a break from the retrospect to pull it all together. maybe that's what i need. i was fortunate enough to catch a friend from home on Skype this morning and feel a little soothed. amazing how that can happen. you feel so lost and adrift in everything swarming around you and sometimes all it takes is one person reaching out through the noise and shaking you awake. maybe i've been feeling alone. it happens. it was actually a conversation with Foxie in rl time that got me thinking about everything. that ever happen? your mind begins shifting the puzzle pieces and working them around, but the picture is still a nonsensical disarray of colour and crap, then someone just walks up, puts their finger on one piece, makes one move and suddenly it all makes sense. the realisation is an audible click. we were talking about the fact that we tend to create distance from anything that can be perceived as negative. he does this intentionally, as not to be hindered by the tiny boxes the world is so eager to put us in. i do this subconsciously, because i suffer from "i just want everyone to love me" disease. i've been trying to hold it all together for months now, feeling all the while that my health was slipping violently away. i didn't speak up because i was in denial mostly. not wanting to believe that the past could return and make itself so vividly known. so real. i hate you, past. i am happy to know that it's not cancer. but am scared about all of these new possibilities before us. the tumours are too large and in too close proximity to the optic nerve to be removed through the nose in a simple procedure. if they have to go in, it will be full on neuro-surgery. This terrifies me. then again, maybe they'll knick something and i'll wake up with the ability to throw a 100mph fastball. that would be cool. i am hoping that we can go another route though…the other route being radiation. shrink them down, get them to stop functioning, secreting prolactin. too much info sport? well you're in MY head…be careful…it's messy and vulgar and heart breakingly splendiferous. so my little blurb yesterday. i think i just wanted to be real. to admit my weakness, to open myself up and let people in to love me. for so long i've operated under the guise that in order to be love one must offer up some sort of perfection. which is so funny, because i am so far from perfect in so many ways. clever trick braaaaain. i guess, what i'm saying is that i want to start owning who i am, who i really am. the person behind the person who has made bold choices and done things that maybe on paper sound admirable. the person who is a little more fucked up and insecure and afraid. i want to be that person. and be ok with it. and put it out there into the world and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start bei…….wait. that's not where i was going. but you know what i mean. here's the thing. i have a daughter now. and i don't want her to learn the same lessons that i did. i don't want her to feel rejected for thinking outside of the box and maybe even creating her homestead there. i am such a religious person. it's not even funny. i believe in God with every fibre of my being. I see him present in everything, all around me, all the time. I feel him work through our good deeds, our humour and our love. i grew up in the church and dedicated most of my life to service. when they found out i was gay, it was like i was a leper. nobody wanted anything to do with me. at that young age….i felt that God had rejected me. so i spent my life in solitude, hid my relationship with him. showed my love and gratitude by volunteering where i could, teaching abroad, etc. i kept it to myself. i can see now how deeply that feeling of rejection has carved a hole in my life. but i'm also thankful. because i also see how far off base we are in professing our love for him. The only place God exists is in the relationship, and the only way to honour him, is to love. and i'll stop ranting now….i probably just turned half of you off. But kind of feel like standing up in the back of a Gay Christians anonymous meeting and screaming MY NAME IS MANDY! I AM GAY, AND I LOVE CHRIST! as if that will somehow help me reclaim that relationship….ha…ok where was i….oh yes. so this is my experience with boxes and labels and rejection. it carried over into adulthood. when i told my parents i was getting married…they gave me an ultimatum. they told me that they could handle dating, but marriage and family they could not. (highly conservative and catholic) they told me to come home, and if i did not i would lose everything. they thought they could buy me. i could never walk away from jess and the monkey. i haven't spoken to them in a year. i find it so sad. i still email them…i've rang a few times. i won't stop loving them. even if they can't tell me the same. so yes….rejection is a big theme in my life right now. and it's all based on perceptions about who i am. which has created fear. which has silenced me from being honest and open and letting people aaaaall the way in. this blog, this moment, this blurb, this rant….is all about me reclaiming my life. i'm tired of being afraid of what people think. i'm tired of worrying that if i say or do the wrong thing, i will be rejected. i'm tired of keeping quiet when i want to speak up, and hiding behind the more pleasant and acceptable parts of who i am.
right. so, if your'e still reading this…you know a whole hell of a lot about me now. scary, liberating. neat.
i am going to make tea and read. and not clean up the house. and not worry anymore about anything other than my health, my family, friends, genuine honesty, goodness, love, humour and burritos.
good day.
