Category Archives: Friends

The Long Road Home

Glenn returns home tonight after working in North Dakota for the past six weeks. I am very excited to see him. It has been a terrible month of barely being able to communicate because there seems to be a lack of cell towers and he has had very poor internet service if any. This has been an annual job for him for the past couple of years to go and test the soil where the seed potatoes are grown to certify them for export to Canada. But it is good to have him home. I think sometimes it’s healthy for relationships to have long breaks from each other and always seems to realign where we are and how strong our relationship has grown on the past 14 years we have been together. It seems when you have been in a relationship with someone this long, some of the spark begins to fray around the edges and you begin to take each other for granted. He always does so much to keep me on target and focused. Taking care of a lot of the detail stuff like shopping and making sure we are fed. I am a person that is very project driven and have always got to have something I am working on at every moment of the day. I got a lot done while he was gone, though the website is not up yet it is nearing completion and I feel like I have created something extraordinary in his absence that he hasn’t even seen it yet. So I am totally jacked to see his reaction to the project. I was my goal to have the site up and running upon his return, but after about 3 weeks of technical difficulties we are in good shape.

Glenn is an adorable man, who is kind, quirky funny, like myself, and seems to be solid at the core. I have not written about him much because I had promised that I would not bring him into the process except on rare occasion, and out of respect wanted to protect his privacy, though he has been a huge component in my success and allowing me freedom and flexibility to get this dream up and out there this year. In all the years we have been together I cannot remember a single fight, barely an argument. We are the exact opposite of each other, and I think all the opposition somehow brings up together as a more stable whole. We are both of the same era and the same at our cores. We recognized this early and it’s what brought us together so closely in the beginning. I would say I used to think Glenn was the perfect Taoist. All knowing, all accepting, all giving, and all caring, a balance of all the great things in the world, yet completely unaware of it, not naming or even knowing the essence and harmony of his existence. He is somehow the embodiment of the Tao Te Ching without even knowing and possibly never even hearing of it. There is always harmony and balance that surrounds him all the time.

I have been through many relationships in my life, most of them quite tumultuous and often ending in a bitter sadness. It somehow feels to me with Glenn, he allows me to become my best and brings out the best I have to offer. I believe relationships are basically about ourselves and how we find balance with others whom we choose to share our lives. If we are not content with ourselves first, all becomes chaos and confusion and doubt. How we can become the best without fear, anxiety, or pressure? As a creative soul I learned this early. Thank you Glenn for allowing me to become the best I can possibly be and welcome home, the kitties and I have missed you.

Drawn Into the Darkness

In younger days I was drawn into darkness and often found myself lurking in shadows that were unsavory to others and probably not always safe for myself. Being a boy from Montana we do not always perceive dangers that others may be aware of within their surroundings, making us fearless. Being a stranger we may not always be aware of what the rules are and what is normal. Everything in Montana seems safe, unless you have a run away tractor barreling toward you because the diver has passed out at the wheel. I have spent a great deal of time in large cities and have only felt a threat a couple of times in my life. I spent a year in Washington DC working as a bartender for a club in the Dupont Circle area, had a roommate who was a porn actor, we did a lot of drugs and become party animals, some times to the point where I was not even sure how I even got home. In fact waking up one morning, my ankles sore and swollen to discover I had somehow ended up with a pair of pumps at the foot of my bed, I must have traded shoes, the previous night either with a drag queen or a woman with very large feet. I had always heard Washington was a somewhat dangerous town and had known people that were bashed, some of them quite severely, which in those days was quite often. As a bartender with a porno housemate, we become a privileged sort of celebrities who were recognized and often given a certain amount of advantage, in the form of little packets of treats slipped into our pockets. We were creatures of the nights, going to bed as the sun rose, sleeping all day. But I never felt a threat when I was out, even when I got stupid silly messed up. I had a good group of friends and we all kind of watched each other’s backs.

