A year, a dozen paces, another life

On the last day of February last year, I was sitting roughly the aforementioned dozen paces from where I am now, in 'work-town' Wetherspoons, when I took my phone from my pocket, and made a call. The phrase 'life-changing' is one of those overused cyphers, often signifying little or nothing, but that call really did change everything. A year on, I'm still sitting, rather dazedly, in the fallout, none the wiser as to where my life will, ultimately, go, or even where I want it to go. What I really want is so inaccessible that it can be virtually disregarded, while none of the practicable alternatives hold much, if any appeal. Still in limbo, still looking back at the smouldering remains of those bridges. With another life, lost forever, on the other side.

Love & best wishes to all

Sammy B

The right place, or wrong?

This post has, in the last eight hours or so, already had an on/off history. It began life as my framing in my mind a response to a comment left on my post of yesterday, which soon seemed to be developing sufficient substance to warrant a post of its own. I was at work this morning, though, so I didn't have the opportunity to write down my thoughts straight away, and, by the time I was making my way back from work a couple of hours ago, I was beginning to wonder whether to bother with it, whether it would be a waste of time and effort, more words spilled in a vain effort to engage with a world that has already, for the most part, made up its mind about me and those like me. What has finally convinced me to go ahead and write, though, was the fact that the comment, and the question it contained, was the closest since I created my 'An invitation to a discussion' page last summer to the kind of discussion I had in mind. So, in that spirit, here goes.
The comment I received referred to the encounter I had with the boy on the bus yesterday afternoon, and whether I thought what had happened was appropriate. To address that point, I'll describe what happened, and how it came about, in rather more detail. The day had consisted, as many of my days off do, of my roaming around London, mostly by bus, just watching the world go by, and giving me something to do that doesn't involve me sitting in the small room where I currently am. I knew that I needed to get back to 'domicile-ville' reasonably early, having to be up so early this morning, so I planned a route from where I was at around 2:30 yesterday to take me to the station I referred to in the previous post, or, rather, the pub outside, where I'd decided to have a couple of drinks before heading back. The easiest way of doing that was a shortish train journey, just four stops, then onto a bus route which I'd rarely used before, and never, as far as I could remember, used in that (southbound) direction, but which took me straight to where I wanted to go. By the time I boarded the bus, it was around 3:15, heading towards the end of the school day, when there is often a goodly amount of 'eye candy', in my terms, in evidence, but I had no idea whether this particular route was good or bad in that context. I'd already been on what was a busy bus, probably nearly three-quarters full, for around twenty minutes when it arrived at a stop where numerous homebound senior school pupils, male and female, were waiting. I saw the group of boys, six of them altogether, waiting, and given that no-one was sitting next to me at that point, I did have hopes that one of them might end up on the spare seat to my right - one, in particular, reminded me more than a little of R, the boy from my own schooldays who I fell in love with when I was 17, but, in the event, it was another of the group who sat next to me. Two of the others managed to acquire the double seat behind me, and my seat-mate spent most of the next twenty minutes turned to his right, and with his back to me, more or less, talking to his friends (And, as an aside, the sentence in the comment along the lines of 'he's just a child', while undoubtedly correct in a legalistic sense, brought a little wry smile to my lips, because some of the conversation the boys were having, which I couldn't help but overhear, given that I was sitting right in the middle of it, as it were, suggested that they weren't exactly wide-eyed innocents, not that I would behave any differently towards them as a result). And that was where the inadvertent body contact came in. I didn't initiate it, did nothing to accentuate it, and, as far as I can see, could have nothing to mitigate it, other than actually getting off of the bus several miles short of my destination, because I had the window seat, and had already shifted my ample frame as far to my left as the structure of the vehicle allowed. Having said that the situation wasn't of my choosing or contrivance, though, because it wasn't, that's not to say that I didn't enjoy it. I've made no secret of the fact that I'm sexually attracted to pubescent boys, so to have one so close, albeit accidentally, was something I found exciting. As far as 'action', or maybe better, reaction, goes, though, it was all in my head. I simply sat there and made the most of it.
Which leads me onto a more general point that sprung to mind this morning when I was considering my response to the comment. I've often quoted Nineteen Eighty-Four in various contexts, and another line from Orwell's book came to me earlier - 'Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull'. Because if my private, passive enjoyment of what happened on that bus yesterday is seen as inappropriate, it seems to me that the spectre of 'thoughcrime' is in the air again. 'Paedophiles' are the softest of soft targets, a group vilified by virtually everyone, 'fair game' for every politician wanting to win a cheap vote or bar-room loudmouth wanting to prove his 'red-blooded' credentials, a group of whom no-one dares even to say anything less than the utterly condemnatory 'party line' for fear of being tarred with the same brush - I read a report some while ago (although I can't seem to find it at the moment, so perhaps it should be taken with a pinch of salt) that doctors and others proposing to attend a conference to discuss 'solutions' to paedophilia were targeted with hate mail, even death threats - so if anything resembling the Orwellian definition of 'thoughtcrime' is ever enacted, those attracted to the young are likely to be one of the first targets. And quite right, too, many would doubtless say. Except that once the precedent is set that the government, any government, can define what people can and cannot think, where does that process end? Freedoms, political, intellectual, even sexual - how many jurisdictions still outlaw homosexuality, and how many more would, given half a chance? - are hard to win, and easy to lose, and just as easy to lose by complacency as revolution.
None of what I've written here is intended as a 'justification' for who I am and what I want. I don't feel the need to justify myself in that way, because I didn't choose to be the way I am - as I've said before, I'm not especially proud of it, but nor am I especially ashamed. It just is. What does matter, though, is what I do, which is a choice under my conscious control. And, in that regard, for the overwhelming majority of my life, my conscience is clear.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

