Two Things About Me

While I could come up with a reasonable short list, I could never name a single favorite book or movie. My list of favorite songs would be longer but manageable. Still, it would be an unranked list with no number one. However, for whatever reason, I can easily name my favorite painting and poem. They are:

Sailors and Floosies, Paul Cadmus, 1938

Poem (Lana Turner Has Collapsed), Frank O'Hara, 1964

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Time For Bed

Too tired to really blog tonight, so I'll just post the rather unlikely song my mother would sing to us at bedtime.

The perfect lullaby, really.

My Groovy Education

Learning to read in the Seventies was weird and kind of creepy.

Like, really weird and sometimes creepily inappropriate.

It's amazing any of those of us who grew up in that decade can even look at the printed word without having some weird flashback and completely freaking out.

My Boyfriend Who Lives In Ukraine

The wbole Manti Te'o story brought to mind my erstwhile internet boyfriend, Vladimir from Ukraine. Even though Manti Te'o, like everyone who has a long-distance girlfriend no one has ever met, is "far from gay," the experience of falling in love with someone you've only met online is totally universal.

Let me take you way back to 2003... This was before Facebook and Skype. We didn't have any gay-dating blogs to give us advice. Vladimir and I courted the old-fashioned way: he answered my ad on Gay.com and we emailed each other. Unfortunately, I lost our initial email exchange, but I think it was fairly perfunctory. The email from Vladimir titled "Our great friendship" was the highpoint of our relationship. In it, he seems completely real and not at all like a scam artist trying to fleece American gays. This is, sadly, the last I heard from my Ukrainian boyfriend--I hope he didn't die of the cancer.

FYI: While I have highlighted some of my favorite passages, this email including the picture is exactly as I received it, complete and unedited.

From: Knight Lance vk452@uzhe.net
Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 23:02:34 +0400
To: cjhogan
Subject: Our great friendship!

Dearest Chris,

Thank you very much for interesting reply. I am glad that we understand each other, although many miles divide us. I wish I could communicate with you "Live"!

Unfortunately it is impossible for me to use either chat-rooms or messengers here, that's why I try to write you more detailed every time. Because I have a lot to tell you about me, but my resources are limited so I can't visit the Internet access more often! However I am very glad that we are in touch and our friendship develops.

I also would like if you send me something special: your autograph or postcard with your hand-written words, because I want to keep it close to me, to carry it with me and to feel your presence in my life constantly!

As for me I have also found something very special to send for you. It will be surprise! As soon as I'll save enough for postage I'll mail this small souvenir of mine to you immediately! But it's a bit of very special thing...

Here is my hostel address: Vladimir Kiriyazi, Kikvidze 30, k.37, 01103 Kiev, Ukraine. It is only very pity that the parcel goes from here to the States in 4-6 weeks, but anyway it comes one day!

Also if you only can, please send me any information about your Great Country - for instance USA Constitution. Because here we don't have a lot of information from and about America.

Everything is censored and always very negative. I realize that there are a lot of information in the World wide web, but as my access to it is limited, let's rather use Internet for our communication.

I am really glad to find you and to be able to share my thoughts and hopes with you! I never had a man to talk about my gay feelings. I am so glad that I can write you about them - there is nobody closer to me to share them. I am feeling quite lonely in this sense.

Although thanks my job I am constantly among simple and very sincere, direct and honest people - house-builders, and that's why I don't feel the loneliness deeply. But in my intimate sphere I am very undercover and in closet (not out to them at all).

I am very new to men's love. Living in Bakhmach, very small provincial town, I haven't seen any gay men. And I wanted to meet a man for physical love. However it wasn't possible.

For the first time I had sex with a guy in Kiev, after I moved here to study. He was one of the pupils in our professional school. We made love on regular basis then. But we didn't talk about it, and he had contacts with girls as well.

Than I have had several occasional moments in the army and later. But I never had a man to talk about homosexuality, it was just simple sex without any communication. All the time it was just sex. Frankly it was hurting for me - I think that I am really more emotional person who need spiritual bound more than sexual.