Yet I was always drawn to the darkness. There is beauty at night that becomes extraordinary; that most people do not always see. In photography it becomes very vibrant when it rains or is wet. That’s why you often see wet streets in movies shot at night, yes, even in Los Angels when it doesn’t rain, or not very often, because it makes the details in the lights pop. That beauty seems to become more pronounced in bad neighborhoods with a lot of structurally interesting textures, like alleys and areas of old abandon warehouses at night, like the meat-packing district in NYC. I am always a person who is keenly aware of my surroundings; I think this is another Montana thing that we develop a fascination with everything around us. So at night these areas awaken a feeling that I always love to explore. It becomes about who I am in the space or even possibly channeling past lives, who knows. But in cities these are typically the areas one always tries to avoid, yet these are the areas I like to linger. I tend to think I have a strong masculine presence that most people don’t really want to mess around with. I am very confrontational when I meet others and think I have a focus that sends a clear signal that I can hold my own if you come up against me. My observation skill keep me aware of what is happening around me so I don’t become an open target and can divert things before they can happen. But it is these areas that most excite and attract me.

In looking at my catalog for the website I see this feeling of lurking in darkness present in most of my images. It’s what makes it theatrical and heightens our wonder and curiosity about the subjects. I love the shadows and seeing things emerging from those shadows.

OUTSpoken

Last night I had dinner with an old friend that I have known for years. He is a young kid, originally from California who came to Montana to go to the University. He is a very successful independent business man at the age of 35 who has always been a role model and inspiration to me. About twelve years ago, when I was first getting into photography, we and a few other people started a venture together, to build a stronger gay community in our small city of Missoula. It seemed the time was ripe and I had been a part of creating a men’s focus group to identify and build a stronger healthier way to look at ourselves using federal prevention money from the Ryan White Act. Coming out of this group I saw a need for unity and to somehow obliterate the isolation and lack of communication that kept us hidden and closeted.

This small band of friends began a monthly newspaper called OUTSpoken, where we would take on a topic that we felt needed to be tackled and devote an entire issue to show the subject from many different perspectives, and of course I would have to come up with the cover photo that captured the essence of the topic. These topics ranged from gay bashing, to intimacy issues, to local politics. One of my favorite subjects was people dealing with transgender issues. It was something I didn’t know anything about and became enamored with as we interviewed others going through this process. To me it was a high point in my life. We became very connected socially with the community and began to develop a very strong network of supporters. The project seem to grow as did we and the community began to thrive, suddenly people were engaging on so many levels and the birth of the idea of a community center was spawned and eventually came into being.

We began to reminisce last night about what leaders we had become in developing and impacting our own little isolated corner of the world and how that world has changed and evolved since our endeavor. I think so many people in small towns still feel a bit trapped or isolated and I can’t tell if the internet is helping or hindering this. The skill that we lack is an ability to talk to each other, there is a confidence missing to put ourselves out there for fear of being judged or some other retribution. From what I can see the internet makes it easier to hook up, remain anonymous, without having to engage someone socially. It’s kind of like that person you sit next to on an airplane that you don’t talk to because you know it seems pointless when you are headed for different destinations and your paths may never cross again.

I began to realize last night this is one of the goals I set out at the beginning of this year and writing about my experience, because it is deeply impacting others. People can learn and grow from the lessons I have learned. This year has been one of the greatest years of my own personal growth. I now see how I have made amends with my own family issues, my identity of coming to terms with my own aging process, and finding the vitality in the life that surrounds me. Sometimes we become so caught up in our own worlds that we forget or become blinded to the relevance and significance of our own remarkable beauty. I began to year feeling hopeless and at the end of my rope and now that passion is again ignited and reborn. Wow what an awesome year I am having!

