JamesSavik

My Mom's funeral was the day before he passed.

Oh, Mikie.

This story is looking good so far. I am already a big fan of Bear. 🐻 Alan, don't think you are the only author with a little wish fulfillment in their characterization. When it comes to writing characters, I tend to write people I've known or composites of people I've known. If you're familiar with The Company or The Summer Job, I've known most of those characters and their backstory. I didn't do that to be creepy. A lot of those guys didn't survive the eighties/nineties. Much of The Company is the author's wish fulfillment, and in the story, they survive and thrive. In The Summer Job, the characters illustrated why they acted as they did, and how sometimes people can be perceived as villainous, but are redeemed when you get to know them better, and you get facts instead of rumors. The Summer Job will be coming here to AD in the new year. I'm not sure what to do with The Company. It's become a 250K+ monster and is a 1 chapter/day near stream of consciousness experiment.

Cave paintings thousands of years old describe sex acts that would make a sailor blush. A rookie sailor, but a sailor nonetheless. 😉

Something tells me its not going so well...

I keep getting hit on online by women despite haunting gay sites and forums. I created the following to let them know they're barking up the wrong tree.

Those were the days. If I didn't get laid a couple of times a day, I was probably sick.

the Second Time Around 1978 I first met Randy when I was sixteen, and he was fifteen. I met him at Frank's house- a guy from my football team that I screwed around with from time to time. He enticed me to come over by telling me about a kid from his neighborhood that wanted to join in. Randy was a shy kid. He wasn't big, athletic or a jock. He was cute and a lot more feminine than most of the guys I previously messed around with. What caught my attention was his bright, intelligent blue eyes. Frank treated him like a hooker. He grabbed Randy by his hair, shoved his cock in his mouth and started f**king his face and saying, "You like that don't you little bitch." I was appalled and said, "Dude, be cool." Frank was enjoying being rough and looked at me like I was nuts. "Don't tell me you're soft on this little faggit?" Randy got off Frank's cock (which was not that long a trip) and said, "It's cool. I wouldn't let him do it like that if we hadn't known each other since diapers." Even at 16 I had seen some humiliating shit and treating people that way was a real turn off, so I left the room. A few minutes later after Frank got his 2-minute nut, he joined me on the back porch for a smoke. I asked, "Where's Randy?" "He didn't think that you liked him, so he left." Shaking my head I said, "It's not that. I just don't like seeing people treated that way." "I don't get you man. You're one of the roughest guys I know, but you are so different with your clothes off." I grinned at him and said, "Better or worse?" "Better I guess." "Look man, I need to go. I'll see you later." Frank just laughed and said, "Randy's house is up towards Castle Hills." I drove my Grand Prix up the road to Castle Hills and I approached him from behind. He was tall and skinny wearing white tennis shorts, a crimson Alabama t-shirt and flip-flops. I drove up beside him and said, "Hey!" He jumped. He wasn't expecting me and gave me a wild eyed expression. I said, "You want to ride around?" He smiled, opened the passenger side door and got in. "Where you want to go?" I said, "Sometimes it ain't the destination, it's the ride." I drove to a nearby wooded lake and parked. He looked at me and said, "I didn't think you liked me back at Frank's." "That's not it. It was the way Frank treated you. I didn't care for it. Do you want to smoke a joint?" Randy grinned and looked at me. I pulled out a joint and lit it. Feeling a little self-conscious, I said, "What?" Randy said, "You're not at all what I expected." I took a drag and passed it. "What did you expect?" "Another one of Frank's half-wit jock f**k-buddies who wants a blow job." "I like blow jobs." Randy took a drag and coughed. "Well, who doesn't. I mean there's more to you than that." I took the joint and said, "Thanks." Randy said, "For the joint?" I let my hit out and said, "No. Thanks for noticing. I have to be this ass kicking jock redneck to... I don't know. Survive? Fit in? Mostly to keep people from f**king with me. That's what I have to be. What I am, inside, where it matters, they can't have it. That's for me and the people I chose to share it with." Randy took the joint. I noticed he was looking a little stoned. He said something incredible. Something deep that I had longed to hear. He said, "I understand" and I believed him. I said, "So, would you like to see more of the real me?" He smiled and said, "I believe that I would." I got out of the car and pulled a blanket out of the trunk. We walked to a sunny clearing in the woods where I made love to Randy, gently and with respect. Afterwards, we just lay there naked in the afternoon sun and talked for hours. I found out quickly being Randy's boyfriend would just not work. A hood, stoner, thug like me and a preppy like Randy came from entirely different worlds. His mother would never accept me. My parents would never accept an effeminate guy being around me. However, over the next three years, we shared those worlds occasionally until life happened and took us in different directions. _____________________________________________________________________________ 2010 I had not seen or heard from Randy in years when he "friend requested" me a few months ago on Facebook. Things started slow. We had both been down a lot of dark and lonely roads. Randy's long-time mate David and my Jeff had both died of AIDS in 1996. We had both survived more than thrived. He's been sober and in AA for three years. I've been clean and sober in NA for five years. We both know that we're carrying a shitload of baggage and that we're both damaged goods but for some reason that doesn't seem to matter. Youthful passion and white-hot lust have given way to happy familiarity. We talk more than we have sex which is something new and completely alien for me. Maybe we have a chance to have something we both missed because of the times and attitudes and culture. Maybe we have a chance to grow together, heal each other and walk away from the searing pain of our pasts. Maybe we have a chance to have some good years and not have to walk alone. I'm damned sure that we're both due for a change for the better. Who knows? Maybe we'll get it right the second time around.