I am sitting here. 
Beneath a tree on the east lawn of the Taj Mahal. I arrived when the gates opened and have spent most of my day exploring the grounds. I am speechless, in awe. I have no way to articulate how i am feeling and i feel completely inadequate at making any sense of this. All I can say is that i felt caught, swept up, in this momentum of bodies rushing toward the gates of the Taj. The velocity of hands and arms and legs made it easy for most people to ignore the throngs of beggars lining the street which travels directly to the entrance. but every so often my eyes would fix on a particular scene and i felt transfixed. a small child bathing in a pool of filthy water. an old man sleeping beneath the unreliable shade of a weathered canopy. emaciated dogs roaming about, looking for scraps of food, entire families doing the same. elephants, camel taxis, donkeys, rickshaws. all if it pushing and pulling at the senses, shoving the shoulders of my being, meeting me directly in the eye and waiting for my next move. and then there we were, just when i felt ready to scream at the invasive nature of all of it, we stood before the main gates and moved inside where all of the chaos came screaming to a halt. from the main gate you are deposited into a plaza surrounded by two more gates. One to the south and one to the north. One gate for royalty and the other for…me. I took off my shoes and climbed through the entryway. i was deposited on a platform which faced a linear reflection pool. surrounded by gardens and footpaths, which lead right up to the Taj. 
There she was. glimmering in the early morning light. absorbing the warm hues of summer and casting them about. We were not meant to withstand such beauty. My body was pulled, lead to her feet. and i climbed obediently the steps before me. a mausoleum so full of life. a tribute of his undying love. their tombs in the centre of the room. i sat for almost an hour. listening to their voices bounce off of her walls and climb out through the clerestory. i am in love. love. love. love. love. Behind the Taj lies the yamuna river. and beyond that the banks in which Shah Jahan meant to erect 'The Black Taj'. you can still see the foundations and irrigations ditches of the project which were never finished. There is so much detail that a photograph cannot relay. and so i spent hours wandering around just observing, staring at all of it. the inlay work of the pietra dura, the incised painting of the ceiling, spandrel detail, the jail screen carvings which surround the cenotaphs inside of the tomb. the calligraphy of the outer pishtaq. I asked krish what they do when they need to replace or repair the Taj and he told me that the artisans who originally built it were under strict government contract not to work on another project, infact…the artisans today who work on the taj are direct descendants of those same men. I was fortunate enough to visit their workshop and watch them in action. sent my parents a marble chopping block with an floral inlay, the same stones used throughout the taj. 
Picked up a statue of Saraswati, the hindu goddess of education and music for Jess. Picked up a little elephant for Kaila. I wandered back here, to watch the sun set over the Yamuna River, to glimpse the Taj one last time before heading to Jaipur through the backroads of Rajasthan.
Posted by
The Holy Goof
7:20 PM
Loaded up into the car with Krish. A friend of Ravis, he's heading to Agra and on to Jaipur. Following a bus load of tourists along the golden triangle to give tours. He offered me a ride. I was eternally grateful as this meant that i could put off the train just a little bit longer. So I've been hearing about the Golden Triangle since I arrived. Every Backpacker has trekked it. In fact, most of the holiday packages in India these days are designed around it, which seems silly to me. A whole bloody country to explore and we pay someone to cart us inside the same old tired lines. weird. The road to the Agra from Delhi is a holy road said to cleanse the soul and awaken the mind. I felt awake, i also felt anything but cleansed. with every single mile, my heart broke. 
Imagine the most staggeringly horrific living conditions you can think of, then string them together in a 200km chronology of apathy and indifference. It was a confronting scene that left me speechless and angry and feeling powerless. by the time we arrived in agra i was in no position to appreciate the Taj and so left it for the morning. i am in my room now. the power is going in and out. i should get some sleep before tomorrow…tomorrow i will walk the 11km trail into the city and up to the gates of the Taj Mahal. I've been waiting for this moment, i can't wait to lay my eyes upon her. place my hands against her cool stones. is this real?
