How does a woman, raised in the south by a father who was a new deal democrat, slowly become a conservative? I always believed that my father, an early neo-conservative, was a major influence on my mother, but as I spend more time with mom since my father’s passing, I think the answer is more complex.
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What’s the best way to deal with a parent or relative as they age. My aunt, my mother’s sister, raged through her decline with anger, denial and increasing hallucinations. My mother has taken a different approach, always the optimist, she tries to see the positive. But like my aunt, my mother is strong willed. Often when mom says yes it really a secret no.
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What are the effects on the mind and body of being in the closet and hiding who we are? All of us who have lived in the closet have gone through periods where it was easier to hide and periods where it was much harder.
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As I have tried to think through why talk of marriage to my partner continues to cause a level of anxiety I have landed on the wedding kiss as one of the key triggers. Continue reading
I will have been with my partner for five years this coming January. We have lived together for a year and a half. It has been a wonderful journey but our recent talk of marriage has me all stirred up. Continue reading
Back in the early 1970s as I was beginning to explore my sexuality and my attraction to men, I began to buy and collect gay porn magazines. I hid them in the hollowed out back of my mother’s old portable record player which I used as a nightstand. Continue reading
As a young man experiencing the pleasure of orgasm for the first time it was inconceivable to me that this pleasure could ever go away. If an older person had told my teen or twentysomething self that my orgasms would change and evolve as I aged I do not think I would have believed it. Continue reading
I began to experience ED in my early 40’s. I don’t know exactly when it started, but at the time, it was all twisted up with my closeted existence and the difficulty in having sex with my wife. Continue reading
My two brothers and I, with our children, have all descended on the Florida town where my parents are renting an apartment for the winter. My mother’s desire to take my father, who at 90 years of age, is wheelchair-bound, out of the apartment for meals, movies, and tonight for s’mores, knows no bounds. Continue reading
Whose life is this anyway? I went from living my new gay life with a sense of freedom, joy, and fun to caring for my wife who was dying of cancer, caring for my father who is dying of old age, caring for my college-age son who found himself accused of hazing and working with my siblings to clean up my father’s estate, which is a mess. Continue reading
