3 Reasons to Love January

1. Professional golf starts up on TV again! (I am aware that this could be a reason why I can't find a BF... I have never met another gay guy who gets into golf as much as I do.) Anthony Kim is such a cutie pie, too.

2. Professional tennis starts again! The Australian Open is probably my favorite of the Grand Slams. I get to see Australia, one of my favorite places on earth, on TV and it's nice to see that it's summer somewhere on this planet while it's freezing cold here in NY. And I relish staying up until 3am to watch the matches live.

3. The Golden Globes are tonight! I love movie award season for the sheer pageantry of it all. After seeing Slumdog Millionaire yesterday in Chelsea with Ed, I now know why people have been hyping it up and why it will win Best Movie at the Oscars. Revolutionary Road might be more in line with the high-minded tastes of the Academy voters, but hey, if Shakespeare in Love can win Best Picture, Slumdog can as well.

Hangin' With Mom and Dad

Tonight I finally watched this documentary on the Korean War that I had been meaning to see for some time. Mom, Dad and I made it a night with microwave popcorn, pillows and peaches. (I am not trying to be alliteratively cute here--I really did have some canned peaches to balance the saltiness of the popcorn.) Anyway, I knew what to expect before the DVD went on--Mom was going to tell me all of her war stories, and Dad's too, as if I had never heard them before. Tonight I didn't mind. I let her bask in her storytelling.

About how she as a young teenager escaped from the Communist North under gunfire to reach the safety of the South; how she had been separated from her mother for more than three days and how against all odds they reunited by the train tracks.

How my father had been imprisoned in the South, charged with being a North Korean spy; how a Japanese soldier with the U.N. helped uncover evidence to prove that he was a civilian; how he wrote letters on old newsprint to American schools asking for an academic scholarship.

The documentary wasn't the most stimulating. But that didn't stop me from feeling.

Life is mysterious; life is miraculous.

My Heart is Breaking

Here I am living far away in New York, and I am weary of the Mideast conflict that never seems to end. But in Gaza it has finally ended for many. In the loss of homes, schools, places of worship. And of course, life. As a human being and a citizen of this world, I feel it is incumbent at the very least to try to understand the conflict. But of course I cannot, much in the way I don't understand all the animosity between the Indians and Pakistanis, and the British and the Irish, and the Spaniards and the Basques. Is there any point in trying to understand when those closest to the conflict say to me, "Oh, just stay out of our business, you'll never understand." Is that what we're supposed to do? Just mind our own business? Watch on helplessly as millions of lives get displaced and destroyed? Is death the only solution to discord?

Embarrassed Again To Be an American

So we're finally closing Guantanamo. After more than six years. And now we're asking the rest of the world to offer asylum to prisoners we said were so dangerous that they couldn't be released, or tried in a court of law. For six years. I don't know if this amounts to chutzpah, or stupidity, or arrogance. It's certainly unfathomable. There very well may have been dangerous people imprisoned at Guantanamo. On that point I'm in no position to debate. But for America to convey to the world that these people were the worst of the terrorists out there, and then demand of Australia and Europe to take them in, give them housing, jobs, health insurance and citizenship, and then pretend that the last six years never happened is more than criminal. It's illogical. It's immoral.

Questions

This year I am determined to figure out the answers to some important questions. Namely: who? what? when? where? and why? As in, who am I going to tell about my HIV status? What exactly am I going to divulge? When, where and why is this information being shared?

Though I often tell myself that I really don't need another person in my life, the truth is I have been wanting to get married since I was 25. I have had two boyfriends, but this was before I was HIV+. Since becoming poz, not a single guy has been brave enough (or honest enough) to take me on as I am. In the five years I've been in NYC, I have found myself usually telling someone I like about my status on the second date. I can honestly say I have never had a third date with a guy in over five years. This year, I am determined to get to a third date. So perhaps the most important question, the one I omitted above, is HOW?

I have been given a dazzling array of advice over the years, everything from "Tell him right away" to "tell him after sex the first time" to "tell him only after you are officially dating". Most people say the timing should be somewhere between "right away" and "before sex". But frankly, it's terrible advice. I can't remember the last guy I told about my status who wanted to have sex with me, and I intend to have sex again before I die. I am leaning toward "after sex the first time" (but taking care to have safe sex). Of course, I'm not sure if that's quite honorable either.

