In other news....

What is it about fallen Serbian politicians/war criminals that make them think they should represent themselves in court? Is there some errant episode of L.A.Law on reruns over there, where Harry Hamlin loses a case to a crazy Eastern European millionaire, making every Timur, Dosev and Radko think they can take on Western judiciaries?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25810899/

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't also mention that it is now perfectly legal to refer to women who prefer women as Lesbians. The courts of Lesbos have struck down a lawsuit that would have opened a legal path for residents of the flannel wearing Mediterranean isle to sue those who identified themselves as lesbians, or use the term in advertising or marketing, unless they were actually legal citizens of Lesbos. With this challenge decided, the gay community has now turned its full attention to an ongoing legal battle between a group of same-sex partners and the residents of Ass Pirate Cove, Florida.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25798114/

A knock on the door at 2:30am

Here I sit, at 2:30am, creeped out and quite awake after an encounter with a stranger at my front door. My dog, Fred, jumped out of bed and started barking ferociously in the front room. When I finally realized that this bark was not the bark he uses to scare away passing dogs from the front windows, but a much more angry bark, I got up and instinctively grabbed my cell phone. I have a large glass front door, and standing in my doorway was a young kid, probably 18 or so, shakily holding on to my front door with his eyes closed. When I approached the door I asked him what he wanted. He lazily opened his eyes and then mumbled that he wanted a glass of water. I told him that he needed to leave. He stood there for another minute, eyes closed. I told him again that he needed to leave and that I was calling the police, at which point he took off his baseball cap and held it above his head, then opened his eyes and stared me down. I called 911, and asked if they could send someone out. The kid staggered away.
The exchange was quite creepy. I'm pretty sure the kid was messed up on something, be it weed or booze, and just didn't know where he was, but for someone just coming out of a deep sleep, it was eerie and gave me that sick feeling in my gut that you get when your heart starts racing and your brain tries to suppress the flood of fight or flight chemicals that come with a startling situation. Thankfully, I have Freddy here to keep watch over the house and yard, but even Fred doesn't want to leave the front room, now, in case something happens or the stranger comes back.
Sitting here, listening for every creak and thump from the outside world, I can't help but chide myself for watching all of those reality crime "investigations" on MSNBC. Especially the one about the four people in Wichita, who responded to a knock on their front door and endured hours of assault, rape and finally, death. The logical part of me knows that the chances of that happening to me are quite astronomical, but now that the thought was planted there by the ominous reporting staff at MSNBC, there is a part of me, living inside the irrational part of my brain, that is terrified and assuming that I just thwarted a full scale robbery and assault with the help of my trusty sidekick, Fred, and my cell phone.
While I know that I'm lucky in many ways, after all, the police are currently darting up and down my street, and the adjoining side streets, with flood lights attached to powerful SUVs, I also hate living in the city during times like this. I have being exposed to crime and crazy and the chaotic randomness of things, because of my surroundings. I know that crime exists everywhere, but that doesn't make me feel any better at 3:00am, wondering who that kid was, and whether or not he was simply a person genuinely in need of water and help, or if he was really playing passive to gain entry to my home. There is a part of me that wants to believe that people are generally good, and that we have become a nation of freaked out potential victims because of our daily exposure to all the bad news and crimes we hear about on the news. The news organs know we can't resist hearing about the latest rape & robbery, or the gruesome details of a home invasion or car jacking, but I think the fascination is more about our curiosity of seeing a car accident and craning our heads to see the gory details than it is about educating ourselves about the surrounding environment and protecting ourselves and our loved ones. But then there is a voice in the back of my head that tells me that part of me is naive, and that I should be wary of everyone, and trust nothing.
I'd like to hope that those two voices meet somewhere in the middle, and that I can believe in the good of people without becoming a victim, and be cautious and street smart without living a life of angry, grinchy, selfishness.
I'd also like to get some sleep - but those two voices are still yelling at each other.

Digging in and digging up

I have wracked my brain the last week, trying to put into words my complex mother issues, having just recently visited her for her birthday. I can't. Stay with me for this one, folks....
Remember Pulp Fiction? It's one of my all time favorite movies, for many reasons, some very obvious, some very personal. Remember the mysterious brief case that seemed to be the focus of much of the movie, albeit wonderfully distracted by the mayhem of dialogue and editing? My mother issues are the contents of that brief case. Every once and a while I have the occasion to crack open that case, and when I do my eyes bug out and my face is bathed in it's dysfunctional golden glow. Slack jawed and without words to begin to describe the depth of horror and guilt and wonderment and ludicrosity, that's right I made up a word - deal with it!, I have to just slowly shut the case and move on. I just can't articulate what it is. All I know is that it is present in me, and it rears it's head on occasion.

One of the main reasons I haven't been able to concentrate on my mother issues is that I was contacted this week by an ex-girlfriend. That's right - there was a time back during the Jurassic Era, when I roamed the boggy lands of the Great Plains, that I dated a girl. In fact, she was kind of the last serious girl I dated before evolving into the wonderfully talented and wise gay you have come to know and love. And she saw me on Facebook and emailed me. And I was kind of rocked back on my heels by it, I have to say.
I don't want to give too much of the juice away, more to protect the dignity of those involved and to allow the past to stay buried, but she was the last big deal, so to speak. I casually dated a girl or two after her, but only for appearances, and I selfishly let everyone around me know that this woman had broken my heart and should never be forgiven for doing so. When I left Omaha, to start a new life in the gay friendly red state of Arizona, I would bring her up in conversation from time to time, as the girl I almost married. The truth is that there was never a ring on her finger. I was saved from that embarrassment before I could actually buy the ring - but I had decided shortly before we broke up that I was going to buy a diamond and get down on one knee and propose to her, and came within days of doing so. At the time, I was way too humiliated to deal, and so I made a huge show of our breakup. Over time, I've come to realize that it was the best thing that probably ever happened to me in my entire life. It cracked the facade that I was trying to construct around me; the facade of the hetero family man that wanted a wife and kids and a house in Dundee. While plausibility is entirely relative to your perspective, I could've continued on that path and been one of those creepy middle aged, church going, kid having, soccer dads who end up in a police raid on the public bathrooms at Elmwood Park. I could've continued ruining life after life with my own denial problems into perpetuity.
But I didn't, because she probably saw what I couldn't, and did something about it. She really did break my heart at the time, but in looking back, I am so eternally grateful she did.
So I wrote her back. And before I was done filling her in on the last 10 years of my life, I asked her to forgive me for being such a shitty gay boyfriend. Just the way I'd practiced over and over in my head all these years. I crossed my fingers and pressed SEND. I hope she doesn't freak and never talk to me again, because I really do dig the idea of reconnecting with that past. That history. That era, shortly after man left the swamp to walk upright, when man had yet to order his first Frappaccino, and cell phones were only found on jailhouse walls.