Read his bio here. Pay attention to the part about his marital status and how Disney fucked him over at 21. Tommy Kirk, Obit at The Sun Was Tommy Kirk married? Kirk remained unmarried throughout his life. Despite being viewed as one of Disney's favorite kid actors, it was previously reported that the company fired him over being gay in 1964 when he was 21-years-old. According to TMZ, Kirk once said: "When I was about 17 or 18 years old, I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t going to change. I didn’t know what the consequences would be, but I had the definite feeling that it was going to wreck my Disney career and maybe my whole acting career. It was all going to come to an end." The child star added: "Eventually, I became involved with somebody and I was fired."

Plenty of room for drama in that premise in the Texas ==> Massachusetts move alone. Looking forward to it.

A snip just for you Camy. Lucky Charm was sixty feet long and looked fast sitting still with sharp lines. She was mostly white with red trim and a pugnacious looking green leprechaun painted on her stern. Billy’s evaluation was, “That’s not a boat. That’s a little ship.” Pops drove slowly by and said, “That’s our ride. We’ve got numerous options about where we can go and what we might do when we get there. One of our options is that I know a man who runs a resort on Palawan in the Philippines like the one we’re staying in. He offered me a job anytime I want it and, with Lucky Charm, we can run charters. It’s one of our options, and I think you will like it there. It gets many Australian tourists, and who doesn’t like Aussies?”

Just sent to Mike. It will start posting soon. This is something new for me. I'm sort of flexing my writing chops with this one. You'll wonder what the heck, and then it'll grab you. Hope you enjoy!

I did think. You did not. Read the post again carefully.

COVID-19 is a modified Coronavirus(1). Coronaviruses are first cousin to the Rhinovirus which cause the lions share of head colds. One guess which family causes the rest of them: coronaviruses. Coronavirus and Rhinovirus are positive stranded RNA virus which means their genetic material is the single stranded RiboNucleaic Acid (RNA). They differ significantly from DioxyNucleaic Acid (DNA) based viruses. RNA viruses do not have double-stranded genetic material of DNA viruses and are much smaller than their more evolved cousins. As a consequence, RNA viruses do not have the error correcting mechanism built into dual stranded DNA, and are apt to mutate at the drop of a hat. These mutations happen very rapidly, and soon a population with an Alpha RNA virus will soon have Beta, Gamma, and Delta strains. It is possible to create a vaccine for a specific Rhino or Coronavirus, but the problem is that each mutation Serotype will differ enough from the original that the probability that the vaccine will work decreases. This is why there has never been a vaccine for the common cold. There are literally hundreds of thousands of Rhinoviruses and Coronaviruses each with a unique protein shell. It is that serotype that vaccines use to train our immune systems to look out for. This is also why the COVID-19 vaccine is of very limited efficacy. Most of them do a reasonable job of inoculating against the original COVID strain, it is only partially effective against current sub-strains of COVID like Delta and Gamma. It will be completely useless against future substrains as they diverge further and further from the baseline COVID serotype. Without hysteria, consider what Coronaviruses and Rhinoviruses actually do: they cause mild respiratory illness. In patients who are elderly, present with pre-existing conditions or compromised immune systems, this can escalate to a viral pneumonia. Nothing has really changed other than we have a wide-spread virus with shadowy origins that make us all very nervous. The way that it has been handled on a national and international level is extremely questionable. Why destroy economies for a virus with a 99.8%+ recovery rate? Why force vaccinations when natural herd immunity is better for actually killing the damn thing eventually? A much more rational policy is to protect vulnerable populations like the elderly, people with pre-existing conditions and compromised immune systems than to inflict vaccination on an entire population. One of the dirty little secrets of vaccination is that the tiny rate of Vaccine Injury when applied over a large enough population may eventually kill more people than the virus itself. It's not ignorance alone that has people looking askance at the mass vaccination for COVID. I have had both doses of the Pziefer vaccine. I took it because I am around many elderly people. Knowing what I know now, I won't be taking anymore. This entire COVID phenomenon has been managed fear and hysteria which has been leveraged by sharp operators for political advantage, and to enrich themselves by the billions while spreading misery and economic disaster to the rest of us. It is past time to JUST SAY NO to the overreach. __________________________ 1- https://centerforsecuritypolicy.org/nih-funded-chinas-gain-of-function-research-at-the-wuhan-institute-of-virology/

