Straight-Gay Marriage
This article brings a whole new conversation to the table with marriage equality. It’s not about same sex marriage. It’s about a straight person marrying a gay person. And it’s being promoted by the two actors who play a gay couple on Modern Family.
I don’t watch Modern Family, but I think I’m getting this right with regard to the characters. The guy who plays “Cam” in gayface, Eric Stonestreet, and his acting partner who plays “Mitch,” Jesse Tyler Ferguson, talked about straight-gay marriage on Jimmy Kimmel’s late night talk show.
Our course this was also a “spoof” public announcement.
Said Stonestreet in a spoof Public Service Announcement:
‘We’re proud to advocate the latest frontier in marriage equality: the union between one straight person … ‘ Finishing his sentence Ferguson said: ‘… to one gay person. Straight-gay marriage.’
Frankly, and feel free to call me crazy, I don’t completely get why this is a “spoof.” I didn’t even know anyone used the word “spoof” anymore. For those of you who may not be aware of this, straight-gay marriages are not all that uncommon and I see no reason to “spoof” about it. I’ve known gay men who are happily married to straight women. I’ve known gay women who are happily married to straight men. And yes, I’ve even known a straight man who was happily married to a gay man. I don’t know what any of these people do in their bedrooms and that’s none of my business. All I know is they are, and have been, happily married for a very long time. I see no reason to laugh at them. And this is one reason why I don’t watch Modern Family.
You can read more here.
Advertorials Suck
I’ve posted about advertorials in the hopes that I might be able to show a small segment of readers how to spot them. They are basically paid advertisements that are designed to look like real articles and news stories, geared toward misleading the general public. This is one I spotted this morning on AOL news.
It’s titled like this, to resemble a news item:
Have Scientists Discovered the ‘Magic Bullet’ for Healthy Weight Loss?
Here are the first few lines…
(Boston) – With all the controversy surrounding today’s most popular diets, it’s no wonder more and more consumers are looking for safer, healthier, ‘enjoyable’ alternatives.
The growing number of these health conscious consumers has paved the way for new, innovative ways we think about our health – specifically, our weight.
The Breakthrough That Has the Industry Buzzing
New research has uncovered something surprising: emerging science suggests that combining a probiotic with a fat burning component can help improve digestive health and promote healthy weight loss – smart.
This isn’t news or journalism. What does “New research” mean? Nothing. This is a paid advertisement designed to dupe people into thinking it’s news.
You can check the rest out here. I have no idea how this product works, but I do know, for a fact, the best way to lose weight is about as simple as life gets: Eat Less.
Hot Cop of Castro Street
That’s not the title of a new m/m romance. It would be a great title, but it’s actually a real story and there is a real hot cop of Castro Street. Evidently, this cop works in San Francisco and Armistead Maupin of the old time Tales of the City fame recently posted about the cop on Facebook. (I’ve noticed how older celebs tend to lean more toward Facebook than Twitter…just an observation.)
‘Well, I finally got to see him in person,’ Maupin writes on a Facebook post accompanied by a photo he snapped of the cutest cop since Kent McCord on TV’s Adam 12.
Maupin shares their exchange: ‘I told him he had become something of celebrity on the web to which he replied with a sly smile: “So I’m told.” He graciously consented to a picture then sent us on our way with: “You guys have a nice day.”
Sounds like Maupin went out on a mission to track him down.
You can read more and check out a photo of the hot cop here. He’s every bit as hot as they say he is. But then I have rarely seen a cop I’ve found unattractive.
FREE Excerpt
I just submitted a short to German Publisher, Bruno Gmunder. It’s one several stories I’ve submitted this year in between my regular contracted books and indie projects. I like working with them. I like the books they produce. I like the editor and the process.
The excerpt below is a never before published version of the one I just submitted…Jersey Jacks. Just for clarification, the word Jacks does NOT have an apostrophe for a specific reason, which should make the storyline more obvious. And, this is the unedited raw version.
Hardy Johnson wore beige slacks and white cotton shirts with button down collars to work. He had a different necktie for each day of the month and his shoe color always matched his belt. Sometimes he wore a suit jacket, depending on his mood or the time of the year. And he always wore a more conservative suit for important meetings that required a less casual look.
At the boxy concrete and glass suburban insurance building where Hardy worked from nine to five forty hours a week, his co-workers would smile at him when he passed. He would return each smile and exchange casual comments about the weather, something significant happening in the office, or joke around about something involving current affairs. When he arrived in the morning the unmarried young woman who sat behind the reception desk on his floor often smiled a little too long and batted her eyelashes a little too fast. The married guy in his early forties in the small office next to Hardy’s would pat his paunch and joke around about how Hardy’s looks wouldn’t last forever, especially after he turned thirty.
Hardy would smile evenly at the receptionist and laugh along with the married guy, and then he would go into his office and work without giving any of them a second thought.
After work, he usually went to a gym not far from his condo. He would change into loose baggy shorts, a comfortable T-shirt, and cross-training shoes that would work for weight lifting and cardio machines. He preferred to keep things simple and he always focused on specific parts of his body. His intention was not to become a hulking body builder with bulging muscles in his arms, legs, and back. He was twenty-eight years old and he wanted to maintain his thirty inch waist, but without becoming obsessed with those washboard abs so many other men at his gym seemed to crave.
