Do you really want to hurt me?

The thing that happens when your plan does not go exactly as planned is called life. Luck favors the prepared and a little more common sense can be used by everybody. Today I have been talking to my friend about furthering the productivity of my articles and collaborating on some projects to help young gay teens with suicide prevention. It felt good to talk to somebody that cares about me being productive and want to see me venture further to have more.

I was talking to my boyfriend about the living situations and financial issues we will be in when I move back to Atlanta. Don't things always seem to switch up in the middle when those two subjects come into question or a conversation?  As usual, we had to agree to disagree about who said what and I told him it was time for us to go to bed. After four years of being together, he can't tell when he is being abrupt or sarcastic even when he text me.  

I can see a huge argument from a mile away and I have eyes in the back of my head to see crap coming from the distance. You know how when someone wants to argue and you don't argue with that person so it makes them want to argue more. They can be staring at the wall and be mad at a brick but if that wall does not answer back, it is still not their fault. Trust me, I have seen the live version of this person. 

As a relationship expert here is a little advice to all gay couples out there. Life was never created just for you to have a smooth ride. Seamless can switch from back to forth and back again but arguing with your partner about something you both are going through, will never solve a damn thing. If this is not your first rodeo together going through hard times, why not agree that you have made it through rough patches before? Why not agree you can do it again?  Agree on what you know is a fact and take it from there. Nobody gets anywhere by being mad and disrespectful to each other about a situation you both are stuck in. 

Do you really want to hurt the person you care about that much that you forget what it took for you both to get to a stable point?  Find a way to handle the problem and move on to either the next problem or the next segment of peace. 

Is this what we paid for?

Today I wrote an article for my column with the same title as this post. It is about a young gay black man that just killed himself by the name of Jay'Corey Jones. I won't go to much into it but if you want to check out the article, just click the link and you can read it in your spare time. http://www.examiner.com/article/is-this-what-we-paid-for?cid=db_articles

I wanted to write about the anger I felt toward this whole tragedy. There are many different reasons to be angry from one end of this topic to the other but there is something specific that stirred in me after hearing about this young man's death.

Struggle is struggle in my perspective. It does no matter what people are going through the pain. Prejudice is prejudice, a hate crime is a hate crime and death is death. So, as a black man, I am given the gift of understanding the power of knowing my history, of unity and of racial identity. These are concepts that must be transferred to the gay community. With so many black people that have died by the hands of racist and prejudice people, so that I could be the black man I want to be today, there is no way in hell I could kill myself if a bully was calling me any racial slur; I don't care about the consistency, frequency or my age. I just could not do it.

It needs to be the same way with the young gay people of today. In the 80's to right now, there were people who had there heads smashed in with baseball bats, lives taken and blood shed so that this generation can be the type of gay individuals they want to be. If they understood how powerful this statement is and was able to identify proudly with their sexuality, not one gay person would find a razor to slit their wrists or find a bridge to jump off of.

Unfortunately, they don't have this type of guidance and I blame no one but the parents almost 100%. If you have a gay child walking around wanting to kill themselves, does it and you have your head in the air saying that the event was unexpected, you did not do your job. Your child's death is your fault. Where do you think the gay youth should go to learn how to stand up for who they are proudly so these bullies, no matter what they say or do, can affect the esteem of your child? Who do you think they should come to? On the other hand, if you don't know how to stand up for yourself, you surely can't teach something you don't know. In other words your LGBT child is in a double trap. As a parent, if you can't teach them what they need to know, you are sending them into a den of wolves defenseless.

We need to wake up. Is this the result of all the marching and beatings that gay people took for so many years? Is this what our blood and death in the gay community paid for? There were gay people that were left in back of allies to bleed out in the street by homophobic bigots and you are telling me the youth of today can't stand up to some jive words by ignorant young peers that don't know why they are being ignorant in the first place?

If you parents can't tell you, I will tell you. You are stronger than that, you are more than that and for damn sure I care about you, if you thought no one else does. You community carries a character or strength with it and remember, that strength is within you.

Why do people want to tear down happiness?

I neither usually find myself blogging two days in a row nor writing about people that hate on others but this time I decided to take special notice about something. I was having a talk with my boyfriend, which I do love very much and he was telling me about something that happened the other night. Normally I don't address negativity in this fashion but I wanted to take this time and use his experience as an example for several positive aspects.

He was in the presence of his friends and one of his supposedly good friends started to disrespectfully talk about me. Whether what this person said was true or not, if you are somebody's friend, you should not be degrading your friend's relationship and partner. When this person started to say insulting and disrespectful things about me, my partner asked this person to stop. This person basically challenged my partner and said "What will you do if I don't?"  My partner kindly asked him to leave and locked the door.

I have been in this same situation and what we are talking about here is basic relationship common sense. The example I want to bring to light is the fact you have someone that wants to tear down what another person and I have tried to build at every turn. Obviously jealousy comes into play and not jealousy of me. This person is obviously jealous of the fact that someone stood up for me with heart and I would do the same with no questions asked. So basically, I was chosen over his friend and I am sure that this person will be back to even out heart with hate as he has continuously done over the years. The question is not even why someone would do that because that answer should be apparent. My question is, why is this not done when I am there?  It is easiest for outside forces to throw your relationship off when two people aren't standing together in a relational and physical sense.

