Category Archives: Life

Three Hundred Sixty-Five

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I’ve tried putting it out of my head. I’ve grown a lot since then. I’ve lived a pretty exciting life in the past year. I’ve reconnected with of people, I’ve had a lot of laughs, I’ve been really honest with myself and others. I’ve had a number of milestones on my journey to reflect, and I don’t need another one. But this date is there, it’s seared into my mind, it’s forever a part of me. 

It was a little after 4:00 in the afternoon a year ago today that Kate told me she was divorcing me, and that I had two days to move out, and then walked out of the room with no explanation, never to be seen again. About an hour and a half after that, I had to sit with my General Manager at the break room at work and try to explain what happened when I still wasn’t sure what happened. She was the first person I told. A year ago Monday, I pet two cats I’d snuggled with for fourteen years for the last time, ever. That morning, I left my home and my life, and no one would tell me why. 

I have a new home now. I have a new life. I’m happy. But this day …  

After everything, I didn’t expect it to still hurt. 

Man’s Second-Best Friend

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Instead of working on my book all late afternoon, I’ve been hanging out with Newcastle, who has been following me from room to room, giving me big, begging eyes for my attention. I let him curl up with me as I watched my one day off slip away from me. 

I love this cat. I love him so much. 

He crawled off of my lap and curled up in the corner of the couch to go to sleep, and he looks old. He is old. I can feel his bones when I pet him. It really hit me just now. He’s lived a lot longer than he was supposed to, with his heart condition and a liver that’s not where it’s supposed to be. But he and the other cat play chase still, even if Newcastle doesn’t really have the stamina to play long. 

When I saw my psychiatrist for the first time, and he asked me what my goals were, I told him, “I want to be as good as my cat thinks I am.” I don’t know if I’m there yet. I think Newcastle has unfairly high expectations. 

I don’t know what I’m going to do when he’s gone. But I know what I’m going to do for these years, these months he has left, When he comes up to me and demands affection, I’m going to put the notebook down and give it to him. This cat has brought me so much joy in my life that the least I can do is give him a happy retirement. 

The Non-Functional Closet

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I have an announcement to make, and this is a big deal, so pay attention. This isn’t a conclusion I came about lightly. I didn’t just say, “I feel this way, it must be this.” It took me years to understand this. I’ve visited doctors and therapists and had some long conversations. Some people I’ve talked to just flat out don’t believe me, and I suspect a number of you won’t either, but it’s my identity, and I need to share.  

I’m asexual. If you’re not sure what that means, in the simplest of terms, A is a prefix meaning Not. Heterosexuals are attracted to the opposite sex and gender, homosexuals are attracted to the same sex and gender, bisexuals are attracted to both, and pansexuals are attracted to everything in between. Asexuals are attracted to neither and none.  

Except when they are. 

You see, like anything having to do with sex, it’s complicated. There’s a whole spectrum (from people who are only sexually attracted to someone they have a deep emotional connection to, all the way to people who are physically sickened by the idea of genitals being touched by others), and I don’t quite understand where I belong on it. I can tell you what it means for me. I can be in relationships. I’ve even had sex since my transition. But in general, with very few exceptions, I don’t feel sexual attraction. I don’t think about sex, sex doesn’t motivate me. Sex doesn’t play a part in my life, and more importantly, I don’t want it to. I find people attractive, but I don’t want to sleep with them. I develop crushes, but not because I want to see the person naked. Hell, I write erotica, but it’s as much a distant, imaginary fantasy to me that I can’t really relate to as when I write about a witch battling the Norse goddess of winter. 

Do I think this is part of the reason Kate divorced me? Yes, I do*. 

I’ve kept this to myself because asexuality is weird to our society. Even the most juvenile of comic book movies shoehorn in a romance subplot, and what is romance about but sex? Sex is everywhere. Sex (in the United States, anyway) is the unnamed, hidden force behind everything. Sex is biology. The fact that I’m not into it is a rejection of a fundamental part of who we are as humans, and many people I’ve told simply won’t accept this about me. 

When I started making the transition, I thought there was something wrong with me. I went looking for causes and solutions and found none that worked. My doctors suspected that my testosterone was low, or my medication was causing a reaction. It’s been suggested to me that I just need to meet the right person. And then, of course, there’s the one that I will bet money some of you are thinking right now: it’s perfectly normal for a man my age to lose interest in sex. 

My testosterone is normal. None of my medications have sexual side effects. It’s going to take more than just one person to change me. It has nothing to do with my age. I’m not broken, I’m not abnormal, I’m not old. I’m asexual. This is who I am.  

