Mommy's Visit

The Storyteller

Hey there! Yes you!

It's been a while and I know you've all missed me - just been busy with a new gig and trying to keep the lights on and be able to pay the mortgage.  I promise I will return ever so often going forward to share my life and time in my online journal.  Better late than never right - according to my Grandfather who raised me – I was born 2 weeks late, and I have been in a hurry to catch up every since!

Although my current occupation and my career for the last 16 years has been that of an Information Technology Manager and to which I am currently employed at the General Parts International – I relocated to Raleigh Durham from New York in 2006 with my former job as an IT Project Manager at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).  I love IT however my passion has always been that of a storyteller.

My earliest recollection of wanting to be a storyteller was when I was 5 and I would spend summers in the country with my maternal Grandmother who had OCD and one day she saw me at a sawed-off tree stump imitating the pastor of our local church and delivering a sermon. She then made me a Gown and gave me one of her old bibles and marked off a section of the backyard as my church for me to conduct my services. Her real motives were to keep me out of the house so that I wouldn’t muddy her clean floors so this arrangement was a win-win for both of us.


So every day I would stand at my tree stump in my flowing home-made pastor’s gown with my old Bible and deliver fiery sermons to members of my amused family, the other neighborhood kids or anyone else who was compelled to listen.

But a 5 year old quickly runs out of topics for a sermon and when I started to take creative license with certain well kept family secrets my preaching career prematurely ended. My Grandmother deduced that it was better to keep me safe in doors at the expense of her clean floors than have me slaughtered in the back yard by my other relatives.

I have always been in love with books as books have always fed the hunger I had for stories. When other kids were watching cartoons and had fantasies about being Superman, Batman, Space Ghost or would stand in front of the television set and shout out SHAZAM in the hopes of being transformed into Captain Marvel – I was busy trying to figure out what the REAL mystery was in a Hardy Boys novel.

Reading was a hobby my Grandmother would happily invest in as it shortened the lines that would snake around her house of neighbors who had one complaint after the other about me: “He told jimmy that leather was nothing more than compressed poison ivy with black coloring and that he should make a BELT out of it” – “he bit Peggy Sue on her bottom lip the Doctor gave her two stitches” – “he pinned ribbons on poor Marcus and told him he could be a kite if he jumped off the roof.” The complaints were endless and although the floors weren’t looking too sharp, the books kept the angry neighbors at bay which suited my Grandmother just fine.

Although I was so widely read by the time I was a pre-teen the interesting thing was I was only reading books about things that interested me. I had no knowledge or care about sports – the only games I played was Chess and for many years considered that my only physical activity.

Once I tried to branch out and play soccer and I even tried out for the school’s soccer team, but when I managed to score a goal – in my own team’s goal causing the other team to win much to the anger and bewilderment of my team-mates, it was clear that I had no business being on the football field and that where I belonged was in the Bleachers on the stands trying to finish “The Stand” by Stephen King.

With all hopes of athleticism dashed I then joined the Debating Team when I started High School.

I remember the Debating Team Instructor to be a fiery Nigerian by the name of Charles Enysimwa who believed in delivering canned speeches to us to recite. I didn’t agree with that brand of preparation mind you as I thought the entire notion of a Debating Club was to teach us to argue constructively and be able to rebut the arguments to opposing views. Anyway – the man wanted to write the speeches, so we let the man WRITE THE SPEECHES.

Our team did very well in the debating matches with the other schools at one match in particular (we were up against Holy Childhood High for Girls – we called them the Witches of Eastwick) as they were an all girls school located on East Twickenham) I remember one match I was in the middle of delivering my speech when someone had left the auditorium door open and a strong gust of wind swooped by the Lectern and took away my notes with it leaving me paralyzed and mortified. There was a moment of uneasy silence and I swear I heard a gasp from one of my teammates - I had only to thank my lucky stars that I had committed the speech to memory days before and so was able to continue while the school Photographer collected my speech from the floor, I remember pausing from my delivery to thank him – impressing the Judges and being awarded Best Speaker although our team lost the argument to the witches.

Shortly after I was 14 and had consumed everything that Sidney Sheldon had written, I decided to write my own novel on a Typewriter that my Grandmother and I bought in New Rochelle, that novel was followed by eight others – all unpublished of course as childhood and adulthood are two very distinct stages of one’s life. I became a Father when I was 22 and three years before I migrated permanently to the United States to live with my Father’s family.



Fatherhood gave me a new perspective in life and my writing became more of hobby in my pursuit to be a good husband and father and provide for my son. Which lead me down my current career path. Years later after the collapse of my marriage and my son becoming older and not needing me as much my thoughts have returned to my passion. I have started writing again and even rewriting some of my earlier novels and giving them a more mature finish.