That's why I assume that my sexual life was poor. And now it is below zero at all. Because I don't want to repeat it that way as it was all the time before!

I don't like it that way.

I would rather prefer to meet a partner with serious attitudes for gay way of living and share my life with him. I am missing monogamous 1to1 relationship built on true deep feelings of love and devotion. I am versatile and 8" endowed (uncut) by the way, however for true love this doesn't matter as for me.

My family doesn't know anything about my preferences. In the Ukraine it is strongly notorious to be gay.

My Childhood Is For Sale On Esty

It's amazing how much of my past can be found on the Internet considering the fact that almost half my life was spent before the Internet went viral. Here was today's reminder that your memories are just a Google away.

A friend was worried about me in the cold snap in Minnesota and suggested I get a lovely knit hat. Here are a couple he found--which I agree are quite fetching.

Their 70's retro look made brought to mind the only knit hat I can honestly say really stands out in my mind. My mother had a winter hat that my siblings and I hated. It was deeply embarrassing to be seen with her when she was wearing it. I thought my friend would appreciate it, but I didn't have a picture. So, I Google "hand knit brown hat with sequins" (yes, my mother wore a hand-knit brown hat with sequins--BIG sequins!) which got me an image that came very close:

Next, I tried "brown knit hat with paillettes". See? Watching every episode of Project Runway paid off, I learned the word "paillette". Admittedly, I had to scroll down, but there it was in all its hideous glory:

Thanks Mom!

When I was ten years old, my mother and I made a date to watch Bette Midler: Ol' Red Hair Is Back together. Somehow, in the middle of Iowa in 1977, she had become a Bette Midler fan. When she saw the commercials for the television special, my mom thought this would be the perfect way to introduce me to The Divine Miss M. I have a distinct memory of sitting in our TV room when this opening number began and laughing with my mother and loving it all.

No good, self-respecting gay is supposed to give any credit to the idea that mothers make their sons gay. However... I mean, really... How unhappy could she have been when I came out?

I Made a GIF!

Now that I'm a cool blogger, I thought I'd make one of these "gifs" I hear the young folks like so much these days.

Here's me waving to you from 1986:

I didn't even have email back then. How far we've come. Well, maybe I haven't made it so far--I wanted to put some text on this gif and, after spending way too much time trying, I could not figure it out. If anyone knows how to do that, tell me in the comments.

That is all for today. CUL8R! (See, I'm hip to the internet lingo.)

Stuff To Post

I keep a file on my laptop of "Stuff To Post" which contains (not surprisingly) pictures I may want to post on Facebook. As I was doing a little computer clean-up, I noticed the folder had lots of good stuff in it that I never shared. Now that I have this fabulous new blog, I thought I'd give some a second chance.

This is one of my favorite pictures ever. It's from the amazing 1955 MoMA exhibit, The Family Of Man. Does anyone have the book? If so, please put the quote that is under this picture in the comments. I know it's great, but I can't find it anywhere.

I think I was worried about offending some of my friends on Facebook with this picture. So, I decided to post it on my completely public blog instead.

ACT-UP & Occupy Wall Street Unite! I wanted to use this as a profile pic, but the proportions didn't work.

I tried to post this picture of the dreamy Minnesota Viking, Chris Kluwe, but I had technical difficulties. ICYMI: Kluwe wrote the best pro-gay-marriage letter ever.

Here's a seed art portrait of Michele Bachmann from the Minnesota State Fair.

It turns out I have collected a lot of pictures of Michele "Crazy Eyes" Bachmann and her husband, Marcus "Ladybird" Bachmann.

A Brand New Blog

My last minute New Year's resolution was to start a blog. I know, I'm about a decade late on the whole blogging trend. I just wanted to make sure this whole "internet" thing was here to stay.

Today, I'm just planting my flag in the blogosphere--more to come tomorrow. Until then, enjoy Dusty Springfield singing "A Brand New Me".