Went out last night with a couple of backpackers i met at India Gate. Ravi is from London, but was born in Udaipur. Phil is from London as well. We went to this club in the old cbd. it's where most of the gay clubs live tucked away from the watchful gaze of hindustan. Homosexuality was still illegal when I arrived in India. I'm witnessing a minor revolution. Nobody dares to out themselves just yet. This will take time. So there i was in an indian discotheque. I have never seen so much moose knuckle in my life. seriously, it was a smorgasbord of sweaty men in tight pants gyrating their intentions, sending out sexual innuendo in calisthenic morse code. I heard such winners as "Your boobs is good" and my personal favourite "I am very good at making the sex inside of you!" after a few drinks the ice melted and i relaxed a bit. I actually had fun. I couldn't stop laughing at the absolute absurdity of it. looking over my shoulder for someone to share this with. no one. laughing even more. we danced until our shoes came off and danced some more and then walked home as the sun came up over the sagging horizon of old delhi. I really like Ravi. He's back in India to connect with his family from who he is mostly estranged. He is fixated on knowing his families history. i am fixated on forgetting mine. the world and it's opposites. we met for lunch earlier and decided to take his car out to Mathura. The drive took a couple of hours and we talked mostly about his girlfriend, california, pink floyd and how much cooler charles bukowski was before he started apologising for everything. 
Mathura was beautiful. the land of krishna. we wandered through Janambhoomi, the temple which was erected at the site of krishnas birth. I was grateful to escape the sun and spent maybe a little too long sitting inside taking in the celestial, the artwork, the breeze. i felt peace there. i'm not sure why. it's a feeling that has become familiar while traveling. in a chronology of ever changing landscapes and new surroundings one finds themselves suddenly in a place that feels like home. it's happened before, it happened in the basilica de guadalupe of mexico city and the inner keep at Beaugency in France. Ravi came and tapped on my shoulder because they were closing the place up for the afternoon. we moved through the swarm of beggars gathered outside and headed to this cafe on the road back to delhi. Ravis hindi is dodgy and we struggled to communicate with the staff. everything was fine, we were eating our lunch and the waiter kept coming over to ask if we were ok, and not knowing what else to do we said it's great, thank you. he looked puzzled so i gave him the international symbol of 'this is awesome'. a thumbs up. his face lit up in recognition and he walked away. a moment later he returned with a soda bottle and set it down. I smiled and thought perhaps it was customary i don't know, so i drank it. he returned again and asked if we were ok, again i gave him the thumbs up. same thing, he came back with another soda bottle. this happened several more times before we put it all together….ready for it?
Connaught place is hailed as the picadilly circus of India. The modern shopping district in it's up and coming CBD. I thought this would be a good place to indoctrinate myself. To adjust and acclimate slowly. to cling to the last comforts of the western world before leaping off into the great unknown. boy was i wrong. the taxi stopped infront of a crumbling edifice, the impression of a building. sleeping dogs and men adorning the entryway. the night watchmen kicked one of them and he groaned before rolling away. "this can't be…."
the driver emerged shouldering my heavy blue backpack. the bag swallowed up his small frame. he didn't even 'umph' when he put it on. "i carry for you, up" "thanks but is this…this is?" "yes park 55, nice hotel! nice" "shit" i climbed five flights of stairs, stepped over piles of rubbish, bricks, an elderly man, and arrived at the door of the hotel. the driver set down my bag and i tipped him. i felt a pang of anxiety as he disappeared. i tried not to show my shock or horror at the condition of the place. clearly not the place featured in the pictures on it's website, by no stretch of the imagination. there were a couple of men, porters, sleeping on mats on the floor in the lobby, and i suppose the manger of the place on the small sagging couch. he rose, scratched at his face. coughed, checked me in and handed me a skeleton key. i climbed two more flights of stairs, my heart sinking lower and lower as we ascended. i closed the door behind me and cried. i'm not sure where the tears came from or why it became impossible to resist them, but i surrendered myself wholly and cried myself to sleep. i passed out fully clothed, ontop of the mattress.
I woke at 3am this morning. My internal clock is fucked. My watch disappeared somewhere between the airport and the hotel. i loved that watch. i had no way of knowing what time it was. i flipped on the light in the bathroom. it didn't respond. i heard a hissing and buzzing from the socket, then a pop. great. i rubbed at my eyes in the vague darkness and stumbled to the shower. a bucket and a scrub brush. was i meant to….? i filled the bucket with hot water and soap and bathed quickly. i was dressed. i'd killed a whole 15 minutes. i sat on the edge of the bed thinking of jessy. i missed her. i missed everything about her. the way her voice drowns out everything and brings me back home. the warmth and affection of her words, her laughter, her love. i'm not really sure how i will go about this, how i will tell her the truth and face losing her. but i know that i must. The revelation will change everything. it will rip quite suddenly the safety net from beneath me. no more hiding. it is the last vestige of armour. what happens after that is both terrifying and exciting. with no connection to the outside world i am free. truly free to disappear, to do what i will with what i have. to find out what i'm made of. to figure out if that voice inside of me knows what the fuck it is talking about. i rolled this around in my mind and absorbed the boisterous clamour of bottles being pushed in a cart beneath my window. it is in perfect harmony with the rest of delhi. keeping a sharp steady rhythm with the pigeon cooing outside my window, the dogs barking in the distance, the two men shouting in climactic tones downstairs. the high pitched shriek of maverick rickshaws, this is old delhis song…… song…… music…… jessy.
