in a sentence, i met vic nine years ago in the personals section of nerve.com. but that sentence doesn`t begin to do us any justice.
nine years ago i was in London working on a project, plagued by insomnia. when you`re only sleeping an average of three hours a night, you find yourself thinking of a lot of things. i realised that on the verge of turning 29, i was divorced, with two children i didn`t see enough of, i had ruined three good relationships and was lucky not to take the friendships down with them too, i wasn`t a prize catch and i was probably going to be alone for the rest of my life. i accepted that and decided it wasn`t something that should depress me, i should just work on fixing me and making myself happy.
i had never been a big fan of personals websites, but the project photographer came back from LA with a copy from the short-lived nerve print magazine and during one of my sleepless nights, i read the magazine and then interest piqued, i went to the website. the personal section was funny and irreverent and featured areas you had to fill out like, best and worse lie you ever told and blank is sexy but blank is sexier. it was fun and it didn`t have to be a meat market if you didn`t want it too. i wasn`t looking for a relationship and that was cool, there were other people on nerve that were looking email/im buddies as well.
i think you have two options when you meet someone online, you could lie like hell and soon or later, you`ll get caught or you can be brutally honest about yourself, flaws and foibles writ large and if they can`t accept that then all you`ve done is displace a few electrons.
each profile on nerve, had a two mandatories, a username and what amounted to a tagline. mine was a Raoul Duke classic “when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro” and vic`s lured me in from the word go; “curiosity? poor cat.” i was hooked, i messaged her immediately with my email address and less than a day later we`d exchanged im addresses. for the next six weeks we im`d all day and at least two hours a night, talking about anything and everything. basically becoming friends.
about a week before the 2000 Olympic Games were scheduled to begin i was on a plane heading to Miami with a plan to rent a car, meet vic and another person i`d been chatting with from nerve and go see a long time friend in MS. i got to miami and couldn`t rent a car without a credit card, so i decided to continue my adventure by greyhound. i spent 22 hours on that bus endured strange people playing in my hair as i tried to sleep and arrived in Knoxville road weary and unwashed and wondered if this woman would take one look at me at the bus station and drive away, abandoning me to a strange city. vic didn`t she got out the car and smiled at me. if there was ever a moment when i fell completely and totally in love with victoria, that was it.
i was supposed to stay four days, i ended up staying almost two weeks. the following January i drove 11 hours to propose and we were married a year later, almost to the day.
this is a work in progress, so bear with me.
i`m not a physically violent person, i may look like a huge, intimidating man, but if you get to know me i`m a teddy bear, well at least with the people i love and even then, there are some that would question that.
i discovered very early on that words have power.
“sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.”
bullshit, i`m still carrying the scars of my first three years of high school. i`ve moved on, i may be a better person now, but they`re there and it`s the reason i worry about my children`s popularity.
i was the short, fat, non-physical-sport playing, sensitive child in an all boys` high school. in any herd, i was the one most likely to get singled out and devoured by the predators and it took four years, a growth spurt and an incredibly violent outburst to break the predators of the concept of me as easy prey. it didn`t stop completely but i was no longer the most helpless. during those `formative` years i learned to bottle my anger and hurt and disappointment and channel its release in the most powerful weapon i know; words.
i`ve always been an avid reader, books were and still are a form of escape for me. the first book i ever owned was Tootles the Taxi. i devoured it, literally, i was old enough to read and when i was finished i ate from hard back cover to hard back cover. i don`t know if it`s because i`m listening to American Gods now or if it`s something i`ve read somewhere but it seems somewhat mythical and powerful. my mother is still an avid reader and encouraged my reading by allowing me to read the paper every morning with a dictionary at my side; i can`t remember a time when i`ve never owned a dictionary; and by buying me a book a month on the anniversary of my birthday. even that wasn`t enough, i joined the children`s section of the public library at 6, and by the time i`d finished my primary education at 10, i`d read everything they had. i knew all the librarians by name and they got me a dispensation to join the adult library at 11. words brought me comfort and joy and there was a time when i wouldn`t leave home with something to read, my mother would take me on her jaunts and as long as i had a book, i would just completely zone the adults out. my books didn`t defend me in high school but the provided a temporary reprieve.