The right place at the right time

It's the last day of what's proven to be a week off - I could, had I chosen, have worked overtime shifts yesterday and today, but declined, partly because of the uncertainty about my ex's dad, but just as much because I simply didn't want to - and I've been out and about, as usual. I've seen a few new bits of West and North West London, not wildly exciting, but new to me, before ending up in the Wetherspoons opposite the last Greater London station on the line to 'domicile-ville', from where I'll make my way back shortly, given that I need to be up at 5:00 in the morning. The bus that I caught to get here proved to be a good pick, it being 'cutie time' while I was aboard - not only were there some very nice sights to be seen from the windows, but I spent 20 minutes with a more than passably cute boy, 12-ish, sitting beside me, and, indeed, as he was turned in his seat to talk to friends sitting behind us for much of the journey, inadvertently leaning against me. He did look my way and move on one occasion, no doubt worried that I might have been annoyed, little knowing, of course, that I was loving every minute! Yeah, I know it falls into the 'sad and desperate' category, as experiences go, but any oasis in my particular desert of solitude is welcome.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Red-blooded?

I've had to bite my tongue, or, perhaps better, my typing fingers this morning to avoid the possibility of provoking an argument on someone else's blog. I'm happy to address the issue, and anything arising from what I want to say, here, though.
The post in question featured a very well-known female singer, and prompted a response from one of the regular commenters which included the phrase '(she's) pretty hot....I'd do her'. There's nothing like profound and insightful musical analysis, and that, I'm afraid, is nothing like it. If that kind of boorish, disrespectful and, frankly, misogynistic remark is what it takes to be a 'real man', I'm quite happy not to be a member of that particular club.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Missed it!

I've only just realised that I forgot about an anniversary that fell yesterday - my blog was three years old. Thank you to everyone who comes to visit, and especially to my followers, long-suffering souls as they are, for their friendship and support over the piece. My appreciation is profound and sincere.

Love& best wishes to all
Sammy B

I'm sorry, but you're completely wrong

I read a post in one of the atheist/sceptic blogs I follow earlier, a post whose main thrust was to highlight the homophobic bigotry of yet another fundamental christianist. Not for the first time, the quoted claptrap included the conflation of homosexuality and paedophilia, which, quite rightly, the blogger decried. He went on, though, to enumerate the reasons he considered the two things to be distinct, which was when, I'm afraid, he raised my hackles, as well as displaying that his understanding of the issue of those who are attracted to individuals under the age of consent doesn't go much beyond the average tabloid hack. The phrase that particularly irritated me, and which prompted the thought in the title of this post, was 'paedophilia is the predation of children'. No, it bloody well isn't. Paedophilia is the attraction of an adult towards, to use the correct definition, a prepubescent child, although, of course, the word is (mis)used much more broadly to mean any permutation of relationship or attraction between an older and a younger person that the particular speaker/writer, or their society, disapproves of. Sexual predation, as far as I'm concerned, is the coercion, be it physical or emotional, of one individual by another to engage in sexual acts not of the victim's choosing, and is independent of considerations of age or gender. Why do so many people, even those, like the blogger in this instance, otherwise liberal and tolerant, seemingly find it such an intellectual challenge to distinguish between what a person is and what they do in this one specific area? I've said it before, and I'll say it again - what I am, and what I want, doesn't make me, and others like me, intrinsically evil. It's how you live your life, in all its aspects, that makes you a good or a bad person.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Nearly, but not quite

For an hour or so this evening, it looked as though I might have been making an impromptu trip to Cornwall tomorrow. My ex rang me and told me that her dad isn't at all well, and that she might need to head to the Midlands, which would have meant there being a need for someone to look after our daughter. Not that, at 15, she needs an awful lot of looking after, but she's still not quite old enough to be left to completely fend for herself for an indeterminate period. After a series of phone calls, though, between us and between my ex and her sister, it seems that her dad's condition isn't quite as serious as it appeared to be at first, so my ex has decided to put her trip on hold for the moment, and approach it in a slightly more planned fashion. I made it clear to her, though, that I'm available to ditch work and go, as and when circumstances dictate, and while I'd obviously always do it for our daughter, I'd just as readily do it for her, too. As I've said before, I still love her, even if the feelings aren't reciprocated.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B