I’m full of random thoughts . . .

A few days ago I sat down to a bowl of raisin bran. At the very first bite I noticed that the milk was a particularly creamy white, a deep, thick white which you might see on a television commercial, generously sprinkled with fuzzy red raspberries. I ate one bite, then another—rich, smooth and delicious. I knew without a doubt this milk was not the skim milk the label claimed. I enjoyed the rest of my cereal, and then I went to the refrigerator, grabbed the carton of milk, and poured its contents down the drain. I don’t drink whole milk.

Yesterday after work I walked into the gym locker room. A handsome young man (perhaps 20) had just finished his workout and was getting undressed for a shower. Imagine my luck! He was directly beside my locker and so we were in each other’s way. Just before he pulled down his gym shorts he asked, “Am I in your way?” I answered, “No, not at all,” after which he pulled down his underwear and there directly in front of my face as I bent down to put my things into my locker was his beautiful, slightly tanned, slightly hairy ass. Instantly overcome, I looked beyond the boy to see that another young man (with an enormous abdominal girth and a collection of tattoos covering much of his upper body) was also looking at the naked young man (even though I know the tattooed man is married and quite straight). I wasn’t surprised—even the straight men can’t resist catching a glimpse of such a spectacle. The fortuitous view of a beautiful young body completely befuddled me. I didn’t know where to look, unable to behave with appropriate indifference. My eyes darted from the boy’s ass to random points around the room, as if someone had launched a rubber ball in a small room to bounce from wall to wall until inertia finally brought it to rest. I got control of myself after the boy walked into the shower and I was left to put on my gym clothes.

I’ve been working at my new job for a month now. I think I like it. I’ll be content with it, for at least a while.

There’s a guy at a table nearby with a t-shirt that reads, “excellent growth potential.” Am I being too … well, hyper-sexualized to think that this is a sexual reference?

It’s been a long time since I’ve bought much music. But a few weeks ago I bought some symphonies of Virgil Thomson, the 3rd symphony of Copland, and some choral works and orchestrated songs of Zemlinsky. The Zemlinsky is quite wonderful. He’s so under appreciated. I shouldn’t have been surprised, because a while back I bought recordings of some of his symphonies and they were also wonderful. The choral pieces have been running through my mind now for weeks, which is always an indication that they’ve struck a special chord with me. The other night I was in the shower, the hot water falling on my head and back as I buried my face in my hands, rubbed my eyes deeply, and let the music play in my head. Nothing else matters at moments like that.

I was in my gym locker room a few days ago (a lot seems to happen in the locker room) and a few guys were talking about the accuracy of the scales. I wondered about it myself. I seem to be heavier than I ought to be. One rather heavy young man was speculating that the scales seemed to be 25 to 30 pounds too light (yes, pounds), while another thought they were 15 pounds too heavy. I stepped onto the scales, weighed myself, and chimed into the matter, wondering if they were perhaps be 3 or 4 pounds too heavy. Finally, one guy, without a trace of irony in his voice, said he believed that the heavier the person was, the more inaccurate the scales were. There was silence for a moment while everyone pondered the implication of this, and then the heavy guy shouted, “That’s no comfort.” Hehe

I’ve succumbed to the United Way campaign and am now giving a (tiny) amount each pay period. I think its impact on others is negligible, but it does give my conscience a free pass to deny other, more deserving supplicants.

Lots of guys at my gym greet each other by knocking their fists together. It seems silly, the forced bravado, the very narrowly circumscribed appropriateness of it, the overt ritualism, but I’ve grown accustomed to it. One thing occurred to me the other day, though—you won’t see gays every doing that. It’s so . . . straight.

Yesterday I had a meeting with my manager. We’re supposed to meet weekly while I’m in my training or probationary period, to monitor my progress, to mentor me, etc. It’s silly, but we do it. It’s silly to me, but she takes it quite seriously. All things by the book, for her, which I understand. She’s a very nice person. I could go on, but what I especially like about her is her voice, her tone, her manner of speaking. I sit and listen to her talk quietly about procedures and issues in her characteristically serious but pleasant tone, and the sounds emanating from her mouth flow over me until I get goose bumps on the top of my head. The hair raises as an animal’s fur might stand up when hearing its master’s voice from a distance. Do others get this sensation, I wonder. It’s almost orgasmic. I’ve gotten this sensation at times ever since I’ve been a kid. It’s as if the pleasant words become meditation tones transporting me into a transcendental state, the “om” of my shop-talking boss.

Proust says that often we love those who are present in our lives; conversely, our love dies after we’ve been separated for a while. Nothing too strange about that. “I no longer value her now because for a certain time past I have ceased to see her. . . Having ceased to see her, I had ceased to love her.” From this observation he makes an interesting inference. He thinks we love ourselves and life for the same reason, so that if we could be separated from ourselves, we might not love life and ourselves as much. “Our love of life is only an old liaison of which we do not know how to rid ourselves. Its strength lies in its permanence. But death which severs it will cure us of the desire for immortality.”

Here’s another Proust gem. “For optimism is the philosophy of the past. The events that have occurred being, among all those that were possible, the only ones which we have known, the harm that they have caused seems to us inevitable, and we give them the credit for the slight amount of good that they could not help bringing with them, for we imagine that without them it would not have occurred.”