LGBTQ Travel

Just Fucking Do IT….and Maybe a Gang Bang

Discerning Daddy

Before you go any further, this isn’t about sex. Well, there is a gang bang story in here. And it’s a really hot gang bang, like one of those 20-load weekend kind of deals, but that’s not what this piece is about. So if you don’t want to read something kind of corny, and full of inspirational moments, just jump ahead to the gang bang story and move on.

But for those of you who can handle the cheese…come on in…

When Noah told me he was moving back to Berlin, I was excited for him. He would be starting a new job and going back to the City he loved. But I was also afraid. Fear, it seems, is a corner stone to much of my life.

Fear is that constant voice in my head enumerating every possible tragic outcome, every flaw in my body and personality, all the failures of my past and the ones waiting for me in the future. I’ve read tons of self-help books and law of attraction and power of mind books that tell me I have to get control of my thoughts and my emotions, I have to be grateful and think only happy thoughts: that what I think and feel will determine the course of my life. I will either sink or swim based on my thoughts and feelings.

If this were true, then honestly, I would have drowned a long time ago. I’m not saying it’s all bullshit, because I don’t think it is. I am a big believer that we have the power to manifest almost anything into our lives, and that how we think about our lives does matter, but, in my opinion, the way we change our life is by directly confronting the things we are most afraid of and moving past them. Not hiding from them or denying them or pretending they don’t exist.

Here are some of the things my head has said to me, “Now that Noah is moving to Berlin and has a new job he will no longer need me. He will see me for who I really am, a failure, broke, struggling, fat, ugly, old, HIV Positive. I have nothing to bring to the table. Eventually he will meet a sexier, smarter, more successful man and move in with him and I will die alone.”

Because in my head, I will always die alone. Oh, and homeless. In my head, eventually, I am always homeless and dying alone.

Another fun game I like to play is what I call the Math = Dying alone and Homeless game. In this fun filled game I like to calculate how old Noah will be when I am 55 (36), and when I am 60 (41) and when I am 70 (51). This game is all about proving to myself why my relationship will never work. It is also disrespectful to Noah, assuming that once I’m too old he will no longer love me, that he is the kind of man who would just abandon me. Which I know isn’t true. Because the game isn’t about Noah at all. The game is all about me and my self-worth.

There are a million stories like this that we tell ourselves. I’m sure you have your own special fun games you like to play when you are lying in bed late at night unable to sleep.

And the truth is, maybe there were reasons to break up with Noah. To just walk away. To say, hey, you know what, I don’t want to risk it. He lives 6,000 miles away. He’s 19 years younger than me. He’s HIV Negative and I’m Poz. He’s going to be super fucking gorgeous when I’m 70 and old and on and on it goes…but I can change that story. Instead I could tell myself another truth: How amazing is it that my partner lives in Berlin and I get to go there every five weeks? How fucking awesome is it (and what kind of crazy stud am I) that I get this super sexy, hot, 31 year old dude who doesn’t give a fuck about my age, and is an educated adult about my HIV status? I mean…where exactly is the problem?

One of the ways, lately, that I’ve been dealing with my fearful mind, is going on long walks. When I’m in LA I love to walk the hills of Hollywood and Silverlake, stunned by the endless views and the strange beauty that makes up my home City. When I’m in Berlin I love to walk for hours through Friedrichshain and Kreuzberg, discovering a new world, learning this new City that is now also my home. I carry books with me so I can stop in cafés and read. It’s amazing how kind and open the world is when you just walk and allow yourself to be open to whatever or whoever might come your way.

The other way I deal with my fearful head is contrary action. My fear wants me to crawl into bed, or to get lost in a dark room, watching hours of Porn (I can literally get lost in an endless array of gang bang videos), or numbing myself with hours of Netflix. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with gang bang videos or Netflix, or going to bed. It’s just about making sure I don’t lose myself in those things.

Like right now. I literally just finished jerking off to some pretty intense BB Gang Bang porn. So now I’m writing. I’m trying to tell the truth. I’m trying to remind myself of who I am and where I want to be. Because in the end, I think Noah and I have a chance, even our 70/51 year old selves: but regardless of what happens with us, I’ll either have succeeded or I won’t have, and that is all up to me. And how I manage my fear.

That’s true of everything in our lives. We waste so much time being afraid. Hiding. Of not taking risks. Playing it safe. Sacrificing. And then one day it’s all over.

So here’s what I did: I got on that plane and I flew to Berlin, and I told Noah all the things that scared me, and he wrapped his arms around me and just held me (He’s definitely the quiet and strong type and I’m definitely…well, I’m not quiet at all) and reminded me how safe I really am. And I made friends. I found other Americans living in Berlin and I befriended them. I invited them to coffee. I made friends with some amazing Germans who loved showing me around their city.

And I just kept doing the opposite of what my head told me. I did the opposite of fear.

I’m not really sure of my point here (I’m really just trying to keep my guilt at bay for having spent 20 minutes watching that gang bang porn video…I might have to go back and re-watch it…it was good!), but I think maybe what I’m getting at is really simple: It’s ok to be afraid and it’s ok to fall down and to fail. Just don’t let those things define your life.

There’s always a reason not to get on that plane, or date that guy, or quit your job to follow your passion, or not to write that book: but as a guy who has been terrified while doing each and every one of those things in the face of all the fear, I can tell you: Life is way fucking better on the other side.

So go fucking do it. Whatever it is. And if you fail, fuck it. Do the next thing. Just keep doing it.

Sorry this wasn’t the sexiest blog…in that gang video there was this super hot…JK you will have to go find your own porn.