Of the guys I have told about my status before there was any sex, they all invariably exude gratitude. Which is nothing more than a cheap mask of relief. Whew. Glad I avoided this guy with HIV. For once, it would be nice if a guy could just take my hand and tell me that it's OK. That everything will be all right. That did happen once. Over five years ago. But he lived in Hawaii, and amazingly, we still communicate from time to time and I even went to visit him there once for 10 days during which time I thought that was the happiest I would ever be in my life. I would like to feel that happiness again. The question is how. And who? And what, and when, and where? What I don't want to ask is "why" anymore.

Answering the Challenge to Write a Happy Post

Psh... one of my readers Luuworld challenged me to write a happy post, as if I couldn't write a happy post. Well, here it is. First off, today Dad was discharged from the hospital. But not before waiting 9 hours for all the insurance paper work to clear. In the meantime, I was wanting to eat a little more than the hospital food. So I crossed the street and went to the corner diner that I had been wanting to see for some time. I absolutely love, love, love diners. They are cozy, warm and unpretentious. The waitresses call you "honey". The cooks look like they learned how to cook in the military. The customers have tired, but honest, faces.

I fell in love with diners back in my college days in Los Angeles. I didn't go to many diners when I was in California; I learned to appreciate them on the many road trips I took, especially the ones where I would drive cross country from California to New York. They all look different. They all feel the same. They make me feel happy. Like I'm really welcome and will always have a place to stay. Walking into the diner across the street from the hospital, all those old feelings of happiness came back. I took my time looking at the menu. I took in my surroundings and breathed a sigh of relief. It felt good to be out of the hospital. It felt like I was on a road trip. Maybe I even felt a bit young again. Wait a minute, I am young, damn it. I'm only 39, and I'm sure I don't look older than 30.

OK, so this post isn't exactly brimming with heart-pounding happiness. Actually, I had a dream last night that DID make me supremely happy. I almost forgot about it, the day was so hectic. I was with two Asian guys that I had never seen before. From the way we were interacting, I knew that one of them was a very good friend. The other was a guy that I was totally infatuated with. We were all getting on a train. Going somewere, I don't know where. But it felt so real. So fresh. So exciting. I wish I could have that dream again tonight to see where we ended up.

Five Years Gone By

Today I celebrate five years since my return to New York. To think, five years ago to the day I was sitting in a holding cell in police headquarters in Seoul, having been informed the day before that I was HIV+; then handcuffed; then driven to the airport; then begging the immigration official to remove my handcuffs before he escorted me onto the airplane. What an endless New Year's Day that was. I was put on the plane early in the morning and then I crossed the International Date Line, so it was still the morning of January 1, 2004 when my plane touched down in New York. What memories.

Last night, New Year's Eve, I sat in a chair in a hospital with Dad. Old episodes of Law and Order were on. The really old ones. My favorite ones. The ones starring Sam Waterston as the District Attorney. I loved his character. New Year's came and went very quietly. Literally.

This morning my mind reflexively started to contemplate the possibilities of new beginnings. Clean beginnings. Such is the extent to which Western minds have been brainwashed into thinking certain things on certain dates. Well, this year started with no clean beginnings. This year started with me collecting my father's feces sample for the nurse. Normally she would have done it, but since I was there, would I mind so terribly doing it for her? As I sat there in the bathroom doing what I needed to do with the sample specimens, I burst out laughing. Thinking about all the times my parents said they changed my smelly diapers. How they didn't mind since it was their own child, their own flesh and blood. I can't say I felt the same exact emotions (I don't think children love their parents in the way that parents love their children), but it was not such a terrible ordeal. Just the realization that on certain days, we all literally deal with shit.

And contemplate assisted suicide. I never really understood what that was all about. Why the infamous Dr. Kevorkian went to jail to defend his practice of assisting terminally ill patients end their lives. After two weeks of visiting the geriatric ward, I got a very unpleasant glimpse into the future. I think growing old is not a pleasant prospect. I think the physical pains do not compare to growing irrelevant. The humiliation. The degradation. I know that the nurses on the floor are tired and overworked, but I did not see a whole lot of love or sympathy for these old people in their care, some of whom never had visitors. As I get older, I can see myself turning more and more into my mother and father. God willing, I will get to end up old and gray in a hospital bed. I just won't have any son sitting by my side. Watching old episodes of Law and Order. Taking care of me. The greatest problems of this world have no technological solutions. No one will ever patent a machine that can mend a broken heart.