Make me feel old, why don't you?

I've just arrived in 'school-town' Wetherspoons, and I've been struck by the caption on one of the photos of the local area in the past that decorate the walls. The picture is of the street outside, the main street of the town, and the caption ends 'c. 1960'. The year I was born. The thing is, the cars and a lorry in the picture, and the clothes the pedestrians are wearing, just look so old! As, by association, am I!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Halcyon days?

I guess that the theme of a songwriter reminiscing fondly about the days of their youth has probably been a staple since songs were first composed. Of late, though, one particular song of that nature has left me feeling - well, almost bitter each time I hear it, which is fairly often in recent weeks, given that it's high on the playlist of the radio station I listen to pretty much exclusively. The song is Wonder Days  by Thunder, and is a fairly obviously autobiographical trip back to the writer's teenage years. The reactions it elicits in me are, of course, no fault of the band or of Planet Rock, but it doesn't change the fact that my teens were, more or less in their entirety, bloody awful, a desperately painful and unhappy time in my life. I went into that period just discovering, or, maybe better realising, that I was 'queer', to use the pejorative most prevalent at the time, which was bad enough, as I saw it then, but worse was to come - by the time I 'escaped' into my twenties (which were really no better, but that's another story) I knew beyond certainty that I wasn't 'just' gay, but a boylover as well. So to hear someone singing about what a wonderful time they had isn't ever going to do much for me, in all honesty. It's just jealousy, I suppose, but rather than being jealous of an individual's circumstances, it's a more societal thing, born of the knowledge that most of my contemporaries 'fitted in', found a sense of belonging. Something I never did, and still don't.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Immerse

In a comment on another blog a couple of days ago, I remarked on the fact that I'd 'quote-mined' Nineteen Eighty-four more than any other book. And here I am, revisiting Orwell's magnum opus yet again - '....a deliberate drowning of consciousness by means of rhythmic noise'. If you can extend the scope of the definition of 'rhythmic noise' to include music, that's what I've been doing for the last two hours. I'd arrived in my local, after six hours of meandering around London on this first day of my long weekend off, and my thoughts had begun to take on a distinctly depressive tone, around boys, and matters arising, needless to say. So I put my headphones on, and drowned my brain in loud music. And it has worked, to a degree, although my situation wasn't helped by the fact that there was a family, including two boys - not especially cute, but not at all difficult to look at - sitting at the table directly in front of mine until a few minutes ago. Nevertheless, I'm feeling considerably more at one with the world than I was earlier - the power of music, once more.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Need a break....

....and, luckily, I've got one. Less than halfway through my shift today, I was ready to simply get up and walk out of the door, never to return. It's not the job, it's the egregious collection of bigots, fascists and fuckwits - and some of the individuals concerned fall into more than one of those categories, one or two into all of them - that I'm condemned to work with that's the problem. Added to my being very tired, and feeling decidedly under the weather - it was one of those days that crop up once in maybe every twenty, when my heart meds don't seem to do their stuff as effectively as usual - I really was totally fed up with everything. It did finally come to an end, though, half an hour earlier than I'd expected, actually, with a couple of the night shift coming in early for overtime, and the sense of release was almost palpable, because I'm now off until Wednesday morning, the first time I've had more than two days off in a row since the beginning of December. I'm not planning to do much beyond chilling out and drinking beer, but the old chestnut about a change being as good as a rest is thoroughly apposite in this case.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Two dreams

Last night was one of those occasions when I remembered my dreams, for some reason, and, while neither of them were remotely likely to happen in real life, the two dreams revealed, not for the first time, some psychological truths. The first involved me being in a relationship with a woman, and being cheated on, while the second found my dream avatar cuddling and snuggling with a very cute (but entirely imaginary) young boy. I may have been at least partly awake the second time, because I can distinctly remember a conscious thought of 'this is more like it', referring, of course, to a comparison of the two dream scenarios. I guess the comparison was a no-brainer, really, given that I've wanted a boy to love since I was 12 years old - consciously, that is, maybe even longer subconsciously - while my interactions with the opposite gender have, in almost every case, ended in tears. Today's society being what it is, I guess I was always doomed to disappointment and lack of fulfillment, but, of course, I'm by no means unique in that respect.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Now we are five

Five years ago today, Sammy B's Semicentennial, the original incarnation of this blog, was launched onto the waves of the cyberspace ocean. And, notwithstanding doubts and fears, comings and goings, happiness and sadness, and huge changes to my 'real life' situation, here I still am. I may be wrong, but I think there's only one other person who was around on 24/2/10, in the particular corner of cyberspace I gravitated to, who's still actively blogging now - the landscape has changed more than a little, and, overall, probably not for the better. That said, and despite my recent doubts about the value of carrying on, I think there are still more pros than cons, so carry on I will. Sorry, guys, you haven't got rid of me yet!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Moral superiority complex

