Preoccupation

So, I guess this marks the end of the longest involuntary interval between posts - involuntary in the sense that I hadn't made an active decision not to write, as has been the case on a few previous occasions - since I began the blog nearly six and a half years ago. Why the hiatus? Partly work, given that I've been on a run of eleven straight working days, the last four of them night shifts, partly material, a lack of what I considered interesting things to write about. But the main reason is that I've been more than a little preoccupied by a subject I really can't write about, even in this pseudonymous environment. No-one else is involved - don't worry, no skeletons have found their way into cupboards - but I've spent, even by my standards, an inordinate amount of time contemplating the rights and wrongs of the issue, and of my life in general. Without, needless to say, coming to any useful conclusion. The maze without a solution is still the best metaphor for where my existence has led me.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ache and heartache

This time three years ago, I was languishing in a hospital ward in Surrey having comprehensively lost a battle with whichever bugs cause pneumonia. That potentially life-threatening experience certainly raised my awareness as regards my health, but whether it's tipped the balance too far in the opposite direction, towards hypochondria, is something I haven't resolved yet. Today has provided a good example, as I've spent a good deal of time worrying about an ache - it certainly hasn't been serious enough to warrant using the word 'pain' - in my chest, of a pulmonary rather than cardiac nature. The fact that it's on the right hand side, where the bugs did most of their damage, does make me wonder if there's a connection, but, on the other hand, I don't feel ill as such, suggesting that I might be tending towards melodrama. All I can do, I guess, is to carry on as normal while 'monitoring' my condition, and head to the doctor's if there's any evidence of a deterioration.
No doubt, though, about the heartache - as I arrived at 'worktown' station after the end of my shift this evening, I almost literally fell over an exquisitely beautiful boy of 8 or 9, another unattainable 'ghost'. There was another level of piquancy in this case, though, because of his more than passing resemblance to a picture I saw a few days ago of another, slightly older boy, in a decidedly less salubrious place. Life imitating life, or something like that.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Ignorance

I've been 'treated', in the 'open till midnight' Wetherspoons I've stopped off at on my way home from a late shift at work, to one of the most egregious displays of ignorance I've had the misfortune to experience in quite some time. A sixty-something bloke has been opining, at inescapable volume, about everything from football to American politics to transgender people - and has been completely wrong in pretty much all of it. Anyone can be mistaken, but don't abuse the the privilege, please.

2355 edit: He's just said something I agree with, namely that none of the English qualifiers for next year's Champions League have a hope of winning the competition. But I still wish he had a volume control.  That I was in charge of!

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

90

That's how old my dad would've been today, had he lived. Would he have wanted to be around at that age? I really have no idea. I know I certainly wouldn't want to be, given the inevitable ravages of the aging process - both my hiccuping heart and my terminally screwed-up ankle have been playing up today, and that's before beginning to consider my greatest fear, namely losing my mental faculties to dementia or similar. I would like to live long enough to have a few years of relatively healthy retirement, something Dad was denied, dying, as he did, less than a year after after the end of his working life, but whether that's likely is, frankly, doubtful.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

No fun, and close to tears

Little more than four hours after I published the previous post, on Saturday evening, one of the main reasons why my life is so difficult asserted itself. Right at the beginning of my shift at work that night, conversation turned to a 'fly on the wall' TV series, apparently focusing on some UK police force, a recent episode of which featured the activities of a vigilante-ish group who have entrapped a number of 'paedophiles' through online chatrooms. Needless to say, all present but me were resoundingly in favour of such an outcome (I wasn't, of course, remotely stupid enough to voice my views on the subject), but the fact that the two colleagues of the group I most regularly work with who are the closest I have to 'friends' at work were among the most fervent 'antis' was depressing almost to the point of tears. They not only don't understand - no-one who isn't 'on the inside' ever can - they don't want to understand, the kneejerk, unthinking received opinion is vastly simpler, and, of course, keeps them aligned with the overwhelming majority of 'society'.
And more frustration today, on a different but roughly parallel track, a goodly number of touristy and school trip cuties out and about in town, so close and yet so out of reach, as always. The most notable was in Oxford Street, an utterly beautiful boy of 12 or so who 'ghosted' in and out of my life in half a dozen heart-melting seconds. Would that, just once, I could connect with someone like him, if only for a few minutes of passing acquaintance. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Fun and giggles

I had a short, but memorable dream yesterday, in which I was cuddling with a young boy (not one who bore any resemblance to anyone I know in the 'real world', even by sight). There was a slight sexual frisson, but it wasn't really an 'erotic' dream in a direct sense, the predominant feeling being of fun and happiness, the boy giggling, and me responding in kind. Reflecting on the dream in my waking thoughts made it obvious that one of the things that is conspicuously absent from my life is almost any element of 'fun' - K and I have some jocular exchanges at times, but they're very much the exception, not least because, given our increasingly divergent life paths, I really don't see that much of her on a day to day basis. I guess I've always tended towards being a serious sort of person, even when I was a boy myself, but to maintain that mindset too relentlessly isn't, I think, entirely healthy. Someone to release my pent-up giggles might be distinctly therapeutic.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Depressingly predictable....