as i got older, i hid my hurtful words behind the guise of absolute truth if you were a friend, if you weren`t a friend then there was no hiding, i was just nasty and cruel. my barbs were calculated to cause the most harm. with family and friends, it was easier because i knew the weaknesses and had bottled hurts real and imagined and distilled into something truly venomous. one of the reasons my ex-wife and i are such good friends now is that we`ve said every hurtful thing two people can say to each other. i`ve always said if they verbal arguments we had in the last two months of our marriage had been physical neither of us would be here today. everything we said to each other at that time was meant to cut to the quick and simultaneously salt the wound while we were at it. and in retrospect, she was just reacting to me, i started it, i was pushing her buttons and she responded.
i still have pretty sharp tongue but i don`t bottle, well not as much and i`ve learned temperance. this isn`t where i`d intended to go with this, but i`m pretty happy with it anyway.
i am highly sexual in nature. i make no bones about it, i think it`s natural and fun and am willing to try almost anything once; children, the dead, animals and faecal play being the exceptions; and all the things i am interested in i believe i`ve tried.
there are things i`ve done and forgotten, there are things remain with me and there are things i`m enjoying discovering. i started my sexual adventures early in life and at this point i can say i`ve been having sex more than half my life but it`s not about quantity, it`s about quality. the best sex in my life has been with long term partners as we got to know each other better and with vic, each time is better and better.
i`m very opened minded about sexuality and spend a lot of time reading about the subject, partially for my own edification and partially because i enjoy reading about sex. growing up my sexual fantasies were fuelled visually but by images i`d built in my head from stuff i`d read. even now, porn mostly bores me. i`m not saying there isn`t stuff that excites me, it`s just that`s not how i`m stimulated.
part of my fascination with sexuality is how people react to practices and people that are outside their norms. sexual mores like sexuality itself evolves and it`s fascinating to be able to read about whether the female orgasm is an evolutionary by-product, when as recently as 40 years ago, the female orgasm wasn`t even being acknowledged.
i worry however about the misinformation and in some cases the complete lack of information that young people are getting these days. there seems to be no middle ground for information these days the places where one can find clear, unbiased, truthful information about sexuality are sorely outnumbered. it`s mostly either misguided or deliberately misleading abstinence education or equally misleading pornography.
Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. the top list is the original bbc list, the list below is the one that’s circulating on facebook.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.
2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.
1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien [X]+
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen [X]
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman [X]+
4. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams [X]+
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling [X]+
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee [X]+
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne [X]
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell [X]+
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis [X]+
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë [X]
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller [X]+
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë [X]
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier x
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger [X]
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame [X]
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens [X]
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott [X]
19. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy [X]
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher’s Stone, JK Rowling [X]
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling [X]+
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling [X]+
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien [X]+
26. Tess Of The D’Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck [X]
30. Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll [X]+
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez [X]+
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl [X]+
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson [X]
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert [X]+
40. Emma, Jane Austen [X]
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams [X]
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald [X]+
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas [X]
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell [X]+
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens [X]
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett [X]
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck [X]
53. The Stand, Stephen King [X]
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth [X]
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl [X]
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell [X]
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer [X]
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden [X]
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens [X]
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough [X]
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett [X]+
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton [X]+
67. The Magus, John Fowles *
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman [X]+
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett [X]+
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding [X]
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind *
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett [X]+
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl [X]+
75. Bridget Jones’s Diary, Helen Fielding [X]
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins *
78. Ulysses, James Joyce *
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl [X]
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake *
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy [X]
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley [X]
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo [X]
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel [X]
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett [X]+
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer [X]
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez [X]+
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot [X]
100. Midnight’s Children, Salman Rushdie [X]+
1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen [X]
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien [X] +
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte [X]
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling [X] +
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee [X] +
6 The Bible- [X]
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte [X]
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell [X] +
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman [X] +
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens[X]
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott [X]
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller [X]
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien [X]
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger [X]
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald [X]
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy [X]
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy [X] +
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck [X]
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll [X]
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame [X]
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy [X]
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens [X]
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis [X]
34 Emma – Jane Austen [X]
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen [X]
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis [X]
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini *
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden [X]
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne [X]
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell [X] +
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown [X]
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez [X] +
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy *
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood [X]
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding [X]
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel *
52 Dune – Frank Herbert [X] +
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen [X]
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth [X]
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens [X]
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley [X]
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez [X]
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck [X]
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov [X]
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas [X]
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding [X]
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie [X]
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville [X]
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens [X]
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker [X]
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett [X]
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce *
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray *
80 Possession – AS Byatt [X]
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens [X]
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker [X]
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert [X]
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White [X]
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle [X]
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton [X]
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery [X]
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams [X]
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole *
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas [X] +
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare [X]
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl [X]
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo [X]
i read an interesting post over the weekend and while it saddened me, i understand. i don`t empathise, but i understand.