The Elusive Nature Of Intimacy In A Modern World

The other day I had some friends over, we partied a little too late, and everyone was getting a little drunk. At the end of the night I was taking a friend home who is slightly disabled to the point where he can no longer drive. Several years back he had been stricken with a brain disorder that paralyzed one side of his body, making it difficult for him to get around. He has been recovering in the past year or so since I have gotten to know him, but the recovery process is slow. He is a single man who lives alone, in his mid 30’s, and extremely attractive. On the drive home we began to talk about relationships and what the modern sense of dating is like in this time. My heart was filled with such agony as he began to describe his constant connection to others online, and how painful the loneliness of his life has become, just trying to connect with others. Connecting for sex is not the problem, but connecting for any kind of intimacy seems to be elusive. I made an off handed remark that this seems to be the way of our modern gay culture. This idea has really been haunting me the past couple of days as I have been thinking about that loss or lack of intimacy in our modern world. I don’t think his disability plays much of a part in his loneliness, because he is a good communicator, has a great personality, and is very easy to hang out with, but lies more with our culture becoming so disjointed that we have become desensitized to personal interaction. I know we live in a time where everyone is so busy trying to live their lives that fitting others into their world can become difficult. Do they actually need someone to share their lives with? When you can readily have sex with people you meet on the internet, hook up for a half hour and move on, it seems to make life easier. Many of the younger gay people I talk to are not even looking for any kind of relationship because they don’t want their lives to be complicated by others. They can get what they need and move on without any kind of entanglement. I guess it surprises me how uncomplicated the basic needs of a person becomes as the world we live in becomes so complicated. When I was a young gay man, it was intimacy first that sex came out of when I was with someone. It always seemed to heighten the encounter. I don’t think the fact that people are picking each other up has changed from my earlier days, then now. Perhaps it was even easier then because you could do it anywhere. The gaydar would go off, you would make the connection in public place, and follow each other to private spaces. But again it was the height of the sexual revolution, before HIV. There was a thrill to be able to be this intimate with another person and you often lingered in the afterglow of what had just happened because it was so sensational. But this whole connection online or texting, through minimalist words or phrases, with glimpse of a dick or ass taken in the mirror from a cell phone, in a padded profile, seems to remote and distant. Now the act of sex is mistaken for intimacy and nothing is really shared other then the body. And Now my heart is broken for a friend who feels so isolated and alone and living on the edge of others actions and words that never come. I think the real disability here does not lie with my friend but in what we have become because we are too afraid to let others into our worlds.

Evolution Of A Culture

I am completely obsessed with building the website now and I seem to work on it non-stop. I reached out to many of the talented people whom I have gotten to know over this past year and the whole project is becoming a wonderful collaboration of so many wonderfully talented people. Ideas are abundant, and the possibilities unlimited. I see now that this will grow well beyond myself and am coming up with a vision for the future where part of it will become a platform for others to come together. I have been searching the web for a long time trying to make some sort of connection to others who do what I do, and it has been very scattered. It seems once I find something that is working it suddenly disappears. I am not creating just a website, but a Joomla interface which becomes a dynamic portal engine and content management system that can be shared by many and has the potential to become quite interactive. In a sense, this can become a sort of space that becomes a clearinghouse for gay arts, written, and visual. However, that is many steps and stages away: but it is my long term vision of what The Naked Man Project will eventually become when the blog part of this project ends at the close of this year. Right now I am having a blast just putting myself together as The Naked Man Project and learning the process.

I realize through my many years I have been obsessed with finding my identity as a gay man and the evolution of its culture over the past 30 years. It has changed so drastically from one extreme to the other: being apprehensive and filled with self-doubt and self-loathing now to the point where we can be married in many states. Montana not included. There is so much that has captivated me along the way, wondrous things that can very easily become lost in the shadows of our evolution. Much that the new generation has taken for granted and probably doesn’t even care to know from which its origins spring. But it really begins with the naked self and how we look at ourselves in that mirror each day. I feel a lot of being gay has been a projection on what we wanted to become and a rejection of the values from which we come. We can so easily become paralyzed by our own internalized homophobia. Our safety and security jeopardized by our inability to communicate with each other. Sure, the social networks are creating a web of friends we can interact with, but our decreasing lack of skills toward communication seems to be minimalized to a mere tweet that now must be deciphered to understand its value. Manhunt and Craigslist still rules supreme for anyone wanting to hook up, often without even getting to know their names, merely for a moment of gratification, and then moving on. Why do we still live in a world that values being anonymous? I do have to say the images and profiles on Manhunt are becoming captivating and creative from an artist point of view, as we try to express the core of our sexual/sensual selves as it becomes the new calling card which we hang our identity. But it is a world where a man of my age is shunned from even being acknowledged no mater how creative or witty I become. Perhaps we no longer need relationship or companions. Perhaps our lives have become so busy that we no longer need that interaction. It’s like art, have we become so saturated with it that it no longer contains any intrinsic value. I always envisioned a future where as we evolved as a gay community that we would somehow become closer to each other as a culture. But it has become the opposite, that vastness just grows wider and more distant.

But I also find a vast richness and body of friends on the Internet that are enriching my life and helping me move toward a greater understanding and vision of myself. In many ways it is awesome to stand here at this moment and look out over a magnificent world of possibilities.