No means no.

No means no. 

I am perfectly fine with that. I totally support it. 

But I also support that yes should mean yes, and maybe should mean maybe. I’m not just talking about sex here. I mean in everyday life. If you say ‘maybe’ or ‘yes I want to do that thing but I’m busy right now’ instead of ‘no’ – that’s really fucking confusing. I’m not psychic, ya know. 

It seems that where I live, there’s a sort of culture of not saying no. But I’m just not wired that way. For me to get to the point that I understand your ‘yes’ or ‘maybe’ to mean no, I have to stop believing you and no longer trust your words. And that just damages our friendship or working relationship or whatever. 

This rant was prompted by an article I saw this morning. Here’s a link:

9-Year-Old Threatened with Sexual Harassment Charges 

Basically, a little boy likes a little girl at school; he writes her a bunch of love notes; she’s not interested; the school threatened the boy with sexual harassment. The article states definitively that the notes were unwanted by the girl. But I just want to know did the boy know this? 

Neither this article nor the “source” article mention whether the boy knew the notes were unwanted. Honestly, I am not defending childhood sexual harassment. If this boy knew that the girl wasn’t interested and didn’t want the notes, then he should know to stop. But if he didn’t know, how could he know? Not to be flippant, but was there a set of “do you like me check yes or no” boxes? 

What is clear to me from this article is that some other students were guilty of bullying &/or sexual harassment. Anyway, say no, people. If we’re teaching men and boys that they need to hear and respect ‘no’ when it is said, we also need to be teaching people to say no. 

Say what you need to say. 

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

My birthday wish

So, my birthday is coming up. Whoo. 

I have this impression that most people, when they get lots of birthday wishes on their facebook wall, fell happy or excited or “blessed”. I suppose they feel something like whatever the birthday wishers intend them to feel. 

I am not most people, perhaps in lots of ways. But when I see those facebook wall wishes, I don’t feel happy. I definitely don’t feel “blessed”. Now, I understand that other people actually do mean well. But what I feel is not well. When a bunch of people who I don’t know especially well, and with whom I don’t really communicate beyond the occasional “like” or comment on a facebook post, and to whom I am simply not that close wish me a happy birthday I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that I’m not close to them. I’m barely close to anyone, and these kinds of wishes on my birthday really make me feel that. They make me feel worse. 

This is a big problem in my life. I’m desperately alone most of the time. I can’t invent people to spend time with me. Well, I can invent people if I’m writing a show or something. But they’re not real. They don’t make me feel any less lonely. Anyway... 

To be clear, I’m not upset that it’s my birthday, that I’m getting older and all that. I’m really not. And I don’t hate the idea that people would want me to have a good day on my birthday. But the honest truth is, someone I barely know taking 2 seconds to write on my facebook wall does not help that to happen. It makes you feel better, because you think you’re doing something good for me. That’s perfectly normal. Sometimes I wish people a happy birthday. But in this case, on my birthday, you’re actually making yourself feel better by doing something that makes me feel bad. 

I know! That is a very unusual reaction. But as I said before, I am not most people. 

So, here’s my birthday wish. If you want me to actually have a great birthday, then do something to make a difference in my day. Write me a real message in my inbox, something personal and specific. Ask me about what’s going on in my life (very little, sadly), or tell about your life. Start an actual conversation – and then continue it. Or if you live somewhere nearby, make a plan to do something with me: buy me coffee or lunch or something (‘cause I’m broke). Or just stop by and visit for a little bit. And if you happen to be financially fortunate, I don’t know, send me some money; I need a new phone, and a new computer, and I’m worried that my car could break down any day now. (Did I mention I’m broke? Seriously broke.) 

Or even better, how about hire me for a gig? A normal job, even, if you’ve got something that I could reasonably do with my skill set. I’m not working much at all. (Hence the being broke.) If you’re in a position to influence such things, ask me about the shows I’ve written and if any of them might work for your theatre. Or, if you’re comfortable with yourself, you could model for me. (I’m a photographer too, in case you didn’t know.) That would be awesome, ‘cause even the people who say they’re interested aren’t interested enough to actually do it. 

