. He's suggested meeting up again, and I'd certainly be interested in doing so, although he's currently living back with his parents in what is far from being the most accessible part of the UK. I hope something can be arranged in the not too distant future.
A lesson to me, as much as anything else - people can change, and their views can evolve, and I shouldn't prejudge their reactions.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 14 June 2012

Forward to the past

Well, here I am, back where I last was in 1990. In what amounts to a bedsit, on my own, with nowhere else to go. My wife and daughter are moving out of the family home today, and there's no way I can afford to maintain the place, and this place, and contribute towards my family's new domicile, on just my wages, so the house will be gone, sooner rather than later. With no-one else in it, even if I was still living there, it wouldn't be a home, in any case. I spoke to my wife yesterday, and she was talking about the disposition of things, possessions, why don't I take this or that? I've tried, over the last three months or so, to make her understand how all of this has affected me, largely without success, but I think that what I said, that 'things' are a total irrelevance when all that matters has been lost, might have got through to her - she was pretty quiet after I said that, at least.
This fait accompli, though, doesn't resolve anything in itself. I still don't know where I'll go now, or even whether I want to go anywhere. The pain of loss has overwhelmed everything recently, but once the realisation of the void that now constitutes what's left of my life kicks in, I get the feeling it's going to be very difficult to come to terms with. Maybe impossible.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Tuesday 12 June 2012

You jest, surely?

There's a story emerging this morning (I heard it first on the radio news, and my immediate, out loud, reaction was 'Oh, f*** off!') that the Church of England has claimed in response to the government's proposals for marriage equality that 'gay marriage is the greatest threat to the Church of England since the Reformation.' Leaving aside the obvious historical illiteracy contained in that statement - the Church of England wouldn't exist, but for the Reformation - the hyperbole here is breathtaking. One of the quotes in the report I read which particularly caught my eye referred to what has been 'understood' by marriage for centuries being replaced by people making a 'vague commitment to each other'. If two people, whatever the gender permutation, stand up in front of a church (or register office, or wherever) full of family, friends and sundry other witnesses and take vows promising a lifelong union, in what way is that a 'vague commitment'?
If there's anything behind this, apart from blatant discrimination and bigotry, it's the fear of the church hierarchy that they might lose their totally unearned and unjustified position of privilege within society. The concept of 'disestablishment', the separation of the state from the church is being raised, as if it's a bad thing. When the proportion of the population who are, by any reasonable definition, active Christians is in single figure percentage points, what's not to like about disestablishment? Welcome to the 21st century.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Saturday 9 June 2012

Intolerable

A word that's come to my mind a number of times in recent weeks, as everything I've built the foundations of my life on seems to have disintegrated around me. But what does the word mean, really? In my case, evidently not the dictionary definition, because here I still am, living proof that my situation isn't, after all, intolerable, at least at the moment. Not that there aren't more severe challenges looming in the immediate future, both divorce and bankruptcy are nearly inevitable now, so maybe my threshold of toleration will be breached yet. But I haven't reached that point as things stand, despite virtually my whole life being spent either at work or in this 15 by 8 room, or travelling between the two. Could I tolerate this lifestyle for years? Not seeing or speaking to anyone, apart from my work colleagues, day in, day out? Never feeling a loving touch? Living with the haunting knowledge of all the mistakes I've made in my life that have brought me to this point? Embracing the 'never', the lack of any chance of ever really being myself? 'Men are infinitely malleable', Orwell wrote in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Is my level of malleability sufficient to tolerate what I would previously have thought intolerable? Yet more questions, still no solutions.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Thursday 7 June 2012

Re-emergence

Maybe, at least. I don't, in any way, want to blame Daniel for my returning to inflict my woes on an unsuspecting Blogworld, but it has, perhaps, been the final nudge in a process which has been ongoing in my mind for a few weeks now.
One of the biggest benefits I've been lucky enough to enjoy over the past almost two and a half years of my time in cyberspace has been the connection to others I would, could never have 'met' in any other way. And that connection has been the element I've missed most over the last ten weeks or so of self-imposed 'exile', a period which has, arguably, been one of the most traumatic phases of my life. Things are still ongoing, and I'm not going to go into any great detail at this stage, but it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that I've lost, or will lose in the near future, just about everything that has been important to me over the last twenty-odd years. The question is, and the answer is far from clear to me at the moment, where do I go, where can I go from here? I predicted that if I ever came out to my wife I'd lose everything, and gain nothing, and that prediction seems to me to have been proved correct. Is there a way forward for me? Do I even want there to be? Questions, questions, but few, if any, answers.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B