This is General Robert E. Lee. He was the South's top General and had a brilliant record on the battlefield.
Lee was a gentleman. He was quite civilized and not to leave a trail of horrible battlefield atrocities. He was well thought of on both sides of the lines. He actually went to West Point with many of the Northern generals and considered them friends.
Recently when the furor over the state flags that took some of the symbols of confederate flags, I decided to read up on Robert E. L
The Lessons of Steel
Steel has some very profound lessons to teach.
It is hard and cold sometimes but, if you learn these lessons, they will serve you well.
Steel is not magic.
It's work is not accomplished overnight.
It takes commitment and continuous, sustained effort to make that magic happen.
In the beginning there will be pain. You will be sore and want to quit but, if you persevere, there are rewards.
It won't happen ov
A ton has been written on the subject of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Unfortunately, most of it is quite abstruse and to make matters worse, it has a vocabulary of its own. In this blog entry I want to give my readers a basic understanding of PTSD, what it's like and how it's treated.
PTSD is a psychiatric condition that effects millions of people world wide. It is quite literally a mental scar left on your consciousness by traumatic events.
When I use the word trauma, I'm not just ta
Here I am again. It's really late or, maybe it's early. It depends on how you look at it.
Sometimes I think I've done a lot of healing and I've come so far. Then nights like this my ghosts come to me.
I don't know which ones are the worst. Sometimes its the ones that tell me to blame myself. Or maybe the ones that tell I should have done better. Then there are the ones that make me wonder why I'm still alive when so many others are dead.
Me and my ghosts have a merry old time. I roll
James- my namesake. He hit the beaches of Guadalcanal in 1942 and fought his way across the Pacific with the 1st Marine Division.
Richard- an Uncle on my Mom's side was a pilot in the old Army Air Force flying B-24 and eventually B-29s for MacArthur out of Australia, the Philippines and Guam.
My Dad- was 16 when he joined up in 1943 and was a Flight Engineer on B-17s. He flew out of Italy and England. As he was training on B-29s, the Japanese surrendered. After the War he went to col
When I was a kid and adults were trying to scare me out of my nasty homosexual hobby, they used to tell me stuff designed to scare it out of you. They said all you could ever hope to be is a bartender or a prostitute. Homosexuals always end up in prison. Homosexuals are useless, can't have families and other delightful things.
Of course that was all a product of the WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) society that I was immersed in. Some of it was self fulfilling.
Many young gay men in t
What can you do for me?
What's in it for me?
Why are you being so nice?
What is YOUR game?
So, how does this scam work?
How are you going to hurt me?
What can I do, How can I help? << Winning
I want to free you from bondage.
How weird is that?
I don't want to tie you down. I don't want to smack you with whips.
I want to free you.
Now if I can just free me.
When navies build a ship, it's a big expensive deal. Ships are supposed to last decades but many things change over decades. There are engineering improvements and new technologies. Missions expand and more capabilities are required. There is a real danger and, it has happened many times, that multi-million dollar state of the art warships are obsolete before they leave their builders slip.
It's called different things by different services. Refit. Modernization. Overhaul. Sailors wouldn't c
Why did you change your avatar from the silly cat to the blue Beast?
I'm posting Broken here at GA and that ties into that story.
Why did you post Broken? It's been on the shelf for a long time.
I'm stronger now. I plan to finish it. Anyone that has read it up to this point will tell you that there is a lot of ugly stuff in it and you can tell by the last chapter- it's going to get worse fast.
There's a whole lot of drugs in it...
Duh. It was the seventies. The whole country
I'm curious to hear from my readers:
Have you ever been on the wrong end of police misconduct?
Bullying, Harassment- that sort of thing?
I'm considering a story that involves it and I would like to hear your experiences.
If you aren't comfortable replying here, please PM me.
Misfit KId I dream frequently, sometimes they come out funny I go through insanity, all they want is money All these parties they get so habitual, the same sea of faces Always pushin', always pullin', always in the races I get cooled out I get the come ons I get rumbled I get crumbled, yeah I'm the American misfit kid I'm still wonderin' what I did I'm stiletto, so so sharp and I'm willin' to cut Sometimes nebulous, well I'm ready to strut Lost and frantic, new age romantic, I'm checkin' out t
In 1983 this cartoon lampooning Jerry Falwell appeared in Hustler triggering a long running legal case1.