But it is the one I needed to hear today. So it’s the one you get.

I promise, I’ll write something super hot really soon!

Hey, and also, my new book, AccidentalWarlocks, is now available on Amazon. It would fucking amazing if you went and checked it out!

Thoughts on Travel and Sex and Love Part Two

Discerning Daddy

In my early 20’s I was lost in a dark and violent heroin addiction. My life was narrow and small, without hope. I was lonely and sad, broke, the only relief was getting high. I remember snorting bags of China White in my Court Street Brooklyn apartment at night and then going for long walks through Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights ending up at the Promenade, the Manhattan Skyline like some far-off fairy tale land of kings and magicians, a land where anything could happen: a land of endless possibility.

I would stand there, high as fuck, and dream of the life I wanted: a life where I was a writer, where I wasn’t alone: I had friends and a boyfriend who loved me, family who could stand to be around me, a life where I didn’t steal and lie just to get by.

I could feel that fantasy life in me, burning through the darkness, trying to get my attention: like a coded message in the sky, or in the flamed lights of New York City, flickering in the neon, trying to remind me of who I really was.

During this time I read a book called Martin and John by Dale Peck. It’s a small book, a first-time novel by a gay writer my age who lived in New York City and in London. I remember sitting in café’s in the East Village reading that book and crying. Every word connected to me. In the acknowledgments he wrote a thank you to a café in London where he would sit and write.

I must have been 25 when I read that. I remember so clearly thinking, I want to be that guy. That writer sitting in a café in London. I want to sit in café’s all over the world writing.

I didn’t get sober until I was 42 years old.

It wasn’t till I was 49 years old, sitting at the Bach, a café on Hoxton Street in London where I would go to work on my book, that I realized: holy fuck! I got exactly what I wanted.

That’s the thing about life, I spent so much time running, so much time trying to hide from the pain and the fear, that I couldn’t see that life was pushing me in a direction, trying to send me down the path of who I really was. The only obstacle to that path was me.

This has been true for most of my life. The more I try to control and orchestrate, the more I try to force something, or to hide from pain, the more I allow fear to cloud my thoughts, the further I get from who I am supposed to be.

I am now, at 50, in a process of learning to allow who I am to unfold. Sometimes I wonder, what if I had gotten sober younger, or if I had been more focused, or if I had always worn condoms when I fucked (would I still be HIV negative?), or if I’d never used heroin, or stolen all those cars and money from my dad, or lied to my friends, what if I had never been any of the things I spent most of my life being: would I be famous now? Would I be successful? Or would I still be wandering down the lost path? Maybe all those things are the things that have brought me closer to myself.

I spent a year travelling back and forth from LA to London visiting my boyfriend Noah. Every morning we would wake up and he would go to work, and I would walk across the street to the Bach, books and computer in my backpack, and I would order a flat white and sit there and write. I started a journal called “Thoughts on Travel and Love and Life” and I wrote in it every day.

During the afternoons I would walk over to the Glory, and down to the canal and make my way slowly to Broadway Market and London Fields. I would sit in that park and watch people, strangers, as they went about their lives. I created elaborate stories about who they were and the lives they were living.

I also spent a lot of time worrying. About money. About Noah, about sex and being in a long distance relationship, about work, about all the endless things our brains find to latch on to and obsess over.

But I didn’t let those worries stop me. I would just start walking again, exploring a new city and a new people. Finding book stores and cafes, wandering through parks and museums, stumbling upon London Bridge and Big Ben and that Ferris wheel that still seems like a mystery to me: what Is that fucking Ferris wheel all about?, never really knowing what anything was until, while telling Noah about what I had done that day, he would tell me what each and everything I saw was, giving me history and context to my day.

I am a clueless tourist. I just walk, letting it all be out of context. I probably should have bought a guide book, or at least asked Siri, but I wasn’t there to see the “sights” I was there to experience myself somewhere new, somewhere so far out of context that the only thing recognizable would be me.
That is what travel is all about for me. When everything recognizable falls away, and the only thing left is yourself. You can’t hide anymore. Some days the loneliness was unbearable, the fear so out of control I felt stunned by it, but other days there was hope and joy and love. And I just kept walking my way through all of it, coming out the other side: because there is always an other side to walk out of.

I’m still afraid a lot of the time. I don’t always know where the money will come from to keep traveling, my boyfriend, who now lives in Berlin, is still 6000 miles away. I wonder how we will make it work, I wonder if I will succeed or fail. I’m 50 now. It is easy to believe life is no longer beginning, instead it is ending. It would be easy to get lost in these thoughts, to turn from my path.

But then I remember that day, sitting at a café in the East Village, reading Martin and John. I remember how badly I wanted Dale Peck’s life, to be that writer in some café in London, or Paris, or Amsterdam, writing. I remember going into the bathroom and snorting a line of heroin. I remember the sadness, the since of hopelessness. I remember thinking that I would never escape.
But I did escape. And somewhere out there somebody is sitting alone, feeling like they will never be able to have the life they want: they feel trapped: hopeless.

I don’t give a fuck if this sounds corny, I don’t give a fuck if I’m the cheesiest guy in the whole world, I just want to say this: we are never trapped. We are never without hope.

I am 50 years old. I am 6.5 years sober from a brutal 23 year fight with drugs and alcohol. I am HIV Positive. I should not even be alive. And yet here I am. Living the exact life I wanted at 23.

Think about that. What kind of fucking miracle is that?

And Hey! Go check out my book, Accidental Warlocks, on Amazon! Your Support Would be Amazing!