* I was fully honest with Kate about how my needs and wants were changing, so this isn’t something that was just kind of sprung on her unawares. She’s the first person I talked to who actually believed I was Ace. And I’m pretty sure that she ultimately decided she wanted no part of it. 

Cool Spots

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I’ve had a few days to think about this. On Thanksgiving, Dr. Darrel Lloyd, one of my professors and mentors at Hastings College, passed away at the age of 85 (I hope that’s a lesson to all you youngsters about the dangers of smoking). My contemporaries at Hastings who had even a passing crack at the English Department knew Dr. Lloyd. If you didn’t take one of his classes, he did an annual Christmas reading which was one part hilarious and two parts bolt-you-to-your-seat. He was a brilliant man, and funny, and kind, and all of the other things I’ve been hearing.  

But the thing that he was to me, as I’m sure he was to a lot of people, that isn’t really coming across in all of the memorials I’m seeing, is that he was hands-down the coolest professor at Hastings College, possibly ever. I can name a lot of cool professors, including Dr. Lloyd’s son, also Dr. Lloyd, as well as the father of one of my dear friends, and they were pretty great. But as far as turtleneck-and-tweed-jacket-wearing, slow-motion-strutting, lecturing-anywhere-in-the-room-but-behind-the-podium, laid-back-quip-at-exactly-the-right-moment, deep-sexy-voice cool, no one could beat Darrell Lloyd. He couldn’t have been cooler if he was in a band. No one will ever be that cool again. 

I won’t be in Hastings on December 15 to celebrate his life and his passing, but my heart will be there. Darrel Lloyd will be there too, in the back, slouched down on his seat, taking it all in and being the coolest ghost in the Midwest. 

Life’s a Musical

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I’m generally a happy person. My life is challenging, but I mostly get to do what I want, and I’m surrounded by good people. But find me on my commute and I get exceedingly crotchety and cranky. I don’t get violent, I become like Tommy Lee Jones in any movie that Tommy Lee Jones has ever starred in. And considering what a public transit commute is like in any big city, who can blame me? I keep to myself, I don’t jostle anyone, and I get home to my big, adorable, stupid cat, and everything is good again. 

There’s this thing, though, that I never noticed during my time served in New York, and that’s the singing. This usually happens at night, but it can pop up any time. Someone, of any age, with earpods in their ears, will start belting out, at the top of their lungs, and usually not very well, whatever they’re listening to. It’s loud enough to pierce through my podcast, and it drives me insane. It also puts me in a dilemma. I encourage self-expression, however you want to do it, from wearing colorful shoes to dancing on the sidewalk. This, though, is kind of awful. Even when the singer has talent, it’s kind of awful. I can’t maintain my bubble if someone keeps popping it with whatever the latest star has to say this month. There’s a reason playing music without headphones is illegal on the Metro.  

There’s nothing I can do about it. I’m not about to tell a Metro agent about it, because what are they going to do about it? And even if they could, am I really the kind of person who wants to penalize someone for doing something that makes them happy? No, I’m not a Republican. The good news is, it doesn’t happen very often, maybe three times a month. It’s a temporary nuisance when it does happen. So I just suck it up and mutter under my breath. Joy is a challenge to come by, and they found it, even it’s just for the length of this track. 

Oh, now they’re singing the next song on the playlist? Goddammit! 

Pit Stop

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I’ve been writing nonstop for the past two-and-a-half, almost three years, whenever I can, wherever I can. It’s been nothing particularly profound, mostly silly magical adventures, with a few romances and one epic sci-fi/fantasy thrown in, but it’s my art and my reason. I have no doubt whatsoever that if I hadn’t been structuring my new life around writing, I never would have made it through this divorce. Even as I’ve been working these endless strings of fifteen-hour days, I’ve managed to find a cumulative hour a day to put pen to paper.  

And with that in mind, I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself. I just finished a novel that I think is good enough to shop to agents after I give it a once-over and a polish, and for the first time since I started this marathon in 2017, I don’t have an idea for my next piece. I’m not calling it Writers’ Block, because that connotates an outside force keeping me from inspiration, when in fact, I just haven’t let my mind wander as much as I usually have (probably those aforementioned fifteen-hour days). I’m also not sweating it. If I take some time off from writing, I might actually do things like finishing unpacking my room or read a book. I’ve committed to doing some editing next month, which I wouldn’t be able to do if I was scribbling and typing furiously away every time I wasn’t working, sleeping, or doing laundry. 

