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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.
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Protected: sunday style – monday afternoon edition
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running over
I have been keeping up with my oldest friends via Facebook, which is the nicest feature of the thing for me. I haven’t done this good a job of staying in touch since I left Ohio for Arizona back in 1996.
Yesterday, I spent a good chunk of the day chatting on Facebook with Bill. Of the surviving high school group, I have known him the longest; it seems everyone has. Although we didn’t become close friends until my sophomore year, we were in the same Cub Scout pack in elementary school. So, what? That would be the third grade, I think.
As it turns out, Bill has been cycling; all a part of reducing his spare tire, which wears a bit heavier on him than most I suppose. Bill is diabetic; the juvenile variety. I remember a conversation with a third party while living in Phoenix about the expected lifespan of folks with juvenile diabetes. The guy was being a bit of a jerk and I was getting very upset because the implication was that Bill wouldn’t be around much longer in my life. That was over ten years ago. Bill turned forty-one last fall.
He has a cycling race coming up. He is racing with Team in Training, a fund-raising branch of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Yeah, that Team in Training. He told me he was racing for me.
I cried.
Between Bill and <lj-user=philhasablog>, that makes two.
My cup is spilling all over the place… -
Protected: gryphons_hole asks…
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childeofthesun asks…
Question: I’m gonna drop you two cuzin I just couldn’t decide!
-How do your health issues relate to the art you make?
-What is your favorite piece of vintage clothing you’ve scored?Answer: First things first:
I do not often feel a direct connection to the content of my stuff, but that may be changing soon. I have been stewing on a set that deals specifically with my loss of my sexual being during chemotherapy. it is five years now and they are still working up to the surface. Beyond that, I would say the most noticeable indirect connection would be expediency; some days I feel compelled to produce. I get frustrated if I do not. I imagine this is at least in part due to a sense of being on borrowed time.
Second:
My favorite…? I will give two. They may be the only things found that truly are vintage. I am not so much the right size for such things…
The first would be these military pants. I am still not so sure which period they are; a few folks say US army – Korean War era. They are incredibly durable; cut from the heaviest weight wool I think I have ever seen in a trouser. The front of the thighs have two layers of wool with some sort of water resistant interfacing in between them. Everything is buttoned, including the fly. Cargo pockets and a great cut for tucking into the boots. I knew these trousers would not stay on the rack for long. I broke my normal trends and bought it full tag price, which for the DAV is still a deal; it was eight bucks and ninety-eight cents. Quite the steal, IMO.
The second would be this rally coat. I had no idea when I bought it that it was vintage; I wasn’t even sure it was a man’s coat. LOL When I get it home, I looked into the labels. I haven’t found any specifics about the manufacturer but I suspect it is of a good age. Again, I don’t expect vintage clothing to fit me. This one is a perfect length in the sleeve and an excellent fit over all. I think I got it for a quarter…
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dreams – no more doughnuts before bed…
I dreamt of a homicidal bunny.
Seriously.
I had an apartment in this grand old house in a grand old neighbor. Oddly, John Hundley, the bindery operator at work that recently died from cancer, was sharing on of the rooms in the place. There was this rabbit, see…? And it was in the house. The dream was a sort of mano-a-mano between me and that damned bunny. Dark grey fur, stubby ears, vicious little eyes. Every time I boxed or bagged it, it got out. Every time I thought I landed its demise, it regained consciousness and set about its payback.
Seriously.
I was beginning to feel disturbed during the course of the dream. I think me more than my fdreamself; I have this thing about layers of consciousness and degrees of lucidity in my dreams. Sometimes I play someone else – as in I feel myself inside the body of another; sometimes I play myself – as in my conscious mind has slipped inside a dream form of myself; sometimes it works like television – where I am a disembodied viewer; sometimes I am truly myself as I walk through the world – one unified being. This dream would have been in the second category. My conscious mind was functioning inside a dreamself; meaning that I was aware I was dreaming but the actions of my dreamself were uneffected by this realization.
Eventually, it come to simply getting the thing out of the house. It became almost like a twisted evolution of Fatal Attraction. (I wonder if the bun had boiled a pot of Glenn Close soup up in the kitchen.) Finally, I just shooed the damned thing out of the basement door and watched it scurry off, about ten feet. Then it stopped, turn itshead over its shoulder to glare at me and made a sharp turn to the neighbor’s place. It then began to mark the thresholds of the various apartments there. each time it looked back at me with an evil grin. Yeah, I didn’t know bunnies could grin either…
Here, the dream skipped forward. I had left to run errands and returned to find city notices post all over our yard and across our entrances; the neighbors all down the block as well. Seems we had been turned in to the city for vermin problems. I couldn’t get into the house with my grogeries. At this point, I awoke, at least a bit irritated.
At that point I found a link in my inbox to this (link no longer valid), a gift from Mother.
I kid you not. -
jaycifier asks…
Question: What do you yearn for? What do you dread? And what makes you feel content?