Posted by
The Holy Goof
6:10 PM
My head rested heavily on my hand as i stared out of the window lost in a never ending deluge of thought. The black outside was suddenly streaked with silvery whisps of cloud, and the distant glow of lights. a city emerged. new delhi. as we descended toward the landing my anxieties became very real. I was about to land in India at 2am with nothing but an address for a hotel i'd booked on the internet. Wtf. I grew quiet, almost catatonic. Throwing my bag over my shoulder and moving through the crowd as if i knew where i was going. The truth was, i was just following the crowd. Still. after all of these years. I found myself pushed through customs and spit out onto the sidewalk amidst noise and traffic and the violent sour heat of an indian metropolis. i looked around for a ride and found cab. i held the piece of paper in my hand feebly trying to communicate my desire. Connaught Place, park 55? hum…are you? a taxi? can i get a ride?" What followed is something that would take months for me to master. it is a yes, that looks and feels like a no. it is a yes that is communicated by tossing ones head to the side in the direction of no and then bobbing it emphatically back and forth. "Yes, Yes, Connaught place 500 rupee." this worked out to roughly 20 bucks. "Sure, Fine" he lead me through the parking lot, which is a generous term for a large field with thousands of taxis, cars, motorcycles and auto rickshaws smashed into one another with seemingly no way out except honking, screaming and the grace of God. i loaded into his car and we pulled on to the motor way and headed for the CBD. My senses exploded with the sights and sounds and movement of Delhi. I'd lived in developing nations before, so the poverty was not necessarily a shock, but still, no matter the preparation, you can't help but be overwhelmed by the shear volume of it. It's aggressive and confronting and heartbreaking. once stopped the car was suddenly swarmed by children pushing their hands into the window and asking for money. pointing to open wounds on their arms and legs. How could anyone resist? i floated between complete and total empathy for their suffering and admiration for their genius. i'm crap at this part. i'm just crap at it. but the only way to survive is to turn off. to focus your eyes forward, to not speak, not engage and not encourage. it feels heartless at first, but then just watch. watch as a westerner in this situation empowers themselves for the first time. i still haven't mastered this either. i still feel like a schmuck. but i understand all too well how dangerous it is not to play by these rules. so the traffic. traffic in india. one of my favourite things in the whole world. an alice in wonderland of obscenely risible characters and props. a brand new mercedes next to an ox cart, next to a bike, next to a motorcycle with six people clinging to it from all sides, next to an elephant. all moving in the same direction, all oblivious to the hilarity in any of it. This is perfectly normal. This is india. the past and the present violently collide creating a vortex in time where the most advanced technology in the world exists in harmony with the most primitive. We sat, arrested by the chaos of cars and noise and i watched all of it, the spectator of a tragic comedy that's been going on for centuries. i watched the reflection of the cab in the beautifully paned glass of a sky scraper that was being built, it's frame festooned with ladders of hand made bamboo and tethered with old rags. it's workers sleeping on mats at the site, bathing in the run off gathered in murky pools. i am so far from home. If anything struck me at that moment, it was this. This is the first time i have gone, without a plan, without a deadline, without knowing anything. just gone. I am so fucking far away from home.