The best thing you could do for my birthday would be to actually become my friend, not just my facebook friend. I have very few. (I guess I’m nearly broke in that area, too.) You may not know me very well, and what you do know is that I’m, uh...kind of prickly. It’s true. But on the inside I’m actually soft and gooey. Well, that just sounds gross. 

Most people won’t want to be my friend. That’s okay. I understand, it’s a huge investment. And a lot of people seem to have plenty of friends already. 

Oh yeah, plus world peace and all that crap. You know, since I’m making wishes. 

The awesome and exciting story of my day so far!!!

I just went out to move my car, because apparently I think I’m in New York City. 

No. Actually, when I got home from rehearsal last night someone had parked in the spot where I usually park. Not a huge deal, I just parked in another spot. This evening when I leave for rehearsal that spot might be hard to back out of, as there’s not much room back there. So I moved the car now, while there are only a few other cars here. All the “normal” people have gone to their “normal people” jobs. But they’ll be back. 

I’m sure the reason that whoever parked in my usual spot is that they didn’t want the difficulty of backing out this morning from their usual spot. 

Anyway... 

I just went out to move my car, and I found a spider had taken up residence inside the car in one of the cup holders. Not all that long ago – a few weeks, maybe – I found a spider in my shower. It has since relocated, but I was fine with it being there. I wasn’t hurting me, and I felt no need to hurt it. Actually, it might be doing me a favor, catching other insects. But I’m just not okay with a spider in my cup holder. Sometimes I use that thing, for cups, or sunglasses, or my phone. And sometimes when I’m driving, my hand may reach over there to pick up whatever is there. In such a situation, I’m probably not paying so much attention to whether a spider is there and if it might decide to bite me because my hand is in its spider-territory. 

So I removed the spider from my car. 

The End. 

Yep, that’s it. That’s the exciting adventure of my day so far. Awesome, eh?

I hope the spider makes it, finds another car to invade. 

No. Not another car, just another place to live and do whatever spiders do. 

And now, it’s time to continue my daily overdose of caffeine, i.e., cup of coffee number two. Also very exciting. Or maybe the opposite of that.

a shallow realization

I just had a realization, as I was out for a walk in my neighborhood. I realized that I was not looking at the world in the way that I’ve come to normally look at it in the past several years since I started taking a lot of photos. That way of looking is to really look – to see things. 

Oh, look at that; it’s very interesting or beautiful or ugly or whatever. That thing wasn’t here the last time I walked down this street. And that thing has definitely been here every time I’ve walked down this street. I wonder how that got here or why the thing I saw before isn’t here. 

It’s not very surprising, this change in how I look at things, except that it happened relatively fast. It’s only been a month, or 6 weeks maybe, since I put my camera away and decided to take a break. That’s not very long, right? I remember several years ago when I really started taking pictures I eventually realized I was looking at the world differently. But I think it was a lot longer before that happened than 6 weeks. 

Of course, with this realization came the other part which is that the way I’m looking at things lately is just very shallow, very much a functional visual interaction. It’s like I’m missing some part of me. 

I’m also looking at people differently these days. I guess I’d have to say I’m NOT really looking at them most of the time. I think I’m mostly just looking to see who the person is, where previously I might have looked at their faces and bodies and proportions and expressions and posture and all that stuff. (Not in a creepy way. Wait, maybe... Do people think I look at them in a creepy way? I could ask, but unfortunately, people mostly are not very honest. Anyway...) I found so many people beautiful in some way or another, and often I wished I could photograph lots of people that I saw. Not just snap a quick photo of some random person walking down the street, but to spend an hour or two with the person and my camera in front of a black sheet or a blank wall, really photographing a human person being human. 

I have missed it, and thought about it, and even had dreams about doing photo shoots. But, ironically, I’ve not actually done anything about it. Ironic because that’s sort of the reason I’ve been taking this break – that while there are a handful of people who express interest in doing a shoot with me, they mostly don’t have enough interest to actually do it. And my frustration with that whole situation has led me to stop trying. 