Answer: This is a difficult question for me. I think mostly because I may not view life in such terms. I think I shall answer them in reverse…What makes me content? Almost anything; good or bad. I can be content to spend two hours in a dentist’s chair; I will kick back and drone on while he works, comfortable and calm. Perhaps for me contentment is about finding my center in something. During typically unpleasant things, I tend to zone out of focus a bit to help pass time. The good stuff holds my attention enough that other things cannot distract. So my life goes. The incredibly unpleasant will pass, so it no longer holds me in discontent.
What do I dread…? I have this lingering sense of being an idiot. It has been with me through most of my memories of life. When it flairs up, I dread taking on new processes that don’t exactly make sense to me; the fear is seeming a fool for not knowing what I suspect everyone else in the world knows. Silly, yes, but real. It is the root of my procrastination. I hate making phone calls to agencies or organizations when I feel I don’t have a clear idea of what I need to ask. This can be a terror. I can work around it a good deal, but it is close to ever-present.
Yearning may be the most difficult to answer… I yearn to be understood, at the most basic understanding of the question. I yearn to have a group of peers that gets me. I think I have it, or at least the start of it, but I don’t yet feel I have it in place enough to avoid the worst parts of my dread. I am getting there.
Beyond that. I yearn for specific, conscious contact. I often get to a space where I feel I just go through motions. I know that routine is good for me, but I still have a strong need for conscious choices. I yearn for connection with others that keeps my brain as involved as my body; and vice versa. I crave situations that engage me on all levels; complex and intricate: emotional, mental, sexual, physical, spiritual. That is the door to the perfect space for me.
March is question month: ask your questions here.
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catnash asks…
Question: Since I’m relatively new to your journal’s friends list, tell me something that I might not know yet about you, please.
Answer: I am currently a bindery operator for a book manufacturer. I have been such for two years, having worked up front in the pre-press departments for two years prior to that. Prior to that, I did the store displays for a high end event/floral design/interiors/antique shop…
Prior to that I was a floral designer for over eight years at various shops in both Cleveland, Ohio and Phoenix, Arizona.
In addition (in and around those jobs listed above), I have been: a cash control clerk for an amusement park, a produce clerk and bag-boy, an odd-jobs handler for a veterinarian, a floor clerk for a head shop/sex store, a doorman and bartender, an ad designer for both a leather store and a gay card and gift store, a Sunday helper for my uncle’s motor paper route, cutting and marker assistant for my mom’s drapery business, a cocktail server, a food server for two different places and an engineering co-op student for a fun-food equipment manufacturer.
I do get around… many of the last list were in between and overlapping with the main jobs.
Oh! And I have been producing my own erotic images for just about ten years now.
March is question month: ask your questions here.
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chronicpaint asks…
Question: You have the opportunity to teach me something, a skill, or experience or anything really. What would you want to teach me?
Answer: This is difficult because I think you were already on the path to learning it when we first collided into each other here. I don’t wish for the answer to imply that you have not already been learning it… I think you know this, but perhaps don’t carry it with you daily… yet.
That said: I wish to teach you most of all how much the scars of life add to our beauty. It is told better than I have words to say in the story of The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. I have mentioned it here on numerous occasions. It was reintroduced to me by <lj-user=gearjock> a year or two ago.
The most poignant passage for me: “Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand”
If I were to guess, I would say you have the first bit of this in your heart. I think you know how the trials of your life have added to the person you are becoming. I am not so certain that you believe the last bit of it yet. That is where I would focus my effort in knowing you. Our world puts silly amounts of importance into things that everyone will lose over time. I think that single thing does the most damage to our ability to love ourselves.
Another excerpt: “Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you….”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time…”
As I suggested earlier, i don’t think any of this is new to you; I would simply wish to leave the lights burning on the path while you catch up to me. It is nice to have company on a long journey.
March is question month: ask your questions here.
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gearjock asks…
Question: What is your favorite guilty pleasure, outside of the sexual arena?
Answer: I am not one to carry guilt about my choices. If I suspect a choice would carry a heavy amount of guilt, I reconsider that option and move on. That said, I will answer the essence of the question; I don’t need to get caught up on semantics…
I would say clothing. For – what? – six months or so… I have been stockpiling the finds from the DAV locations around here. The budget is insanely small. Most trips, I spend between ten and fifteen bucks. I have too many clothes at this point. I routinely pass them on to friends and re-donate as I find things with a better fit.
It all seems so superficial to me and I know to a point it is. I continually remind myself to keep it light and to have fun; to goof off. People in the world are entirely too serious about life. Including clothing. I am a goofball. I am secure in how I see myself. Those two things combine in some weird ways and I enjoy those moments. Beyond the superficiality of fashion, like many other material things, it can represent a good amount of a person’s inner sense of self. I like the game of appearance; how different people react differently to me based on how I look. It fascinates me. And it is a good bit addictive.
Right from the start of this whole visual rebirth, I noticed an odd thing. I had been much of the same in appearance for the past six years here in KCMO, that of a traditional leather image: jeans, tee, bar vest, chaps, leather uniform bits… So on. In just three outings in a jacket and tie, my perception was already that the leather was the costume and the ties were the real me.
I am endlessly curious about that. I suspect it ties into personal doubt and insecurity and the whole concept of imposter ‘s syndrome…
March is question month: ask your questions here.
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Protected: shirtlifterbear asks…
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gryphon's hole 