Rigel

So this roo walks into a bar and says ...

Yom Kippur is a testament to the permanent maleability of the human spirit--if one is willing, one always has the power to try to change the one's life for the better. May everyone here be written and sealed in the book of life for a good year. --Rigel

Uluru--that's my bet. --Rigel, who is waiing for a literal cliff-hanger in the Northern Territory of Australia

Vance--Best wishes for a speedy and complete recovery. Sciatica can be a real pain in the butt. And Sam--taking care of your sweetie in time of convalescence is the perfect opportunity to both show your love and deepen it beyond measure. --Rigel

Article from the Washington Post on the guys who maintain wooden roller coasters: Thrill Keepers I read it and thought of you...

Of course, another possibility is that if Brandon guesses wrong in the "gaydar" quiz, Jon and Eric will impose the penatly: Brandon has to take Chase to bed. Eric will, of course, know that this isn't a problem for either of them (sort of like Monty Python's "No, not the comfy chair!"). Not that I think it's a good idea for them to be rushing into a sexual relationship, when they've only known each other for hours, but hormones will be whoremones. --Rigel

Interesting chapter, with lots of well written camaraderie. Of course, the question to pose to Brandon is, "if you could sleep with one of us as a fantasy, who would it be?" But I can't believe Helen and the boys haven't discussed the financial element. Will Brandon be paid a salary, or get a portion of the income, or some combination thereof? When you're dealing with lots of money (potentially) and possible emotional interaction, you want to have a contract detailing how you're going to be able to afford your life. Also, if I could be the voice of aged wisdom (Helen?) and make a suggestion: Brandon and Chase do NOT want to rush into a relationship. They need to be musical partners and friends, and that needs to be paramount over any sexual partnership. If they screw and screw up, the resulting emotional rough edges will make joint musicianship well nigh impossible. --Rigel

Dang! I may have mentioned in the other thread about the convention that I organize and host a weekend that's become an in-real-life gathering for folks at another on-line forum (based on a VERY different topic than GA). Well--the first weekend of November is the weekend we've scheduled this year! So I'll wish you all well, but that's one of the few weekends I won't even mind that I won't have internet access. --Rigel

The Ritz in New York. (click here)

Okay, the events coordinator in me can't help but consider trying to come with a practical set of logistics. In real life, I've run a gathering of locals that expanded in recent years to include people from all the the world with similar interests, who met through a specialized forum website on that topic. Two years ago, attendees spanned 13 time zones, but none of the Alaskans could make it last year. Also, I actually DID meet another local GA person over dinner, and in the process, we contemplated the potential rules for inviting a larger group of GA people. Significant others are welcomed. Some of us have boyfriends we'd like to share this world with. Some of us even have wives, and when they realize that we hang out with a group of normal people and they get to meet our on-line friends, the time we spend on GA might be less threatening to them. This place is not fundamentally about cheap sex talk, after all. Minors need to bring along a parent or two or adult guardian--sorry, but the no unaccompanied minors rule is going to needed to make sure we stay unquestionably legal and above reproach. Besides, most minors are probably too young to be traveling long distances by themselves. Perhaps the thing to do is to have several gathering places around the globe, hooked up by internet and camera, so we can all meet a few people in person and relate to the larger crowd via the wonders of modern technology. It would probably need to be over a weekend, and given the time differences (we literally span the globe) some of us will be congregating at odd hours. (Maybe those of us in the mid-Atlantic can try a run-through of this on our own. Dinner in DC?) There are nodules of us in Texas, Britain, India, California, the mid-Atlantic (Virginia to Maryland), New England--each group needs to find an acceptable and affordable gathering place with high-speed internet access, and bring along laptops. This is probably a weird pipe-dream, but as George Bernard Shaw once said: "The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man." --Rigel

Given where this story is being posted, I'm expecting that Brandon will turn out to be gay, and that Chase will turn out to be gay, and that Lump is the homophobe. If Brandon is gay, it would explain his being tossed out of his home. If Chase is gay, it would explain the problems the boy had with their father, who can't accept Chase's sexual orientation, and the possibility that Lump sided with the parents on this issue. Oh, to CJ: great start to a story, though I think I might like it even better if these great characters had a chance to play about in a universe that stayed realistic in a tale that didn't develop into a thriller involving radioactive bombs. --Rigel