I very much doubt that many committed members of the Abrahamic religions read my blog, but should such a person visit, and declare my moral bankruptcy because of my sexuality, my desires, I'd refer them to this. And then ask them how morally superior they feel.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Close encounters of the cutie kind

Not long after I arrived at work this afternoon, I was groaning inwardly and bemoaning my luck - after the torturous shift I had to contend with recently, another of my colleagues had brought his son into work with him, and, to make matters still worse, I was working the position next to 'the archbigot', the very last person I would want to see the slightest hint of 'the real me'. I'd met today's boy's older brother, 14 but looking more like 12, and cute with it, on a couple of previous occasions, and 'little bro', 9 or thereabouts, certainly showed a family resemblance. Far too young, needless to say, for anything other than 'eye candy' status, but still a potential pitfall I could certainly have done without. Things, though, didn't pan out quite as I'd expected. For the first half of the shift, I didn't see much of the boy - Dad was in the support position on the 'back desk', and the little guy stuck pretty close to him, but, later on, things got busier, and my colleague had to get 'hands on' with the job, in the positions, successively, on either side of mine. Given that I wasn't especially busy, I ended up 'child minding', answering the boy's questions about what was going on and generally keeping an eye on him while his dad was otherwise engaged. And he gave the impression of being a rather bright, switched-on little cookie, always a massive bonus as far as I'm concerned. There was one awkward (for me) moment, when I'd stood up to do something, and he moved and ended up standing very closely in front of me, close enough that I could feel his body heat, which had a physiological effect, so to speak, but the boy, of course, was completely unaware of anything untoward, as, thankfully, were the rest of the company. All in all, we got along famously, to the point that when the boy said goodbye to me - his dad finished ten minutes or so before I did - and I gave him a gentle pat on the shoulder, he moved as though he was going to give me a hug. He stopped short, maybe because his dad was standing right behind him, but I think it was indicative of how we'd connected. The best 'boy moment', in short, that I've had for many a long day. Not that it will lead to anything, given his age, but it's certainly brightened my weekend.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Unputdownable

I stayed up very late last night - well, the early hours of this morning, really - much later than I would ordinarily do. What was the reason? A story. One I'd thought I'd read before, at one of the online story sites I frequent, and I'd certainly read the start of the tale in the past, but the second half of the story didn't ring too many bells at all, so maybe I didn't finish it the first time around. I did on this occasion, though - at 3:45! It was a man/boy story, with the twist that it was man/boys - identical twins - and with a little fantasy element added in, too. Yes, there was some sex, but, to me, it was far more a love story, and one with a happy ending, never a bad thing. The story is here, if anyone would like to investigate the motivation for my sleep deprivation!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

How sad

According to front page of today's Metro, UKIP (or Ukip, as the illiterate headline has it, as though it was a noun rather than an abbreviation) are 'outraged' over a Channel 4 'docudrama' about the possible consequences of the election of a UKIP government, which included race riots and mass unemployment. Well, what a bloody shame. If they weren't a bunch of fascistic xenophobes with no policies beyond yelling 'immigration' as a universal scapegoat, then maybe thinking people might not hold them in such contempt, or believe that the country would go to hell in a handbasket under their auspices. Sadly, you don't have to be a thinking person to vote.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Careful what you wish for

I've had the chance of something rare recently, a completely 'off the leash' day today - I'm on lates tomorrow, I haven't got any domestic things that need doing urgently, and K is doing her own half term thing. On top of that, the day dawned bright and clear, and remained so throughout, loads of blue sky and winter sunshine. So, of course, an 'eye candy cruise' had to be the thing to do. And, wow, was there some eye candy on view, even 'nose candy' at one point - on one of the buses, there was a little guy sitting behind me who smelled so delightfully, quintessentially 'boy' that I wish I could've bottled the scent and taken it home with me. Couldn't have been better, could it - except that, as the day progressed, and the parade of cuties continued, the leaden knowledge that, for all I might look, and enjoy looking, I'd be going home alone asserted itself. So now I'm in the other place being off the leash allows - in my local, drinking more than is realistically good for me. And not caring.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Easier with practice

As planned, K and I went out yesterday for her belated birthday meal. She'd decided she wanted to go to an American style diner, so we duly ended up in such an establishment in a shopping centre in the town at the terminus of the bus service that stops outside the flat. I doubt that any American would've found it at all authentic - it's part of what is a growing nationwide chain of restaurants, and gave the impression of being what some corporate functionary thought a diner should look like - but the food was pretty good, if not cheap, and we both enjoyed the meal. What was far more enjoyable, though, from my perspective, was the interaction with my girl - we both seemed to be 'on form', conversationally, and our banter was, and here's a word you don't hear from me too often, fun. On the way back, K came out with a comment that was straight out of the encyclopedia of back-handed compliments - she'd been talking about her on/off local boyfriend (off at the moment), the cute one who lives one bus stop away from us, and had commented on how 'difficult' he could be. Surely no more difficult than me, I replied, to which she said 'Yeah, but you get easier with practice!' before cracking up laughing. Thanks, Babes - I think!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The (almost) invisible birthday girl

