Coming Out

Last week, I confessed that when I was a kid, I watched Sonny and Cher to see Cher’s gowns. I also watched syndicated reruns of Green Acres because Eva Gabor wore so many ostrich feathers. But it wasn’t until August 15, 1980 when I realized that I was gay. It was the day my mother came home from the supermarket with this.

I was a civilized kid, and so muscle cars and rednecks didn’t do much for me. But I had been watching The Dukes of Hazzard, anyway. There was something about that Bo Duke that made me not care that he talked like a pie-eatin’ mountain inbred. Seeing the “Hunk” article (and its accompanying shirtless photo spread) made me realize that it was the scenes like this one.

Suddenly my life’s goal became clear: I existed because I was supposed to marry John Schnieder. But then I turned the page and considered that maybe my heart really belonged to him.

Yes, Bo Duke could take me away for the summer and teach me what it meant to be loved, but it was BJ who I was supposed to spend eternity with. And so that’s how it was, on the day that I came out to myself, and became religiously addicted to an asinine show about a primate and a trucker.

What’s New on My Photo Site

There are a handful of new images, and old images that I’ve just never shown before, on my newly designed photography site. Among them are these two shots of gas stations in Tipton, Indiana, which is about an hour north of our home.

As always, I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts.

Our Goddaughter

This is Beatrice June, who was born between yesterday’s two major news events. So if you believe such things, it’s theoretically possible that she is the reincarnate of Farrah Fawcett, but not Michael Jackson.

We’re going to call her, Little Bea.

Here she is with Charlie, who Jay and I can now call “Daddy” with much less implied innuendo attached.

I didn’t get any photos of her with Courtney yet, because it just didn’t feel right for me to ask a woman to pose from her hospital bed, four hours after labor. But there will be plenty of opportunities to come.

And Little Bea, in case you haven’t noticed, is precious.

Three Things . . .

. . . that are completely unrelated, but I wanted to share with you:

1. I take back (a little of) what I said yesterday about Twitter’s failure to deliver information to me of value. My friend Brad’s “tweets” are awesome. Among them, he sent out this review of the new Transformers movie that’s perfectly hilarious.
2. Based on Amazon’s decision glitch that removed nearly all GLBT literature from their search feature and the fact that six weeks after their apology, they were still flagging the word “gay,” I have removed all the items from my Amazon WishList and set up one with Barnes and Noble. So far, I like B&N much better. For starters, if you’re a B&N member, you can use your card for a 10% discount on every purchase, even online, and you get special discounts via email. Second, their post-order correspondence is much better than Amazon’s. And third, they’re fast! I placed an order on Monday at 6pm and it was waiting for me on Wednesday when I got home from work.
3. We got a text message at 7am today from Charlie telling us that he and Courtney are at the hospital. No news yet but sometime today, Jay and I are going to become godparents.

Twitter

After months of saying that I wasn’t interested in succumbing to the next big thing, I finally set up a Twitter account. This has been something I’ve been thinking about doing for a few weeks now, because becoming familiar with all social networking sites is something that’s actually on my objectives at my “real job” this year. But to be honest, what really got me to join was finding the Twitter info for Ben Godfre, and the chance to hang on every word follow a famous model who could convince me to sell a kidney for the chance to shoot proved to be too much to resist.

So far, I’m not all that impressed with Twitter. I haven’t seen any “tweets” coming across my page that have especially enriched my life (or that I couldn’t have done without knowing, at all), and I’m more than a little irritated by the fact that the first four followers I impetuously added and then tried to get rid of won’t go away (the “remove” button apparently does nothing).

I have also noticed a lot of the usual suspects on Twitter — six years ago, we were on each other’s blogrolls; four years ago, we were in a Tribe group together; two years ago, we all became MySpace friends; last year, Facebook friends; and now everybody’s here. But if I’m going to actually use Twitter (which remains undecided), I’m going to go a different route and not just add the same collection of folks that I’ve already networked with on umpteen other websites. Twitter might actually prove to be a good place to find a new audience ripe for the whoring marketing of my photography site. We’ll see.

But in case you’re so interested and want to follow me . . .

sbarnesphoto

A Random Memory from the 1970s

Back when I was a kid, my parents would take me out to dinner every Friday night. Sometimes, especially during the summer, we would go uptown to a greasy spoon with a screen door and tile floors called, The Sugar Bowl. Other times, we would go to chain restaurants like Mr. Steak and Sambo’s (the 1970s equivalent of Denny’s).

Wherever we went, I was usually irritated. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t appreciate going out to dinner (although the cooks at The Sugar Bowl didn’t mince the onion fine enough in their spaghetti sauce), and it wasn’t even that I didn’t want to spend time with my parents. It’s just that sometimes we wouldn’t make it home in time for the opening dialog of The Sonny and Cher Show, and seeing the gowns that Bob Mackie designed each week for Cher was one of the things that I lived for back then.

I had my priorities, you see.

Doing No Harm

A couple of weeks ago when I was at the Buddhist Center in Bloomington, my friend bought me a tiny bumper sticker that says, “Do No Harm.” It’s on the back of my car now — normally, I’m not a fan of a lot of bumper stickers, but my car is old enough now that I’ve decided it doesn’t really matter — so this sticker is just below an HRC sticker and to the right of a D (for Deutschland).

For the last few days, I have found myself frequently thinking about its message. To really “do no harm,” to live by the words as a real Buddhist would try to do (or Christian should do, if you ask me), would not be easy . . .

• Do no harm means that I should not squish the huge and hideous wolf spider that’s running down my hallway.
• Do no harm means that I should always think before speaking, and sometimes refrain.
• Do no harm means that I need to learn to stop eating when I have had as much dessert as I should.
• Do no harm means that I could find something better to do when I find myself sitting in the living room having a negative fantasy.

. . . among so many other things. It would be almost impossible.

But it’s still not a bad philosophy to keep in mind.

M. Joyce Cook

Jay’s mother passed away yesterday at a few minutes after noon. This is the last photo I took of the two of them, shortly after Jay’s last birthday. His mom made the quilt they are posing with for our guest bedroom, which is where they are in this photo.

If I have my dates correct, it was April 15th when Jay’s mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, meaning that she lived one day short of nine weeks following her diagnosis. There must be a better way to say this, but all I can think of is, that sucks. But the last few weeks were painful, agonizing, and traumatizing for Joyce and her family and everyone who loved her, and so at least the speed at which cancer took her was also quick to bring her peace.

Meet Me in the Green Glen

I discovered Maureen Drennan via one of my favorite photography websites Conscientious. For what it’s worth, I don’t smoke pot (I am not judging those who do; I’m just editorializing, I guess) but her photo series, Meet Me in the Green Glen, about a far-away marijuana farm somewhere in northern California, is somehow very appealing to me.

Photo and copyright by Maureen Drennan
Maureen’s portrait work is very nice too. You should check out some of her portraits on her website.

The Weekend So Far

These are prayer flags, at the Buddhist Center in Bloomington.

This is the view from the sidewalk cafe where we had lunch, which was delicious, after the Buddhist Center visit.

This is the view from Indy Gay Pride, the next day.

None of these photos do my new camera justice. I can’t wait to work with a model.