Just for your edification, I thought I would post a copy of it here. For historical purposes of course.
As for Jerry Falwell, as of this hour, the degenerate culture-war criminal remains stone cold dead.
For those of you that grew up after the AIDS apocalypse, Jerry Falwell was the man most responsible for the Moral Majority movement that swept Reagan into power in the eighties
My 70s trilogy is finally complete and it's all hosted here at gayauthors.org
It follows a small group of friends from Mississippi that learn that we need each other, how to be friends and lift each other up.
We weren't saints and all of us got lost along the way at some point. Only together did we find our way.
the Place in Between
Getting to the Happily Ever After
Nightfall
Time for a confession. As often as I do it, you would think I was a bloody Catholic.
One of the biggest issues I had coming to terms with being gay was, in my time, that excluded you from ever being a dad.
Sure- things are changing on that front. If I had the cash, I could adopt but I don't and I'm getting to old for it.
So if you wonder why I am the way I am with the younglings, that's it.
I may not ever be a dad, but if I can be that guy that tells you that you have value when
Holy crap, how did it get to be three am and why am I eating nachos?
This has been an emotionally draining weekend and it has left me feeling very vulnerable.
Friday night I told my story to a 12 step meeting. I've done it before in front of complete strangers. This time it was in front of people I knew. It would have been easier just to take off all my clothes and sing
. It went OK. No one showed with torches & pitchforks and not a word was said about exorcism.
Then there was t
Please Don't
Please don’t look at the bruise on my face,
Please don’t ever drop by my place,
Please don’t ask me how I am,
Please don’t ask unless you give a damn.
Please let it go when I say that I’m fine,
Please ignore it when you see the signs,
I don’t know why they get so mad,
I wonder what happened to my Dad.
Please don’t say I just have to be strong,
Please don’t see what is really wrong,
I can take it, I don’t talk back or fight,
I can take it, it’ll be all right.
A Glimpse of Normal
I showed up for summer football practice on my bike at the appointed time of 7am in August my 8th grade year.
August is a blow torch here in Mississippi. It's not cool in the mornings. It's just less hot.
I was wearing my Red team jersey that I had earned the year before. I was supposed to be on the 8-9th grade starting team but the redneck coach wasn't having any of that. There was no use arguing with him. He just wasn't going to have a faggot on his team and tha
Pat Robinson just compared gay marriage to man-dog marriage. Pat Robinson Compares Gay Marriage to Man-Dog Marriage
Now I've got nothing against dogs but I'm reasonably sure that they have no standing in legal agreements.
Pat Robinson is an ass hat and spreads hate against the GLBT community every time he opens his senile mouth.
Tell ABC Family that this isn't the sort of family values you had in mind when you tune in.
If you have had quite enough of this asshole, sign the p
The answer is being stuck between a bud and a bro.
There's something you might not know about Southern culture. In some ways we are almost Arabic.
Once we make friends, there's very little that can change that. We're loyal to an absolute fault even when it hurts and goes way past making any sense. Why sure Butch, I'll follow you over that cliff.
There is one place that I absolutely hate to be: in between people I care about in a controversy.
I literally don't know how to han
Abusers isolate you from family and friends.
Abusers abuse you and make you think it's your fault.
Abusers cheat and then they are insanely jealous. All to often they don't even acknowledge your relationship.
They will use you.
Abusers use sex to reward and punish.
The problem with abusive relationships is that they only get worse.
Cops see this crap everyday and hate it. They get called out to the same house or apartment break up a fight where someone is obviously
Occasionally a story will come along that goes beyond just being good and becomes important. Dabegle's Everything's Jake is one of those stories. It rather graphically illustrates how gay teens and young adults can wake up and find themselves in abusive relationships.
No one that I've ever met just decides one day hot damn, where can I find someone to abuse me every day? Abusive relationships happen to gay and straight young people every day and none of them are looking for it.
There is
