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  • welcome to the hole

    welcome to the hole

    Once upon a time, I kept a LiveJournal account, gryphons_hole, a deep, dark, comfy little hole in my brain where I kept notes on my life and queerness.

    This is the archive to that account, mostly password protected, adult, queer content, stripped of photo content after the site restructured its photo hosting feature. I hope to restore that content as well.

    If I know you, ask for the password. If I don’t, hope for a generous mood.

    08.18.24 I have realized a need to continue in this space. A kink reawaking if you will, with content that may range into inappropriate for my other blog spaces.

  • The quiet of my brain upsets me. It always has.
    I am full of the eerieness that always surfaces when I am about to be vile.

    I have been resisting the urge to be petty and sour and pissy.
    It isn’t going away, but I am not either.

    Can’t put it to words yet without getting whiny and ‘why me’ and crap.
    So, no words. Yet.

  • The first slump of ’06

    I am home.
    Or at least back to the place I live…

    I am overwhelmed with sadness now.
    I feel torn in so many pieces right now.
    So many places I could be, so many places I could go.
    But none of them really offer any improvement.

    Right now, it all feels like the same crap.

    I miss my friends so much. In Phoenix and Cleveland.
    I have a good handful here too that I would miss greatly
    if I were to move.

    But I still feel alone and isolated and sad.
    I am still missing the one thing that I have always wanted.
    I am not a fool. I currently don’t think it exists anywhere.

    I want to be part of a community that supports me back
    as much as I support it. I want people – other than a handful of friends –
    that won’t be huge flakes whenever someone else depends on them.

    A friend in Phoenix said it best this past week.
    “You are anachronistic…” I know I am.
    That knowledge does not make it easier to accept that I will never have
    the one thing I want. I think perhaps this is at the core
    to my feelings and draw to polyamory.
    I no longer feel that this longing can be sated by a greater community,
    but I have seen small instances where they are achieved in communal ‘families’.

    Our communities are failing. This observation weighs heavy on my heart,
    a heart that has proven how much it can carry.

    I have already rescinded the plans for the whacked crazy year.
    It was an impulse attempt to fix my life.
    I am glad I made myself wait until after the trip to move forward with it.
    I will not. The rules changed while I was gone, literally, and not for the better.

    I was planning to quietly let it pass into oblivion,
    but then thought better of it.
    My life is the good and the bad. The weak moments and the strong.
    I would be too dishonest to be myself if I hid my previous intentions.

    It would have been a big thing for me.
    It may not have meant anything to anyone else.

    I began planning to run for Heart of America Leatherman.
    It was established as a contest feeder for the American Brotherhood Weekend in DC every April.
    Anyone here that doesn’t know what this is or means, please let it up yourself.
    I am not in the spirit to teach right now.

    It would have been grand. Then they felt they had to change the rules.
    Rules that took me four years to even learn or understand.
    They think this will fix the problems with the contest, but it won’t.

    I am glad this happened. I have regained my own sense of self in the matter.
    I have returned to my ongoing position with regards to me and leather titles.
    I will wait until I have in my life – my personal life – the experience
    of a title holder that consistently prove him or herself true to the word given.
    I will not add my name to their ranks until I feel beyond all doubt
    that I want to be forever associated with those that passed before me.

    This had become important to me numerous times in my life.
    If you need to ask why, I doubt I will have words to answer
    other than to say in order to see if I can stand true.
    The ultimate test of self. But now, I need more.
    And I don’t see myself getting it from that path.

    I think I will spend the year healing. I never really got to do that this past one.
    Maybe some what physically, but the rest of me needs to heal as well, and my body still isn’t
    all that fixed…It may never be.

    One week into the new year, and already my plans have turned 180 degrees.
    Such is life. I still stand to face it. The difference? I stand alone by choice,
    until folks of worthy character take my side.

    About the only solace I have is that I hold greater disappointment in others
    than I do in myself…

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  • The Last Evening, Part 2

    I just got in from the evening. Nu-towne Saloon and Friends were the only stops. Got to see the peeps I was hoping would be behind the bars. I also got lucky with the sheer number of people I got to bump into while out tonight.

    Before dinner – another night at TexAZ Grill (16oz prime, DUH!) – we stopped in at this great candle shop right up the way. I had wanted to restock on these incredible little poured-tin ‘Scents of the Southwest’ candles they have. Seems there was some sort of high school project or fundraiser recently, and although reordered, they were mostly out of stock. I only found one tin of a scent I wanted. Luckily, Bob had stocked up a bit back and had two scents that I liked.