Something in the oven... ________________________ Door Kickers I was listening to an album trilogy by Stone Rebel called The Indigo Trilogy. The MP3 was playing on my computer and was being fed to my Cambridge Audio AXR100 over a Bluetooth connection driving a pair of Klipsch Reference Premiere RF-8000F speakers. The rich sound of the superbly crafted music filled the room as I wrote a review. For a little while, the beauty of the music forced the ugly memories to retreat. For a while, I could forget. I could forget the IEDs. I could forget the burned, stinking bodies. I could forget the maimed children, the gaunt sunken eyes and the ever-present smell of death. I could forget the dead and broken friends. All that combat. All that death. All the rules of engagement that had obviously been written by a retarded lawyer. All those battles fought with both hands tied behind our back that by some miracle, we won. All for nothing so some pussy of a politician could say we were done. The VA said I had PTSD. Well, fuck. Of course, I do. That’s what happens to sane people in war. The insane ones like the killing. I’d seen that shit too. Unlike many vets of the Sand Box, I did not find my solace in a pill, baggie or bottle. I drowned the din of battle in my head with beautiful music played loud. Like a lot of my fellows, I started out listening to metal. That worked for a while, but metal is… psychically jagged and I had bled enough. I needed something different. I found it in Progressive rock. That’s what I was listening to when the FBI kicked in my door. Some REMFers pointed guns at me as they cleared the house, hooked me up and put a black bag over my face, and arrested me for treason. The Prog Page I started my page on a popular social media site when I go home. As a long-time fan of progressive rock, it was only natural that I created The Prog Page dedicated to progressive rock. Over the years it attracted seventy-five hundred fans of old progressive groups like Yes, Pink Floyd, Rush and new bands like Marillion, Possum Tree and Stone Rebel. Like similar pages, I had to deal with spammers, scammers, trolls and off-topic posts. Some people had the idea that everyone, even people who belonged to closed moderated forums, needed to hear about their religion and politics. At first, I tried to reason with them. This does not work with unreasonable people. The only way to deal with the true believers is to ban them. They are certainly entitled to their opinions, but our forum is not about their religion or politics and disruptive behavior isn’t welcome. Every year I had to ban scores of spammers, scammers and trolls. Posting the rules did not work. They had their mission, and it was incompatible with Progressive Rock. I don’t give a rat’s hairy butt if you hate republicans, democrats, know for sure that 9/11 was an inside job, your conspiracy theories, insider information or know a guy who knows a guy. If it’s not about Progressive Rock, it doesn’t belong on the Prog Page. I’m interested in the great albums. Fragile by Yes. 2112 by Rush. The Wall by Pink Floyd. I’m interested in new music that sounds great and tickles something in my brain like imagination and wonder. I’m not interested in crazy conspiracy stuff about the Federal Reserve, Vaccine depopulation, aliens from Roswell or Lizard People that control the government. It got so bad, I had to create a series of questions any Prog fan could answer just to keep the spammers, scammers and trolls out. What is your favorite progressive album? What is your favorite progressive band? Those questions zapped most of them because they had no idea. I do a decent job of keeping the Prog Page on topic. Sometimes I miss an off-topic post or two and other Admins let me know. Ian from Manchester or Ariel from Tel Aviv are online when I sleep or am at work. Social media is a strange place. There are the giants, and we all know who they are, and there are the midgets, smaller sites that cater to special interests. The giants are large and strange in the way they run things. They are a bit like me. Their response to most problematic users is simply to ban them. As the Prog Page is probably the least offensive of any group and I bounce spammers, scammers and trolls as soon as they pop up, I wasn’t on the moderator’s radar. For years the group performed its mission: to bring great progressive rock to anyone who wanted to find it. Documents In our forum there is a documents section. Pinned at the top of the list is Top100ProgAlbums.pdf that contains a list of the Top 100 progressive rock albums of all time. I’ve got sixty of them on vinyl and most of the rest on CD. The site that makes the list comes out with a new one every year, so it gets changed every February. Other documents that land there are reviews, criticisms and lyrical analysis. Some people want to call other rock groups progressive, and that’s a long-running and unwinnable debate. Are the Who or King Crimson prog? I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. That is a completely valid topic of debate for our page. If you make a good case and don’t get personal, debate away to your heart’s content. Recently, we had many new people. Russell from Texas answered his favorite prog album was Close to the Edge and his favorite group was Yes. Al from Iowa liked Lucky Man by Emerson, Lake and Palmer. Gus from Georgia liked Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd. All of it old school, but respectable choices. I accepted them all. They liked posts most people liked. They participated in discussions. What I did not notice was when Gus from Georgia uploaded a file: NAC-MFI.pdf. Interrogation “Sergeant Daniel Clark, how long have you been in contact with the New American Congress?” “I haven’t been a Sergeant in a good while, and I don’t follow Congress.” A different voice said, “You need to answer our questions.” “I would if I knew what you were talking about.” The first voice growled, “These soldier boys have been trained to resist interrogation.” The second voice said, “Mr. Clark. You had the New American Congress Manual for Insurrection posted in your Progressive Rock page. Could you explain that?” “I’ve never heard of the New American Congress and, if I had noticed it, I would have deleted it and banned whoever uploaded it. I don’t want political shit on my page.” The first voice said, “You’re going to have to do better than that Clark. You are arrested under the terms of the Patriot Act. We can hold you as long as we want.” “You would be wasting your time. I stay out of politics. Period. Both sides are fucked up and… I’ve got problems of my own. I don’t need or want any part of that.” The second voice said, “Clark, you fit a profile the New American Congress looks to recruit: you’re a veteran of the War on Terror. You’ve had problems since you got back. You are just the kind of angry, trained, decorated veteran that they want.” I sighed and said, “Then they’re going to be disappointed. I’ve had all the war I want. I just want to run my business, live a quiet life and listen to good music. I have to be the most boring suspect you’ve ever picked up.” The first voice said, “We don’t pick up many with a Silver Star, airborne wings and Ranger tabs. That’s why we’re interested in you. If a man like you were to go rouge, you could do a lot of damage.” The second voice asked, “Do you know who Gus from Georgia is?” I answered, “Nothing other than his favorite album was Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd.” The first voice said, “That was Colonel Jacob Henderson. He’s recruiting for the New American Congress.” I swallowed and said, “Then you’ve got a much bigger problem than a wanna be hippie like me that don't want to make war no more if Havoc Henderson is on the other side.”