But I can’t deny, it’s weird not to be stressing out about when I can find some time to sit down with my notebook or wondering where the characters are going to go next. It’s like writing was a job, and I just got laid off. I talked about free moments earlier, but when I’m in full writer mode, I don’t have free moments. I’m constantly occupied by my novel or short story. Well, now I have free moments. Who knows how long that’s going to last until inspiration gooses me, and I get back to work. 

What to do, what to do … 

Cat Burglar

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Somebody stole my cat. Somebody I trusted. This was a friend, a confidant, and my roommate. And there’s nothing I can do about it.  

The cat burglar was able to pull off the heist by virtue of being more charming than I am. For starters, she talks to the babies, constantly. She doesn’t really say anything, she just calls them by the nicknames she’s given them and asks them the same question over and over again. She also sings, usually some old, familiar number with her nicknames replacing random lyrics—seriously, she removes all coherence from the songs. Most importantly, she plays with them. Between my long double-shifts and eagerness to write, coupled with my impatience at the way they’ll just sit there and stare at mousey-mouse, I don’t take the little toy out and tease them very much. Nicole will sense when they’re at maximum energy and go to town.  

So now Newcastle spends as much time with her as he does with me, sometimes even more. It’s clear he likes her better. I always took my cats for granted, seeing them as passive pets, and now I’m paying the price. And so I’m going to give her the $800.00 vet bill Newcastle just incurred and wipe my hands of the little traitor. She owns my cat now, but at least she lets me visit him. 

Revision Quest

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“How would you do it?” asks the woman who is showing me the ropes. “Why don’t you give it a try?” 

And so I return to my desk and spend a while coming up with a two-sentence blurb about our new podcast, featuring the phrase, “… a companion to the journal.” I send it back to her, and she says, “This is perfect, run it past the boss.” This is going to take a while. If I’ve learned anything these past five days, it’s that the boss is a reviser, almost pathologically so. Obviously it got her where it got her, so I have to keep that in mind, but I was prepared for some back-and-forth that would go on for hours.  

About forty-five minutes later, the boss props herself up on my desk and states, “Here’s the thing. It’s not a ‘companion.’ We need another word.” 

“Supplement?” I suggest. 

“No, it’s not a supplement either.” She then lists all of the reasons that the podcast doesn’t qualify as a supplement.  

“So what is it then?” I ask. 

She then proceeds to give me a perfect, literal definition of a companion podcast and concludes with, “See? Not a companion.” Since I couldn’t think of any other word, especially given her explanation, we agreed just to remove the offending phrase altogether. The rest of the blurb went in unmolested. 

I say this without irony or snark—I think I’m going to fall in love with this job. 

M-Word

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I was talking to my boss today, and I referred to the medical journal she’s in charge of as a magazine. The room went quiet. Everybody froze, until they all turned and trained their eyes on me. The piano player stopped playing. A record scratched. “We don’t use that word here,” I was informed. “Never, ever use that word.”  

If you want a good picture of what happened, imagine if I had dropped the N-word in the middle of an NAACP meeting. 

All by Myself

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In my life, aside from my Facebook friends, I have three people I call my good friends. Two of them I see about once every other month, and the other is my roommate, who I see, if I’m lucky, once a week. I have two jobs where I interact with people regularly, and I have warmer relationships with some and simply professional relationships with others. During my time off, what little of it I get these days, I spend it writing, going for walks in the city, watching movies, and because he absolutely insists, cuddling with my cat. Someone recently expressed concern that I was lonely. 

I’m not. This is how I want my life to be. Maybe not working sixty-plus hours a week, but otherwise, like this. Writing is my passion. It means more to me than anything, and it’s a solitary pursuit. Also, I want to watch whatever dumb movie I want to watch without having to negotiate with anyone else. Walking in the city is something that can be done with others, and when she’s available, Nicole does it with me, and we have a great time. I like talking to people and hanging out, but I don’t need to, and after a run of long days at two jobs, I don’t particularly want to. 

I think maybe people overestimate the time Kate and I spent together. Toward the end of our marriage, I saw her for, at the most, an hour a day, and she used that time to check Facebook and play Charmed in the background. I was lonely for a long time with her—I didn’t have any friends at all when we were together—and I eventually grew to enjoy my own company. I’d been pretty solitary before that, even during my most social (2002-2003), and by this point with Kate, I had become a hermit. Not all of that has gone away. I don’t want it to.  

And so, if you want to hang out, that’s great. I love hanging out with you. If you don’t have the time, that’s too bad, but don’t worry, I’ll be fine. I now have some extra time to work on what I think is the best novel I’ve written so far.  

In short, I may be alone most of the time, but I’m not lonely. Not even a little bit.