i haven`t actually had anyone say anything to me because vic and i are in an interracial relationship. actually i take that back, someone in Trinidad yelled about something stupid while we were there.
i am a Caribbean black man married to a white southern woman. that statement alone is a set up for all manner of assumptions and all of them are wrong. i didn`t marry vic so i could move here and vic doesn`t have some Mandingo fantasy that she needs to have fulfilled or at least if she does i may not be equipped to fulfil it.
my ideal candidate for a mate, partner, significant other, spouse has never been determined by racial qualities. they had to be funny, smart, talented, strong, have nice legs and be themselves, with that criteria i had a world of possibilities. to automatically discount potential dates, mates, life partners on the basis of ethnic background is stupid. i think one of the fundamentals of a good relationship is the likelihood of continuing a friendship after a break up, ie you should be friends first. do you choose your friends based on their ethnic or racial background?
you`re always going to be `too something or not quite enough, for someone`; too black, too tall, too short, too thin, too loud, too quiet, too smart, too stupid, to wanton, to demure. be yourself and find someone who likes, loves, lusts after you for who you are. not who they want you to be or who you have to pretend to be. i`ve also found you need to be happy with yourself, with who you are before you can even think about finding that someone else to be happy with.
i also think there is an inherent problem regardless of race with relationships today and most of it has to do with unrealistic expectations. there is no happily ever after; things do not automatically fall into place. relationships; all of them; require work. it`s about compromise and communication. there is no perfect relationship, couples disagree, they fight, they don`t see eye to eye, they have mood swings, bad days at work, at school, wherever. you can`t compare your relationship to anyone else`s because they are not the same. there may be similarities but no relationship is exactly like yours. they evolve, they develop, they change, there are good days, they are fantastic days and there are shitty and horrendous days, it`s all part of the package, you deal with it as it comes, together.
wherein our erstwhile theorist waxes on the differences between ponce-y and spastic dancing and communing with the mothership.
one of the channels our television is regularly tuned to when it`s on is VH1 Classic which has afforded me the ability to put forth this theory. there appear to be three distinct schools in alternative music video dance;
ponce-y; as evidenced by Richard Butler of the Psychedelic Furs or most other front men coming out the British new wave scene. obscure music trivia; Richard Butler`s was the member of another band called Love Spit Love who covered The Smiths `How Soon is Now?` for the movie The Craft which then became the theme song for the TV series Charmed. i am fount of useless trivia.
spastic; as evidence by Sinead O`Connor and Michael Stipe. however when it comes to spastic dancing all others are pretenders to the throne of Joe Cocker whose spasticness was forever immortalised by Jim Belushi while Cocker was performing on SNL.
communing with the mothership; the sole star in this universe is Pearl Jam`s Eddie Vedder who usually appears to be attempting to be communication with some otherworldly presence and the only way to facilitate this communication is to be wrestle the mike stand while staring intently at the mike itself.
i’m a huge movie fan, the meme that circulated recently doesn’t even begin to cover it. i come by this love of the big screen honestly, my mother was huge fan and took the time to introduce me to her screen idols. strangely we don’t go out to the movies much any more, but with netflix and cable tv, it’s easy to catch up eventually.