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99.8% is an easy money bet.

Chapter 12 is difficult. Sometimes an author has said all he can and needs to take a breath.

If You Came Up Then You Would Understand "If one more idiot asks me if I'm a top or a bottom, I swear, I'm going to deck them!" "Easy, easy champ." "It's none of their damned business. There's no way I'm going to play hide the salami with a perfect stranger." "Dude, it's not the eighties anymore." "Thank God. If you came up then, you would understand." "If I'd come up then, I would probably have been a causality or a basket-case. What was it like?" "It was like some malevolent thing was stalking you and everyone you cared about. At the time, being out often ostracized gay people and the community was all they had. People read the paper back then. Every day you would look at the obituaries and hope you didn't recognize a name." "Jesus." "There was a guy who was part of a group that ran a few record stores around the area. I saw him at the store pretty regular. Then he wasn't there one day. A week later he was on the obituary page. If you were lucky, it was like that. It just nipped at your acquaintances. If it got someone close to you, and you were faithful and stuck around, you got to see what a real nightmare looked like." Rocky put his hand on the older man's arm and said, "You sound like you are speaking from experience." "Yeah. AIDS was an epic shit show. Nobody got out of that without scars."

So I'll start my very own Militia: Gay Men that will Shoot You if you fuck with us-- GMSUFU. I'll get a flag and everything. Maybe we'll have cookouts and target practice. It'll be awesome. Just remember- if you take away everyone's guns, guys like me will be the only ones with guns because I WILL NOT COMPLY.

I refuse to have one without dinner and a movie.

Freethinker is awesome. It's a great one to start with.

Freethiinker’s work is a cut above. Lot’s of stories you forget but Ft’s you won’t. The story craft and writing is top shelf but his settings and textures are addictive. He’s in the same league as Driver or Dewey and, that’s high praise coming from me.

Phillip is 16 and new in town with his first job: working for the Y. With no friends and his Dad stuck in London (or was that Hong Kong or Singapore?), he resolves to make a few. One of the new fiends older brother Andy is known to be a real asshole and, he wants to have a talk to Phillip.