Electoral College

I’ve been anti-Electoral College for a while now. 

If you’re not sure what I mean, it’s that problem every four years during American Presidential elections where certain states are “swing states”. Certain states don’t get much attention, aren’t really part of the national campaign because they’re a solid “red state” or they just don’t have enough Electoral College votes to matter much. 

That has just never made sense to me. Maaaayyyyybe there was a time when it made sense, if the average voter just didn’t know much about the national issues, so they elect someone local who they know and perhaps respect, then those people go and elect a president. But today that’s just ridiculous and it leads to some weird election campaigning strategies. I’ve often thought, “Why not just let it go? Get rid of the Electoral College. It’s a leftover, antiquated idea.” 

We’re reluctant to let go of things, though, even when they’re not really working anymore. Like religion – it’s not really working so well for us anymore, yet a lot of people are reluctant to let it go. Then again, maybe religion IS working. I guess you’d have to figure out the actual purpose of religion to know the answer. 

Here’s a better (?) example: the whole “gay marriage” resistance that we’re seeing these days. For the sake of argument...suppose there was a time when it “made sense” that people of the same gender couldn’t marry. Well, marriage has actually changed in the past 50 years or 100 years or whatever, and it’s not because of some “gay agenda” to redefine marriage. As society has changed, straight people in marriages have changed what marriage is to the point that it’s something more and more gay people saw as something in which they want to participate. It’s no longer “the husband does this and the wife does that,” but it’s become more of a “we’re in a loving and committed relationship and we want to symbolically and legally join our lives” kind of thing. So we need to let go of that older idea of what a marriage was, because it just isn’t working for us anymore. 

(Was that a better example? You be the judge.) 

Anyway, the Electoral College doesn’t seem to work for the entire country anymore. I suppose you could say it’s working for some people – people in those swing states, whose vote is worth more, is more important that votes from people who live elsewhere. If you have a choice between two states in which you could vote (let’s say you attend college in another state), the perceived value of your presidential vote shouldn’t be a determining factor for where you decide to vote. If it’s possible to clearly win the popular vote but lose the election, there’s something wrong with the voting system. 

Well, since we’re so reluctant to let things go when they’re not working for us, how about this: instead of simply abolishing the Electoral College, why don’t we tweak it a little? In election coverage, nobody talks about winning the “Oregon vote” or the “North Carolina vote” unless it’s to do with the Electoral College, or to demonstrate how backward a particular state might be. (Yes, I’m talking about you, Mississippi.) But people definitely talk about other votes: the black vote; the women’s vote; the Latino vote; the elderly vote. Maybe that should be our electoral college. So whoever wins the “black vote” gets all the black Electoral College votes, etc. We’d have to figure out all the different categories, and the categories might change every four years. Each person still only gets one vote, but if they fall into more than one category, they can decide. So your half African American, half Latino, elderly, bi-sexual grandmother would get to decide where her vote is going. Non-disabled, cis-gendered, white men aged 21-60 don’t get an option, they have to vote “white dude” – call it “reparations”. 

What do you think, America? I say we give it a try, and see what happens.

Olive Branch refused, and How you make a cynic

Sometimes in a relationship between two humans, one of them will do something that hurts the other. It may not be on purpose, not meant to hurt the other... well, hopefully not. But it happens. In making decisions for one’s own welfare or protection or comfort, one hurts the other. 

That one may not realize this hurt. Or they may. Or they may not realize the extent of the injury. One can, in fact, basically kill the relationship without realizing it. Not being the injury party, the one simply doesn’t notice the change. And meanwhile the injured other is hyper-aware of the change. 

After a time, that other’s pain may subside, and the other may want to explore the remnants of that relationship, in the hope that there may be something left, something salvageable, some ember, some flicker of life left. Just maybe there’s a change to rebuild – not the same relationship that was. That’s probably impossible. There will always be...scars...leftover weak-spots, perhaps. 