i will watch almost anything; except the new school of american horror or as it’s more appropriately titled gore porn; and every now and again i’ll come across a movie so depressing or so lacking in redemption that I have to find something that will not necessarily uplift but at least cleanse the palette. mind you, i don’t expect every movie i watch to be uplifting and bring a sense of purpose to my life, but i also don’t enjoy being emotionally drained and feeling like the weight of the world is on my shoulders. the movie that brings that balance back for me is Harold & Kumar go to White Castle, listed hereafter as H&KG2WK.
the first time i need a moment of H&KG2WK was after watching Lord of War with Nicholas Cage. i’m not a fan of Cage, but the movie kept me engrossed and the child soldiers demoralised me. i was numb after watching the movie and i was flipping through the channels to get my mind clear when i happened on H&KG2WK. it was hysterical, it was silly and it was just the sort of brain bleach i needed.
so i developed the scale, with the number being how many times would i need to watch H&KG2WK to rinse a particular movie from my mind. here are a few examples:
lord of war – 2 H&KG2WK
the heart deceitful above all things – 12 H&KG2WK
hard candy – 4 H&KG2WK
requiem for a dream – 6 H&KG2WK
i could go on but you get the idea.
25 Random Things
So the “rules” are that if you’ve been tagged with this note you are supposed to repeat the exercise with 25 random any things about you.
1. i share my birthday with my paternal grandmother and father
2. astrologically it makes me leo on the cusp of virgo
3. i’m really good with computers and electronics
4. i hate seeing clocks blinking 12:00
5. i don’t dance
6. i enjoy doing taxes
7. i find house painting relaxing
8. i’m the sort of friend that would help you bury the body
9. i’ve had two surgeries in my life
10. i’ve never broken any bones
11. i’ve driven on the autobahn
12. i can read a bit of german
13. i’ve seen metallica live
14. i’ve seen tool live
15. i’ve seen weird al live
16. i’ve seen burning spear live
17. i interned in a gallery space in ny for six weeks
18. i have an incredibly high tolerance for alcohol
19. i don’t get hangovers
20. i don’t do recreational drugs
21. when i get drunk i go to sleep
22. i’ve never been on a cruise
23. i took my first flight at 2 months
24. the furthest west i’ve driven in the US is Iowa
25. i love to drive.
USING ONLY ONE WORD! It’s not as easy as you might think! Copy and change the answers to suit you and pass it on. It’s really hard to only use one word answers. Be sure to tag the person you received it from!
1. Where is your cell phone? desk
2. Your significant other? victoria
3. Your hair? dreads
4. Your mother? sigh
5. Your father? missing
6. Your favorite song? panic
7. Your dream last night? unremembered
8. Your favorite drink? water
9. Your dream/goal? living
10. What room you are in? cube
11. Your hobby? reading
12. Your fear? loneliness
13. Where do you want to be in 6 years? comforatble
14. Where were you last night? store
15. Something that you aren’t? rich
16. Muffins? blueberry
17. Wish list item? books
18. Where you grew up? trinidad
19. Last thing you did? type
20. What are you wearing? clothes
21. Your TV? home
22. Your pets? cat
23. Friends? fantastic
24. Your life? blessed
25. Your mood? amused
26. Missing someone? always
27. Car? mazda
28. Something you’re not wearing? watch
29. Your favorite store? apple
30. Your favorite color? grey
33. When is the last time you laughed? morning
34. Last time you cried? months
35. Who will resend this? many
36. Favorite vacation? london
37. One person who emails me regularly? sam
38. My favorite place to eat? thai
Scattergories
Rules: Copy to your own note, erase my answers, enter yours, and tag 10 people. Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real; nothing made up! If the person before you had the same first initial, use different answers. You cannot use any word twice and you can’t use your name for the boy/girl name question. Not always as easy as it looks. Have Fun!!”
1. What is your name: keifel
2. A four Letter Word: kiss
3. A boy’s Name: kevin
4. A girl’s Name: kendra
5. An occupation: killer
6. A color: kiwi
7. Something you wear: kilt
8. A food: kielbasa
9. Something found in the bathroom: kotex
10. A place: kingston
11. A reason for being late: knotted kites
12. Something you shout: know nothing!
13. A movie title: Kill Bill
14. Something you drink: Kool-Aid
15. A musical group: kraftwerk
16. An animal: koala