    Sagebrush, Boots and Saddles, and Spring Rain are the ones I get to bring home. They should be restocked soon and I can arrange something when they are.

    While there we found these cards. One was absolutely brilliant. I suppose I finally have a moment where the universe repeats in actual words, the sentiment carried in my mind. The card? “Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it.”

    Brilliant.

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  • Last day in Phoenix

    I am very VERY happy with my new harness. The rolled leather edge makes it very VERY my size. If you are all good little boys, I will pose for some photos when I return to KCMO next week.

    I am glad to have had this trip. I got to spend a good chunk of time with a small handful of friends. It would have been nice to have had a longer stay and time to see more people, but I was unwilling to short the time with the guys I truly adore and greatly miss to run around finding every person I ever once met.

    With luck, I may even return to Phoenix again this year. We will have to see. It is all tied into that thing that I am not yet ready to reveal.

    Tonight Bob and I plan a bit of bar-hopping, since he doesn’t work tomorrow. My evening outings through the week have been on my own, since he works so early.

    With luck, Terry will join us to get a much needed break from the stress that has become his life over the past year or so.

    We will start with Nu-Towne (I used to work there) and wander back closer to home from there. Perhaps padlock, definitely Friends (I think a good friend is still tending bar there.)

    The trek back home with Michael^2 begins early tomorrow. We should be back fairly early Sunday afternoon.

    I am still reeling from the great shopping spree that come from my trips to Tuff Stuff.
    I am so glad to be reconnected to Bob and Jeffers. Bob was diagnosed with colon cancer and began treatments about the same time as I. Obviously we both were too overwhelmed with our lives to manage ongoing long-distance communications.

    I look forward to creating some nasty stuff for his art-in-trade. (Seriously, I am already swelling with various thoughts that roam through my head.) Once I finish the Gearheads…he’s got top-spot locked…

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  • Protected: More new toys…

    This content is password-protected. To view it, please enter the password below.

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  • A Series of Things and 2 New Toys – Plus the Title That Sounds Like Mr White.

    Today was a nice, full day. I got to spend some great time with some of my family. You know, the other family, the one I get to pick.

    I haven’t seen Bill and Terry for almost three years. I spent some good time with them before and after lunchish time. Bill had an appointment then so I stopped at Tuff Stuff again, until their return from the appt.

    Bill’s back is busted and no one knows why… I can certainly understand the frustration of something like that. The stress that must cause on their relationship… I know that they have all the strength they need and then some to survive this, but sometimes they are not so sure. I would like to change this fact.

    Right now, all I can do for them is be present and be my ever-delightful self and lighten the atmosphere. I think Terry will come to dinner with Bob and I on Friday. Back to TexAZ grill for steaks, I think.

    I headed out in the evening to the middle-of-nowhere-north-valley to meet up with the Michaels and Michael U’s clan. His brother-in-law hosts numerous karaoke gigs. It was in a fraternal lodge sort of place, which was a bit unnerving from time to time, but over all enjoyable…Well, except for the big-lady-bartender that kept insisting my boots made me look like a Canadian Mountie. Of course her monstrous boobs were rubbing on my arm while she said this.

    I am mostly sure that they had their own area code.

    OH OH OH!

    While I was at Tuff Stuff, I fell in love… No, you jack-wads, with new toys. (Although I did also bump into someone I always used to see in LA who is here for school now and hot as hell like always…) A pair of floggers. The tails are this great, heavy rubber strips. The handles are a broad-cut braided leather and they have these great chrome fixtures on the end, that turn out to be a set of finials, but look a bit like a bit, a bit like a boot rest for boot blacking and a bit like
    a bottle opener.

    They are kick-ass! They have a great weight and sting to the hit without needy a lot of muscle driving it, which means I can save some energy, which means they will be great for my current state…

    Bob (not Bob-Bob but Bob at Tuff Stuff Bob…) made a deal I couldn’t refuse. He wanted to barter for some new artwork. Even more kick-ass! He’s the type of collector that wants it to be as whacked, as graphic and as nasty as I like to make it. Yea! for me.

    And I now have a new pair of floggers. It has been too long since I added some new ones.

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  • A note for the passing

    Somewhere in this journal, is the mention of this beautiful, yet bizarre, love I have for a the two major parts of a three way relationship in Phoenix.