K is 17 today, and I was looking forward to actually seeing her on her birthday for the first time since 2012. For much of the day, though, it looked as though it wasn't going to happen, at least in a literal 'with my own eyes' sense. She'd texted me very late last night, asking me to ring her early this morning, because she was planning to get up and go out for 'birthday breakfast coffee' with a friend, but when I did call, on my way back from work, her plans had changed, and she'd decided on a lie-in instead, asking for a later wake-up call. at around 10:30. Given that I didn't get in until after 9:00, this wasn't a problem from my perspective, but when I tapped on her bedroom door at the agreed time, all I got was her disembodied voice, and by the time she actually got up, I was asleep myself. She went out to lunch with some schoolfriends, but was going to call back at the flat before heading up to town for her late, late 'breakfast coffee'. This was apparently overtaken by events, though, and she went straight from one 'social' to the other, leaving me wondering, rather sadly, if I was going to see her after all. Ninety minutes or so ago, though, she texted me to say that she was on the tube on the way home, and I finally got to give her a birthday hug in the last hour. And now I'm just about to get ready to head out for my last night shift of this particular batch, and K is ensconced, teenage-style, in her room. Never mind, we are going to get some quality time tomorrow - I'm off, at least after I finish at 7:00 in the morning, and we're going out for food and shopping, not necessarily in that order. She'll probably have had enough of me after a few hours, but any crumbs from her table are more than welcome!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Redundancy

If there's one 'festival', for want of a better word, which has been more irrelevant than any other, and continues to be irrelevant, right through my life, it's Valentine's Day. Apart from a handful from my ex, and I use the word handful advisedly - I always remembered, all the time we were together, right up to two weeks before that phone call, but she rarely did - I've never received a Valentine's card in my life, and I most certainly don't expect that streak to be broken today. In any case, the only 'class of person' I would want to send me a card would be vanishingly unlikely to do so, even if I was 'secretly admired'. And as K, fresh out of bed, has just said, it's all just a capitalist marketing scam, and heteronormative to boot.
The concept of redundancy, too, has made me think once more about the future of the blog. There's a fairly significant 'blogaversary' coming up in the next couple of weeks, and, given the continuing almost complete apathy my writing seems to engender, and the circularity of the themes here and in Nephelokokkygia, it makes me wonder what the point of it all is. If it helped me in some way, even if no-one at all read it, that could be a justification, but even that small potential benefit is conspicuous by its absence. Maybe once I've got through this week and a day of night shifts, and my recent trough of downbeat mood, things will look brighter, and I'll find some modicum of inspiration. But maybe I won't.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ticket

Another day, another minor celebrity convicted of 'historic sexual abuse'. Things that allegedly happened forty years ago. Following on from a case a few days ago when a 91 year old was convicted in similar circumstances. Meanwhile, the rich continue to steal billions of pounds from the rest of us by way of tax avoidance schemes, seemingly with impunity. Is there anywhere I can buy a ticket to get off of this fucking planet?

1910 edit: Re-reading this post, it may come across to some that I'm condoning sexual abuse. That is absolutely not the case. What I'm angered and frustrated by is the double standard in what is laughingly known as the 'criminal justice system', that if you're rich enough, and well-connected enough (and the two usually go together, of course), you can essentially get away with anything.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A boy, alone

And it hurts
And I'm lonely
And I should never have tried
And I missed you tonight
It must be time to leave
You see it meant everything to me

(Are 'Friends' Electric?, Gary Numan)

The 'you' in my case is simply not there, a mirage, an illusion, no more palpable than a shadow. The 'I' is a hopelessly lost and lonely boy. And that's why it hurts, every day.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

Beyond belief

I came across this story yesterday morning and, even now, I find it almost impossible to believe that anyone would even consider doing such a thing to their own child, let alone enacting the plan. If any of these 'adults' are allowed anywhere near that boy, or any other child, henceforth, it will be a travesty. I just hope the poor little guy isn't irremediably traumatised.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It may have been the last time....