I write a relationship column, so I want to come with relationship advice from life experience and the books of knowledge. A relationship is a package deal. If you have toxic friends continuously trying to unravel the package, eventually you will have to let them go. We are human and when we slip up in our relationships, that toxicity will seep in to corrode what you worked for. It is like a curse. A curse takes years for it to become full strength before it does real damage and that is the same with these type of people. Yes, what I am saying is that as humans we are all susceptible to the curse. No one is different because we all will become vulnerable and the curse finds it way in after a period of being introduced to the same evil.

So if you have people in your life trying to make your relationship harder for you because they are not happy in their own life, just close and lock the door on them. Hard as it maybe, it is the best and I mean the best thing to do if you value your holy trinity. You, your partner and your relationship.

Totally Tyler and I are totally different

So I had some questions come to me about my book series "For the Love Of" but this one comment kind of threw me off. As everyone know, the author blogger and cool person Totally Tyler just came about with a new book about his gay dating experiences in Atlanta titled "Your Boyfriend and Other Boys I Kissed".  It details his experiences dating in Atlanta and gives his view of the city from his perception. It is a great book.

My book is totally different but there were some comments made about what kind of book I have written and that it may seem similar to Totally Tyler's book.The only thing that is similar between our books, is that we both talk about Atlanta and we are both inspired by our lives.

My books are fictional recreations of a young gay man that has this dream of living in Atlanta but he was truly not ready for what was in store. Yes, there is a lot sex and drug use mentioned in the book, Not only that but in some ways you feel like the the main character is proud to use drugs and don't want to stop. The book takes you to what I like to call the dirty, dirty side of Atlanta as a gay black man. There are some funny parts, there are some dramatic scenes that hopefully touch everybody and there will be some portions that you will understand only if you know what struggle is.

I sneaked in excerpts from my books because I wanted to show the "real" experience of Atlanta before editors came in and hacked my shit all to pieces. It might have been against my contract for $1 my publisher gave me, to do so. So if you want to check out small portions from all three books please check my previous blogs and you can get a large sample from of my book Perspective and For the Love Of(verse three) from Smashword at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/soswirl.  I almost forgot, thank you to all my reader and fans that are supporting all my works. I hope I am dong a good job giving you information to enjoy and is useful.

Countdown to home: My priority must be straight

So, I should be back home in Atlanta at the end of the month if everything goes well. Don't get me wrong, if something goes haywire that I need to stay here longer in Aiken it is not a big deal. At least I don't have to worry about silly bullshit that should not have happened in the first place.

When I talked to my boyfriend today he said something that was true but not in its entirety. There is no doubt that when we try to make our relationship work by living together, it is good for a month and then there are major problems. He says there is a total lack of communication. Well he is right but that has not been a recent pattern and that has nothing to do with me trying to communicate. Also when he tells the story of our relationship history he giggles and laughs about it as if he is expecting the same pattern to happen again. Well, after four years, I had figured out the same pattern before he did but I am past who did what at what time.

I have goals that will be furthered by me being in Atlanta finally for good. My articles are doing well, I have contacts and business ventures people want to talk to me about. I have a book coming out that uses Atlanta as the core of the story. I love Atlanta and wanted to be there before I knew my boyfriend or wanted to be in a relationship. It would be silly to think that my first priority is to the same foolishness I found myself wrapped in for the last four years ahead of a career I am trying to cultivate and a person that really cares for me would understand that 100%.

By no means am I calling my relationship silly. I would not have any books to publish if I did not decide to keep with the grind of my relationship. I became a  relationship columnist because of this unique experience with the man I love very much but I would not be much of a relationship expert if I let my own relationship destroy what I am trying to build. In other words, my priority is to my boyfriend and relationship that compliments my efforts to my goals, not destroy them. I have pledged the same support and willingness to make this work.

I thank Barack Obama for nothing

I know I am going to hear a lot of flack from the gay community for not supporting Obama's paperweight pledge to support gay marriage. I am gay, of course, but I find it too convenient that right after North Carolina had their tragic vote to amend the state constitution to codify marriage to only be between a man and women, Obama has a miraculous change of heart to support gay people now.

Why don't we open our eyes and see that he does not care about our issue. He is a decent president that got some things worked out for the county as a whole and he carried on in the initiatives that Bush started but that does not mean he gives a damn about our cause.

The way I look at the situation, if he cared about gay rights so much, why did his administration decide to take "no action" on the executive order the HRC advocated about homosexual discrimination in the work place.  That had nothing to do with marriage expect for the the word "gay" in the title.

You can't be against one set of gay rights and then want to come out publicly for another. That makes you a hypocrite and foolish gay people are thanking him all over place. No, I will say thank you when young gay men are not dying because they are being bullied all over this nation.

Relationships need an translator sometimes

For the first time in four years I finally tried to talk to my boyfriend like an adult and I have no idea what just happened. He typed "I am always willing to give our relationship another chance." When I read a statement like that, it tells me he saw our relationship in the ending stages or he had it in his mind it was some type of finished.

Straight forward has always been the best type of communication to me but maybe I am wrong. Maybe some guys are from Barsoom and some are from Mars. (which by the way are the same planet) See what I mean? Sometimes you need a translator to turn various irrational emotions into a language that you can understand.

I typed back letting him know, if what he typed is how he felt then all he has to do is tell me the truth and either way my feeling won't be hurt. He typed that I did not understand what he was trying to convey or that I wanted to move on. Sounds like an ole switch-a-roo game. He told me not to text him again. Maybe I need a translator from childish to adult.