....and predictably depressing. I've written on several occasions about how trying I find the near-constant flow of bigotry some - indeed many - of my colleagues spout at work, so I guess that when the 'archbigot' and his nearest contender for that title were working adjacent positions, and I was one spot further to the left, as was the case overnight, it was obvious that I wasn't going to enjoy what I heard. They surpassed even those expectations though, with a screed of such hatred aimed at just about every 'outgroup' you could imagine (albeit, amazingly, not gays on this occasion) that it just left me heartsick at the knowledge that I have to share not only a workplace, but a species with their ilk. As ever, it's all the worse because I know beyond question what their opinions and attitude towards 'the real me' would be. The sooner I can escape from all of it, the job, and even the species, the better. But no matter what, escape from myself is, of course, impossible.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Last dregs of freedom

Well, a little hyperbole there, but the impending 'last orders' call in what was my 'second-string' Wetherspoons for a while, but is now simply an 'after late shift' bolthole, because it's the only pub even vaguely near the flat that's open until midnight, will mark my latest withdrawal from anything resembling a social life for the next week, because I start nights again tomorrow. How five weeks can fly, even when your quota of fun is minimal.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Brown eyes, and an echo

More boy stuff, so if that bores/offends you, look away now. I'm in my regular Wetherspoons - now there's a surprise, or not, as the case may be - and, en route, I saw a little guy of Asian extraction who had the most beautiful pair of brown eyes (I'm normally very much a fan of blue eyes) I've seen in the best part of some time. It wasn't long after I'd arrived here, though, before he was thoroughly eclipsed. By a boy who was more than a little reminiscent of Cammy, about the same age, similar build, even facially echoic. I couldn't, unfortunately, peruse his charms to any great extent, though, partly because he ended up sitting behind me, but more because his family reeked of trouble, from the time they arrived until they left twenty minutes or so ago - they were, to all appearances, 'travellers', not a group that would be likely to be well-disposed towards a boylover. What the encounter has done, though, is to remind me how much I miss my 'little friend'. Would that I had even the slightest clue as to where I might have the chance of seeing him again. I'd head there in a heartbeat.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

It's busy and noisy....

....in my 'not very' local, but the Kronenbourg is slipping down all too well, K is out with her (probable) new boyfriend, and I don't have to go to work tomorrow, so I can see a hangover coming on. And I couldn't care less.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The painful truth

A day off today, and a warm and sunny one at that, so there was never a doubt that I would be out and about. And there were cuties around, too, mostly of the touristy variety, given that it was a school day, as I meandered through town. At lunchtime, I was wandering around Covent Garden, often a reasonable eye candy venue, but rather than the boys I was hoping to admire, I was confronted with an altogether different sight. For some unaccountable reason, a number of large mirrored panels have been installed at one end of the central former market building, and the reflection I saw in one of them really brought me up short. I'm used, of course, to seeing my face in the bathroom mirror at home on a daily basis, but that's the only mirror in the flat, so when I saw the full, 'as others see me' view, I was immediately disheartened. I have few illusions about myself - I've always been fat and unattractive, even as a child - but to see how old and tired I look, and, perhaps even more, how sullen and resentful, was very much an unpleasant surprise. Every picture tells a story, of course, and, thinking about it, all of the preceding adjectives are completely apposite - the 'physiological' ones are inescapable, but the 'psychological' ones are even more telling. I am resentful of the hand that I've been dealt, and of my abject inability to make anything of it. And I'm sullen because I know that I can never have what I most want - what conceivable boy, even one who might be open to a relationship with someone older, would want anything to do with an ogre like me? They say the truth hurts - and they're right, in spades.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

People

I'm pretty much done with them. K excepted. Yet another apparent friendship seems to have been illusory - the illusion being on my part, of course. Fiction is the only place where people are reliable, as far as I can see - I've finished yet another rereading of Alexandrine in the last couple of days - and I'm very tempted to go and bury myself there, especially given the number of unfinished stories that are kicking around in Nephelokokkygia's post list. It doesn't seem that I can manage at all well in the real world, so maybe creating my own is the best shot I have of any kind of satisfaction, vicarious as it might be.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

OK, so....

....it was tomorrow, after all. Because a couple of things did catch my attention. A campaigner, with a #BACKZAC (Goldsmith, the fascist Tory candidate for London mayor, spawn of a billionaire robber baron, just the sort of 'man of the people' we really need running the capital's local government) tee-shirt, proclaiming her message in the broadest American accent imaginable. Is she even likely to be eligible to vote in this week's mayoral election? I doubt it somehow. The phrase 'mind your own fucking business' sprung to mind.
A quarter of an hour earlier, though, my tenuous equilibrium had been tested to its limits, as I left 'worktown' on a bus via a thoroughly posh area, and where I was confronted by a cutie who was a close lookalike not only of a boy, but the boy, as I remember first seeing him, at 9 (the approximate age of today's little guy). DBJ, of course. It will be ten years, at the end of August, since that unforgettable first view of the most beautiful boy in the world, at least in my experience. And my memories of him still affect me as deeply as ever.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

What can I say?

That I haven't said myriad times before? Nothing, as far as I can see. There may be a hiatus, or there may not, depending on how issues strike me. Ennui has set in, here, and regarding life in general. I'll probably be back, but it could be tomorrow or next year.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B