He wasn’t the type of gay man who could be identified easily, which is why the young woman at his office often flirted with him and told him he looked like a blond male actor on a popular TV show. He wasn’t in the closet either. His family and good friends all knew he was gay. At the office he said nothing about his sexuality because he didn’t think it was anyone’s business.
For the most part, Hardy knew other people considered him mild-mannered, polite, and easy to get along with. He wasn’t too aggressive or shy. He kept his two bedroom condo neat and clean but no one was afraid to sit on his sofa and just relax. When good friends and family members asked why someone like him was still single, he would just shrug and tell them he wasn’t looking for a permanent relationship yet. It wasn’t a lie, at least not completely. He just couldn’t go into detail with friends and family about what he needed in a relationship, which wasn’t always easy to find. In fact, it was so personal and so complicated sometimes he didn’t always understand it himself.
On a warm Friday night in early June, he returned from the gym and listened to his voice mail. After that, he stripped out of his shorts and T-shirt, went into the bathroom, and lathered his body with depilatory cream. He did this once a week, every Friday, and he didn’t have that much body hair in the first place. The hair remover only took a few minutes to work that night, and he stepped into the shower to rinse his entire body until it was silky and smooth.
After he dried himself off, he walked naked to his bed and turned on the TV to watch one of his favorite home renovation shows on the Home Channel. He didn’t eat dinner on Friday nights because he didn’t want that full stomach feeling for what he was about to do later that night. They were talking about a mid-century modern home on TV and he climbed slowly onto the bed and rested his head on a small throw pillow. He always napped before he went out on a Friday or Saturday night, partly because it was still too early to go out and partly because he knew he wouldn’t be home until three or four the next morning.
As the soft voices coming from the TV talked about real hardwood floors as opposed to laminate floors, and a woman with a soothing British accent discussed them with a cute young guy, Hardy closed his eyes and drifted to sleep thinking about how smooth and clean he felt all over.
When he woke three hours later he sat up in bed and reached for the TV remote. The clock on the cable box read eleven, which meant he’d slept longer than he’d planned. He switched the TV off to avoid the eleven o’clock news saga of murder and crime, climbed out of bed, and loped back to the bathroom to get ready for the night.
After he shaved his face and styled his short blond hair, he went into the walk-in closet off the master bathroom to choose his outfit for the night. He had a basic idea and it didn’t take long to pull a pair black workout pants off the top shelf. The tight white V-neck T-shirt with the deep scoop at the chest wasn’t hard to find either. He put the V-neck on first, and then turned to a large basket where he kept all his underwear.
It took a few minutes to decide between the black see-through boxer briefs or the tight raspberry briefs with the thick leathery waistband. He tried both on a few times and checked them out in a full length mirror on the back of his closet door. The black see-through pair made him feel sexy and dangerous, but there was something about the raspberry pair that really made his heart beat faster. The raspberry briefs with the thick leathery waistband weren’t boxers and they weren’t bikinis. They fell somewhere in between and he worried they might be too conservative. But as he turned and saw how they hugged his ass and made it round out and bubble, he finally put the black see-through briefs back into the basket and turned toward the back of the closet where he kept his shoes lined neatly in double rows.
This was always the hardest part: choosing shoes. His more dangerous side leaned toward the black leather army or work boots. He had over a dozen pairs in various designs. When he tried on a pair with side zippers and looked in the mirror they just didn’t seem to work with the raspberry briefs. So he went for a simple pair of black high top sneakers he normally would have worn anywhere during the day with shorts or jeans.
After that, he fastened thick black leather bracelets to each wrist, a thicker black leather choker collar to his neck, and he wrapped a black leather cock ring around his dick and balls. He didn’t wear the cock ring to enhance anything; he wore it for effect and because it made him feel so different.
In order to get out of his condo building without calling any attention to himself, he put on his black sweat pants and a plain black leather jacket. That night he didn’t run into anyone he knew and the moment he sat down behind the steering wheel of his brand new blue mini-cooper he removed the jacket before he even started the engine. As he slipped the car into gear, he glanced down and smiled at the way half of his bulging chest muscles popped through the low-cut white V-neck.
He drove about twenty-five miles east to an older building in a northern New Jersey town not far from New York City. It was so close to the Holland Tunnel he had to watch the road with care so he wouldn’t make the wrong turn and wind up in New York. When he reached his destination, he turned left and drove down a narrow alleyway that led him to a small parking lot at the back of the old brick building. There were no signs or neon lights in this neighborhood. Except for a few small grocery stores and bars, this was a low end residential neighborhood with unkempt row homes and crestfallen apartment buildings that had been around since World War II.
As he climbed out of the car and headed toward the building, he shoved his hands into his pockets and kept his head down. He glanced around the parking lot a few times and noticed there were more cars there than usual and his heart started beating faster again. This wasn’t a nightclub or a formal gathering place, at least not in the usual way. This place was a private club for men only called Jersey Jacks that he’d joined. The fact that there was no apostrophe in Jacks was highly significant. He’d found this place through someone he’d met casually for sex on Craigslist a year earlier and he’d been going there almost every weekend since. In fact, the only way to discover Jersey Jacks was through word of mouth, and always in a very discreet way.
Chase of a Dream