....but if it was, it was a 'good do'. Last night's house party at my brother's was mainly about our friend visiting from Australia, of course, but there was another significant element I mentioned in yesterday's post, and which did indeed come about. For the first time in sixteen years, since that wedding I referred to, all eight of our 'group' were in the same place at the same time. Obviously, with one of our number living in Australia, opportunities like last night's are going to be very thin on the ground, but, on top of that, none of us are getting any younger - I'm the oldest, at almost 55, but all the others are now in their fifties, too - we all have our own lives, families, plans for the future, or whatever, and we're certainly not immortal. None of that mattered last night, though, we just got on with being friends, as we always have. There were others there, too, which wasn't a problem, but, for me, that reunion, maybe the last of its kind, was what made the evening special. I'm so glad I was 'stupid' enough not to cancel. Would that all my stupid decisions had worked out that well.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Reunion and relief

I did, despite many, many qualms, head down to my home town yesterday afternoon - even up to the point where I was eating lunch before setting out, I was still thinking about cancelling. For once in my life, though, I made the right decision. My brother came to pick me up from the station, and our friend, who'd arrived a couple of hours earlier, was with him. From the outset, it was obvious he was pleased to see me, and I, of course, was equally pleased to see him. And that set the tone for the remainder of the afternoon and evening, plenty of catching up on the happenings in everyone's lives over the past decade or so, followed by a convivial evening in a town centre bar which centred around the England v Wales Six Nations rugby match (helped by the fact that England won, of course!). At around 9:00, when my closest female friend and her husband arrived, it struck me that the evening represented the biggest reunion of 'the group', as we called ourselves, our group of friends who met up, in stages, more than thirty years ago, for about fifteen years - six of the eight 'full members' were there. And, if all goes according to plan, the remaining two will be at my brother's place tonight as well, the first full 'gathering' since (I think) my best man's own wedding nearly twenty years ago. I just hope I'm not tempting fate in anticipating how good that will be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Swallow

That bottle of pills, or whatever your preferred toxin, you may as well, because you'll never be free again. But that, of course, is what they want. They want us dead. Unknown or famous, celibate or promiscuous. The only good 'paedo' is a dead one. And, of course, it's nothing but a choice we've made, because we're benightedly evil. Everyone knows that.

1740 edit: And now a beautiful boy, just pubescent, has come into my local with his family. It's like gravity, magnetism, I simply can't help but look. Would that it was otherwise.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Premonition

Before I went to Manchester in September 2013, a weekend which came close, much closer than almost everyone realises, to being the end of everything, I had the feeling that it was a terrible idea, and that I should find an excuse to cancel. That feeling was partly based on a couple of things my cousin had said on the phone while we were planning the trip, along with a few things he'd said in previous conversations. And my gut feeling was right. I should've stayed away, accepted that he had changed, I had changed, that the interactions between us had turned sour. But I went anyway, my premonition was proved right, and the rest is very unhappy history.
Now, though, I'm getting the same feelings about meeting up with my friend who's over from Australia this coming weekend. I have a vivid mental picture of how he might react if the reasons for the demise of my marriage come to the surface, going back to events when we were both children - yes, even me, I was 11/12, and horribly ignorant, and, in many ways, just plain horrible. Yeah, sure, I could avoid the topic, but other people who will be around know. so lying certainly isn't an option. I can see myself losing most of the few friends I have left, and that's one of the less unpleasant potential outcomes. Once more, I find myself looking for a plausible reason to cancel. I don't know if I could cope with another epic disaster.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A return

I had a call from my brother at lunchtime to let me know that something that was mooted a month or so ago, but hadn't been confirmed, had actually happened. The person who is, in terms of the length of time I've known him, my oldest friend - we first met when I was 10 and he was 7 - is going to be in our home town this weekend. He was, actually, and probably still is, my brother's best friend, but, right from the beginning, he and I were almost as close as he was with my brother. We went to the same primary school, the same senior school, went to numerous gigs together - our musical tastes aren't identical, but there's a considerable overlap - played, very successfully, in pub quiz teams together, and, most notably, spent vast amounts of time in various pubs and bars here, there and everywhere for twenty-odd years. So, why has he been missing for so long, and why has he never been mentioned in this blog before? Because, a dozen or so years ago, he and his family emigrated to Australia - his wife, although her parents are British, was born and brought up 'down under', and has dual nationality. This is, as far as I'm aware, his first trip back, undertaken because his mother, who's now in her seventies, is in poor health. And this weekend is, miracle of miracles, my weekend off! I've spoken to K, and she seems to be quite relaxed about being 'abandoned' for a day or two, so, given that there are 'socials' arranged for both Friday and Saturday, unless anything unforeseen happens, I'll be there. I really didn't expect to see my friend again. This could be quite a weekend!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

A novelty, of late

Namely boys in my local. It's marketed as a 'family' pub, but for, literally, weeks, whenever I've been in here, the vast majority of any underage patrons have been female. The balance has been redressed a little this evening, though, no supercuties, but enough eye candy to enhance my day more than a little. And I've written another chapter of my new story, too. It's not going to be another Alexandrine, unless something unforeseen happens, but it is progressing. And now it's time to go home and cook K's and my Sunday dinner. Should be good!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B