I'm My Own Grampa Lyrics: Many, many years ago when I was 23, I was married to a widow who was pretty as can be. This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red My father fell in love with her and soon they two were wed. This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life For my daughter was my mother cause she was my father's wife To complicate the matter even though it brought me joy, I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy. I'm my own grampa, I'm my own grampa It sounds funny I know But it really is so I'm my own grampa. My little baby then became a brother-in-law to dad, And so became my uncle though it made me very sad. For, if he was my uncle, then that also made him brother Of the widow's grown-up daughter who, of course, was my step-mother. My father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run, And he became my grandchild for he was my daughter's son. My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue Because, although she is my wife, she's my grandmother too. I'm my own grampa, I'm my own grampa It sounds funny I know But it really is so I'm my own grampa. Oh, if my wife is my grandmother, then I'm her grandchild. And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw As husband of my own grandmother, I'm my own grampa. I'm my own grampa, I'm my own grampa It sounds funny I know But it really is so I'm my own grampa. A bit of history from the Web: In the '30s, Latham had a group, the Jesters, on network radio; their specialties were bits of spoken humor and novelty songs. While reading a book of Mark Twain anecdotes, he once found a paragraph in which Twain proved it would be possible for a man to become his own grandfather. In 1947, Latham and Jaffe expanded the idea into a song, which became a hit for Lonzo and Oscar. It's also one of the songs on Michael Cooney's album of Songs for Children. (Michael Cooney is the person I first heard it from, years ago.) And a link to Ray Stevens's version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KzU8CBHRBo --Rigel

Hoping the Beast has a perfectly beastly birthday (in the nicest possible way). --Rigel

Condolences to you, Sharon Ann... --Rigel, remembering his own departed mother as he reads this, and wondering what the modern equivalent of the distributor cap would be, to keep someone he knows oughtn't to drive from driving. My mother gave me "mad money," too, but it wasn't until tonight that I had an explanation of the term...

In my own lineage, I have two grandparents who were first cousins once removed (she was a first cousin to one of his parents), which is/was the closest of permissible legal consanguinities. Of course, that's the side of the family that the gay genes come from. (I look at which of my cousins are gay or lesbian, and you can tell these things--at least four of us in the third and fourth generations are GLB). It also makes me my own third cousin once removed, or something like that. ----- I can think of at least two gay stories I've read in the past year that toy with incest, of brothers or half-brothers raised apart; in each case, they realize physical similarities (in once case, they are identical twins raised apart from each other), but in both cases the brothers discover their actual relationship only after sexual encounters with each other. To avoid complete spoilers, I'll identify only the authors but not the stories nor the characters' names: one story is by Jeff Allen and another by Mickey S. --Rigel

If you look at the Oedipus story--perhaps the ultimate original incest tale-- Oedipus doesn't know that Jocasta is his mother when he woos her and has sex with her-- he only finds out after the deed, and then blinds himself with guilt. Said Oedipus high on his throne When Tiresias made his deeds known An incestuous fling Is a family thing-- It's such fun to come into one's own. --Rigel

Happy Birthday, Jamie. Now you're finally old enough to ________ (fill in the blank). Unfortunately, you're also now old enough that you can't ________ (perhaps DON'T fill in that blank, since you're never really too old!). --Rigel

While I'm not generally bothered by bridges, I can see how you'd be freaked out by the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. Not only is it high above the water, but because of federal rules requiring bridges to cross main shipping channels at right angles, it's got an ominious bend in it as you gain height while leaving the Annapolis shore. And although it's twin bridges, each is fairly narrow. It's much easier crossing a wide bridge like the Tappan Zee in New York, where the curves over the water are just part of this massive concrete 8-lane swath. Of course, if your daughter is going to school on the Eastern Shore, you'll get familiar enough with that bridge over the next four years that familiar will breed comfort, -Rigel

Best wishes for better health, both for you and for your cat. The story can wait--health comes first. I'll be thinking of both of you (and Sam, too). --Rigel