Nonetheless, that other once valued that relationship and decides to initiate contact, to extend a metaphorical olive branch. Sadly, the one whose actions caused this relationship-death may be unaware that the other still has this injury. And, sadly, this one may simply reject the overture entirely. Perhaps this one doesn’t fully understand what happened, how hurt the other felt. Or perhaps this one doesn’t care. 

–        –        –        –        –        –        –        –        –        –        –        –

That becomes a little cumbersome to write not using “you” or “he or she” or other such pronouns. 

Anyway... 

That happened to me, earlier this year. And for some reason it came to mind while I was out taking a walk this evening. Someone had basically killed our relationship about a year before, and didn’t seem to realize it. We weren’t best friends or anything, but there are so few people to whom I honestly feel a connection that when I lose one of them, it’s so very obvious and I feel it deeply. 

But I wrote this person a few months ago and said that I still had these negative feelings. But I was trying to see if there was something there to salvage. This person’s reply was that they had not understood the extent of that “injury”, but that they only want to be around people that like them and make them feel happy. 

Now, this person isn’t dumb, but maybe they just didn’t get what I was saying. I don’t know. I’ve thought about writing them again to clarify that I was hoping to maybe reestablish some kind of friendship. Or maybe I should just take them at their word. 

There was another relationship of mine that “ended” similarly. But in this case, it’s definitely un-reparable, as the other person – who actually went out of his way to cut me off professionally, though, to me it felt very personal, and indicative of a personal weakness – that other person died. Yeah. So... No repairing that relationship. Actually, he got sick, and it became clear he was going to die (though, of course, no one used that word – but that’s another rant: our culture’s fear of and lack of relationship with death) “everybody” started eulogizing him. I just wanted it to be done; I wanted to stop seeing his name and face and all that. 

Then, after he died, everybody continued saying wonderful things about him, and meanwhile, my thought when I hear his name is, “Yeah, fuck him.” 

So that relationship is literally done. And I think it had some influence on my thoughts about this other relationship I was talking about before. Maybe it got me thinking that I don’t really want to go through whatever short span of life I still have with these limbo-relationships. Of course I don’t want that. But I have difficulty maintaining a relationship with someone who has hurt me. 

I’m actually very sensitive. Anyone reading this who really knows me would be aware of a certain cynicism and bitterness in me. But it’s mostly there for protection. I was a shy, scared kid, and maybe I still am. But I’m definitely an idealist whose hopes and expectations for people and society and the world have been crushed over and over. I have all these strong feelings – not strong in the sense that they can withstand a lot of injury or pressure, but strong in that there’s a lot of it and it can be extreme and just take over. So I protect myself with my cynicism and perhaps my aloofness. Of course, then when I do get brave (or just fed up with the severe loneliness) and I open up and let some emotion out people back off, or worse, they just step all over those emotions – all over me. And I try to pull whatever’s left of those feelings back inside my shell and nurse them. 

No wonder. God, that’s exactly how you make a cynic: find an intelligent, romantic idealist and crush them. 

Man, I have issues.

Not doin' so great

What’s the point of being smart, clever, talented (and whatever else) if I’m always gonna feel this alone? 

I think my biggest fear is that I’ll lose hope, and then... I don’t know what will happen, but it scares me, and I don’t really want to think about it. 

Hope that anybody really wants to hire me, that they recognize I’m good at what I do and value that over the other shit (i.e., being everybody’s buddy). Hope that I’ll ever really start writing again. Hope that anybody I really want to photograph will be interested ENOUGH to actually schedule a shoot and then NOT back out or cancel or just not show. Hope that anybody will ever want to fuck me again, much less love me. Or even, much more importantly, hope that anybody wants to truly be my friend, not just on fucking facebook, but actually spend some damn time with me, stop by, have some coffee or some whiskey, just hang out. 

Fucking hope that I’ll EVER be somebody’s priority. 


All this shit just fucking hurts. And I’m tired of hope being all I have. But like I said, I’m afraid of what’ll happen when I lose hope. 

As bitter as I feel and sound now, it’s probably better than whatever happens next. But it feels like next is on it’s way.