It is difficult not to bounce like a playful little white dot along the chronology of this story. I do have to stop myself and remember that the details, every single one of them, matter. They are what set the ball in motion and made everything happen the way it did. I can't imagine that I would have taken such a keen interest in Second Life had certain key elements not universally collided creating the perfect storm. Let me explain. For over a year i was receiving treatment for ovarian Cancer which included heavy doses of chemo therapy and a slue of other toxic drugs. During that time, it was discovered that i also had pituitary tumours forming in the brain. My health collapsed inward. First to go was the body. I stopped surfing, stopped running, stopped moving. Stopped going out. Stopped trying. I am not lance armstrong. there was no glory or no beauty in my fight with cancer. It was a gruesome and hideous struggle each day. most days i lost. after my body went, my mind followed. i slipped deep into emotional despair and depression. i began pushing my friends away. I'd broken up with my girlfriend of 6 years. I think, looking back…i'd convinced myself that i was going to die. there was a small change of plan. i did not die. but i did exist in this purgatory for the living. i started shopping late at night when everyone else was at home safe and sound in bed, i ignored calls from friends and family. i even ignored the doorbell. Enter Second life. I think for me it was a way to reach out. a way to connect to the living. but i didn't want to connect as me. i didn't like me. i didn't even know who i was anymore. so i became this fiction. this ideal. I had enough friction in my real life, so i avoided creating any of it in second life. Rather than own my sexuality and face the occasional confrontation about it, i subverted it entirely by making my avatar a male who was free to flirt and date and love women without the constant rolling commentary. (As an aside to any males reading this…implied threesomes, sexual innuendo, commentary about watching, not funny. it wasn't funny the first time we heard it, and it certainly isn't funny the 5,000th. Unless you are PT, because he blushes when it's even approached.) So yes, that's not an excuse or a justification, just the chronology of thought. I didn't really ever think i'd make life long friends in SL. i'd never participated in virtual environments or made online friends before so i had no idea what i was in for. if i knew then what i know now…i would have approached the entire thing differently (i'll address gender role play etiquette in another blog, promise) So at first, i very playfully worked my way through Second Life. That is a nice way to say that I was a man whore. i think i was just drunk on people. on the beauty of having so many individuals at my finger tips. so many stories and lives and philosophies and passions to discover. i fell in love with making people feel good. because i felt so bad. it took my mind off of all of the things i was going through. it was a complete and total escape from reality. and i loved it. Enter jessy. messy and complicated. I loved Jessy from the moment i first heard her laugh. i froze in place as the sound transfixed me. We chatted after one of her shows. no flirting just talking. our first conversation lasted for seven hours. with one burrito break. She stirred something inside of me that had been dormant for years. since before all of the doctors and hospitals and iv's and endless barrage of pills. She made me feel alive. she woke me up. I started reconnecting to my rl. i started fighting back. i let my friends and family in. i laughed more. i talked more. i hoped more. everyone commented on the change. nobody knew where it came from. problem. I wanted to tell her everything. i wanted to shout my affection and adoration from the rooftop. but how to even begin merging real life with second life when pretty much everything i brought into this virtual reality wasn't real. I was in love with a woman who thought i was a man. wtf. how did this happen? how did i let this happen? what kind of person could do this?
the day i asked myself that question everything changed. everything. i began focusing on getting my rl on track. when i got my clean bill of health, i did not wait. i didn't hesitate a moment. i chased down my dream with a vengeance. the next night i put my 4runner on craigslist along with all of my furniture. the only things i held on to were photographs, journals, books, a guitar, an old typewriter i'd restored. that's it. Whatever clothing didn't fit into my backpack was donated. I gave away my espresso machine, my pots and pans, my lamps and art and rugs and life. it was gone. i stood on the plateau of all of this change, determined to go and leave it behind, second life included. i didn't know how i'd managed to lie to and hurt so many people but i knew it had to stop. i knew it was wrong. and i hated that part of myself. initially i figured i'd just go. i'd go to india and teach and forget about all of it. i'd just walk away. i had every intention of doing that. i was in frankfurt, in the airport waiting for my flight. i was watching this couple say goodbye to one another. they held each other so tightly, so close as the entire world slipped away behind them. they both cried as they clung to one another. how difficult it was to say goodbye, how hard to accept the journey. and that was with all of their knowing. preparation. truth.
disappearing would crush jessy. it would haunt her and leave her wondering. questioning, doubting. maybe even judging herself. i couldn't do it. leaving was not right either. going without explanation would be just as painful as lying. that's when i knew. i would have to tell her the truth. i would have to swallow everything and face what i'd done. it was right. it was fair. she would hate me, and hurl every hurtful word in the book at me, she would cry and i would have to endure the echo of that pain. but it would be nothing in comparison to hers. i owed her this. i had to.
when i arrived in delhi i was consumed by all of it. by the overwhelming change. by the guilt, by the nerves. by the smell. seriously…smelly. I worked my way down to jaipur determined to tell her once i hit my arrival. below are some of my journal excerpts from that journey.
Rumpled Trousers