    I have also mentioned John’s death and how I felt him follow me around for the holiday, sharing his decorating madness with me…

    I have also mentioned my fantasy mind, where I pick their encounter as the point where I converted
    to HIV positive, simply because it is a moment that was also filled with love and friendship.

    Bob told me last night, that Doyle killed himself recently. I want to say this is not being posted to invite an onslaught of ‘so sorry for your loss’ things. My heart knew this was an outcome.

    Doyle has this odd way about him, about his communication. Not just his thoughts, but his actual speech patterns. It was very difficult to understand Doyle. John did it with complete ease. But that is what true-mates do. They understand each other. I think John was Doyle’s interpreter to the rest of the world.

    The fact that Doyle survived John for so many years is a bit amazing to me. Really.

    I will miss them for the rest of my life, but I am thankful that Doyle is no longer missing John. I don’t know how he could have ever truly managed that.

    I love them both. I always will.

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  • OMG!

    So, I sitting in front of the tube.
    CMT or some such country music thing is going.

    Gretchen Wilson comes up, some slow ditty I have never heard before.

    “…best if you just walk away,
    I don’t feel like lovin’ you today…”

    OMFG! Can this possibly hit MORE dead on what is in my heart at the now?
    Cripes-o-mighty!

    ‘Course she goes on the sing that she will anyway,
    but who cares at this point. So the gates are open.

    Then fuck!
    This hot-ass bearded man, think it was James Johnson or some such. Woof!

    Then he starts singing about a dad off to work
    and a child that goes to get his pennies after mom says daddy gets paid for his time,
    so that daddy can afford to spend time with him.
    Jesse-Frickin-Cripes! What is this crap?

    Please just stop the fucking singing now,
    reach out of the tv, screw me raw and rip my heart out.
    It’s what you all do eventually anyway.

    That creepy make you feel worse about my kinda life thing in country music is starting
    to work me nerves…

    Just saying.

  • The Shite and the Fan

    I have had a heavy heart all evening. It has been growing for far too long.
    I have not kept much in my life secret, I don’t do that very well,
    but this is my first ‘hidden’ post. Assuming I did it right, only a handful
    of you are reading this.

    I have made reference over the past couple days to the craziness of the next few months,
    and the potential greatness of this coming year.

    And…you still have to wait a week or two.
    But, of course, before the good stuff springs up,
    the manure must be handled and spread.

    This is the shit and the fan…

    I am about to commit myself to a path that will be full of life experience.
    I have had two years of crap screwing up all the work I had done in my life previous to that.
    And I have a pseudo-partner that seems ever un-able to go where I long to tread.

    I realize I am down to the line. I have exactly two options and I know my choice.
    I can continue with the status quo – nothing special, which leaves me feeling like crap –
    or I can once again fill my life with a richness I have been striving to obtain for over six years…

    Um, yeah…not a hard choice.
    I am starting with the new year. I do this and everything will fall into line
    so quickly my head will spin into 2007.

    I am moving out, leaving my already failing relationship.
    I can only assure five or six months of income to do it right now,
    but that doesn’t matter. I must leave now, or everything waiting to happen will be gone in a flash.

    The complication: I leave Sunday for my trip to Phoenix.
    As much as folks will strive to paint me a bastard for this,
    I can’t drop the bomb then leave for a week. That’s plain cruel.

    I can’t stand it. I dread it. This growing vomit-taste in my mouth.

    I understand so much about me now. I gained so much clarity during chemo
    and David was so busy being dramatic that he didn’t grow with me.
    In fact, I am pretty sure that we have been growing in our own directions
    oblivious to each other ever since we moved into the same house.

    It is epic in its sadness, but it is going away.
    I am resolved with my decision. I am content with my decision.

    I just wish I didn’t feel like puking…

  • A Great Impromptu Addition

    So, last night, I spent the evening at JJ CLubhouse in St Louis,
    hanging with <wooferstl> and <kiwi59>
    and then later a couple of other friends that I couldn’t believe
    I bumped into…

    Woofer and Matt are great people, I had a great time.
    I also gave them a box of homemade chocolates, so I think we are BFF…

    Oh…. oh, yeah. this is for Woofer.

    *over-heard at the bar*
    “If I’m gonna be in full drag, then I’m gonna be fucking you til YOU scream…”

    Wow, sometimes fags shouldn’t let fags trick drunk.