The first ghost I met was at my New England prep school. I was in the chapel meditating using yogic techniques when there was a sudden crack at the door, and I saw a white figure in front of me, perhaps inside the door and perhaps through the window panes in the door--non-corporeality makes precise location hard to pinpoint sometimes. I stopped meditating and told myself it was just my overactive imagination--but that didn't explain why my hand was still trembling and my heart was still pounding. After that experience, I made sure that any future states of altered consciousness would be achieved without the use of chemicals in case I needed to return to reality FAST, which is probably why I never got into drugs. My second ghost was a good friend I used to sing with in chorus; often we were the only two first tenors, and for years we coordinated our breathing, which is about as intimate a nonsexual relationship as you can get. It was Halloween night--yeah it sounds too corny to be true, but sometimes reality happens on the wrong night. I was fast asleep in my bed and felt someone sitting on the edge, the weight depressing the bed down near my left leg. The weight stayed there for a while. I stirred, and no one was there. I don't have pets; there was no physical reason for me to have sensed what I felt. I looked at the clock and went back to sleep. It was a week later that I received a phone call from another friend informing me that my good friend and fellow first-tenor had been off studying in Russia and decided to show his Russian friends what Halloween was all about, and they went drinking, and my friend was killed in an automobile accident Halloween night. I calculated the time differences, and realized that I had been awakened by my friend's spirit coming to say goodbye. So it was a Halloween night about a decade after that when my brother-in-law came home to his house for the last time. He was an artist who lived in a deconsecrated church, and the altar was his studio and the choir-loft was his bedroom. He died while at a symposium out of the country, and he was cremated and his ashes shipped home. The canister arrived on the afternoon of October 31st. My sweetie and I were staying in his bed in the loft for the funeral and mourning period. (Brother-in-law's wife stayed in her studio next door as usual, and brother-in-law's boyfriend in the other apartment--its probably too complicated to explain all the details of a bisexual family.) We set the container of his ashes on a pedestal on the altar, his workplace, and my sweetie and I spend a long part of the evening visiting with her brother's ashes and having a sing-around like the old times, making sure he knew he was welcome home. After all, a recently deceased man returning to his home in a deconsecrated church on Halloween evening is a classic recipe for a ghost visitation if ever there was one, but he let us sleep peacefully that night, because we knew how to treat a spirit. I grew up in Connecticut, and Ed and Lorraine Warren (http://www.warrens.net/) have thoroughly documented many local ghosts in my old haunts, but I don't have personal experiences with those spirits. Caipirinha is probably familiar with their books as resources for his senior talk, and they've no doubt documented the famous ghost of my prep school (not the one I met), but we'll leave that for another Dark Entry. --Rigel

I'll probably miss the chat too, not that I stopped in all that often, but it was a place where you could hang and make random comments and even though you could be brilliant, you could also say dumb things and not have to worry that your inannities would hang out on the internet permanently ensconced world without end. The informality lended it self to developing a casual element to relationships with the other denizens of GA. I suppose I could start a blog, but I'd never get the instant feedback I got while chatting. ----- One thing bothers me about your description of Scott's behavior. Where do you live that one goes OUTSIDE to take a leak? Outhouse? Fertilizing legumes? --But thanks for making us privvy to your being pissed off. Better, I suppose, than being pissed on. --Rigel

Reading this article made me think of lots of stories here at GA, and especially the tales spun by Vance (Vlista): Gay Youths Find Place to Call Home in Specialty Shelters By IAN URBINA Published: May 17, 2007 New shelters reflect an increasing awareness of the disproportionately high number of gay youths in the homeless population and the special problems they face. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/us/17hom...xprod=permalink --Rigel

I don't have a Frank Proffitt-style fretless banjo like the one in my avatar, but I couldn't find a good picture of a Dobson-style minstrel banjo like the one I own (c. 1880s). Its sort of silly anyway, because if you ever catch me performing, I'm generally singing a cappella, with no instrument in my hands. But it's almost impossible to illustrate the naked human voice. So there's a banjo instead. It's sort of like the story of the guy who sees a pawnbroker's symbol outside a shop and goes in to pawn his saxophone. Inside the shop, he discovers that it's not a pawnbroker's place at all, but rather the office of a mohel--the Jewish rabbi who specializes in circumcisions. "But, Rabbi," he asks, "why do you have a pawnbroker's sign outside your office if you're not a pawnbroker?" And the Rabbi responds, "Nu, so what should I put in my window?" --Rigel

Happy Birthday Vance! --Rigel (Well, SOMEBODY's got to start the birthday wishes flowing!)

Add another one (both another year and another Happy Birthday wish!) --Rigel