My current manuscript is entitled “Final Man” and is set in the year 5,025 AD where mankind through inter-racial breeding is down to just one race on the planet and is ruled over by a female president (the best and the brightest) and is more evolved than all of earth’s citizens. Future life is scientific, environmentally-friendly and altruistic and money does not exist, ashamed of Earth’s history and past of wars, diseases, famine and racial and social inequality the history books have been rewritten to paint a life that has always been mired in the present. But archaeologists conducting routine excavation in the Alaska Mountains uncover the perfectly cryogenically frozen body of a man from the 21st century and he is still alive and escapes from the housing facility. The President wants the situation contained by him being caught and killed before he penetrates the society and shatter the lie that modern society is built on – what then enfolds is a battle for survival between the final man of the 21st century and the final evolution of mankind.

Yes, I intend to finish it and get it published.

Already Gone

Remember all the things we wanted
Now all our memories they're haunted
We were always meant to say goodbye

Even with our fists held high
It never would've worked out right
We were never meant for do or die

I didn't want us to burn out
I didn't come here to hold you, now I can't stop

I want you to know that it doesn't matter
Where we take this road someone's gotta go
And I want you to know you couldn't have loved me better
But I want you to move on so I'm already gone

Looking at you makes it harder
But I know that you'll find another
That doesn't always make you want to cry

Started with a perfect kiss then we could feel the poison set in
Perfect couldn't keep this love alive
You know that I love you so, I love you enough to let you go

I want you to know that it doesn't matter
Where we take this road someone's gotta go
And I want you to know you couldn't have loved me better
But I want you to move on so I'm already gone

I'm already gone, already gone
You can't make it feel right when you know that it's wrong
I'm already gone, already gone
There's no moving on so I'm already gone

Already gone, already gone, already gone
Already gone, already gone, already gone, yeah

Remember all the things we wanted
Now all our memories they're haunted
We were always meant to say goodbye

I want you to know that it doesn't matter
Where we take this road someone's gotta go
And I want you to know you couldn't have loved me better
But I want you to move on so I'm already gone

I'm already gone, already gone
You can't make it feel right when you know that it's wrong
I'm already gone, already gone
There's no moving on so I'm already gone

A Lover Is Forever

I think i understand
The reason you won't stay with me
You think a ring upon your hand
Will solve your insecurity

So go ahead and play your games
If that's what you must do
Nothing here remains the same
But the way i feel for you

I can watch you walk away
And i know that i'll get by
And i know just what to say
But honey i can't tell a lie

Figure out what you must do
Because you think you're so damn clever
You can marry anytime you want
But a lover is forever

I can watch you walk away
And i know that i'll get by
And i know just what to say
But honey i can't tell a lie

Figure out what you must do
Because you think you're so damn clever
You can marry anytime you want
But a lover is forever
You can marry anytime you want
But a lover is forever

Success Is Nothing



Ever since Gordon Gekko told the world that "greed was good" in the 1987 epic movie Wall Street I as well as many in my generation have been wooed by the sirens of success.  I have noticed that many gay men without the familial support for this lifestyle and disenchanted with finding meaningful long term relationships have turned all their energies and attention to their careers.  But a laptop cannot keep you warm at night nor console you when the stress and strains of one's daily routine becomes unbearable.

I often wonder as to the price of professional accomplishments over personal and whether it is too much to pay.  Is it true that success is nothing without someone who cares about you to share it with?  And what if it is and you are unable to find him?  Then what do you do?



 

Adolescent Memories

We all have adolescent memories, whether it was a crush on the Captain of the Football Team or your first kiss on or before Prom Night, the first girlfriend or boyfriend and the first time we realized that we weren't kids anymore and growing up meant more than "dressing up" but actually taking control of our lives and making the tough decisions.

Somewhere along the path to manhood the romance in me died. Maybe it was never there to begin with or just that I came into the shocking realization after my first indepth relationship that the fantasy man that I created in my head during my adolescence was just that - a fantasy. A figment of my imagination of my heart tricking my mind into believing all those sappy love stories I saw on television and read during a Barbara Cartland phase of the one person that I would fall head over heals in love with and we would conquer all odds and ride off into the sunset together.

But reality is not imagination or fantasy and you learn quickly that the dreams of your youth are just that - dreams. And the older you get the further these dreams slip away as you are no longer caught up in the romance of a relationship especially when its shiny and new and you brace yourself for the day that it will end and you will be heartbroken. 

I often thought that women believed that only gay men were sensitive, this is a fallacy as ALL men have a sensitive side to them - hell, thats what makes us all human. And yes, men cry too in the dark. The fight for love has been replaced with the fight to not be jaded, to treat each new person that comes into your life and who you date as a "new person" and not hold them responsible for the hurt of your past. As someone once said to me "everyone has baggage and those who don't haven't been anywhere!"

My full set of past luggage comes designer labeled in my memories and dreams that somewhere out there is that guy who will knock me not off my feet but off my ass and reduce all those who came before him to mere auditions leading up the Grand Opening and all that is required of me is to keep working on ME and to keep believing that he is out there and that I will find him and just like in the romances of my youth - we will ride off into the sunset together.

I'll Rise