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More at: The Sebastian Black Chronicles

Today I want to talk about my ex-boyfriend.

Before I started this job, I had had a boyfriend. He is not Japanese. I met him through gay.com. Honestly, the pics of him are not so good, but when I chatted with him, I was attracted by his jokes and stories. He said he lived central Tokyo, which was a bit far from my house, and there was no train then, but I really wanted to see him(and was horny, ) so I went to meet him by taxi. It costed about 6000 yen($75!) It was the same fee as what I worked for 6 hours in a restaurant.

When I met hi for the first time, he was much cuter than pics, so I often went to meet him.

…

Now I can’t meet him easily…I miss him so bad sometimes. Then, I remember his silly jokes and laugh.

I can’t help imagine if I thrown away this life and followed him…

Life is succession of difficult decisions…

Read more at the original source: A rentboy in Japan – the Everyday Life of Me!

Freelancing comes with its ups and downs and one of the ups is having a great team. When you move from one production to the next you get to meet a whole spectrum of personalities in all degrees of emotions. I have an entire library full of horror stories of working in TV which would make your hairs stand on end. Like the time a Director made me take three human poos home in tupperware boxes or the time I discovered a story written about me in trashy tabloid newspaper due to my filming with a particularly nasty Z-list celebrity. Believe me when I tell you that the horror stories far outweigh the good. So meeting this lovely Researcher, with her really positive and calm manner really made a difference to what could have been a very stressful shoot.

More at the original source: Suspicious Boy!

Find out more at the source: Another M4M Blog!

Ever been there?  Read more at: I Shaved My Ass for This?

I’m still enjoying a solo vacation somewhere along the South Florida coastline,  the idea is to concentrate on finishing a novel I’m working on.   Which is easier said than done,   I mean  who wants to stay inside hunched over the laptop when the weather is glorious outside?     Sometimes it’s hard to pound the keys when a sandy beach, rolling waves and hot bodies are just a few steps away.

So the other day,  I thought ‘bugger this writing lark’  for a short while.   I headed down to the beach,  which was surprisingly empty considering the weather was so nice.      A few  little white clouds floated on  passed in a deep appealing  blue  sky and the water of the Atlantic looked so inviting and dare I say,  romantic.

I ambled along the beach in an aimless fashion until I found myself  a spot under a vast tall palm tree  -  such palms are alien to me,   we don’t get such things growing well in the cold climate of my home in England.    My eyes surveyed the beach,  the ocean,   the distant ships far out nearing the horizon,  on voyages to distant lands with a multitude of cargo.

If I’m honest,  it was then and there that I felt a slight internal stab prickle me with the sense of loneliness,   the kind of sensation that one gets when one vacations alone.        My eyes surveyed natural beauty,  of perhaps a certain idea of paradise and yet inside there was this little niggle,  this little poke,  not a sharp pain,  not an all encompassing agony,  no,  not at all.  Just a little snag of an ache of being alone.  Of having no body to share the beauty of the day with,  no-one to ponder the direction of those passing ships,  nor the height of the tree which supported my back.

I guess that’s life!      I’ve been reading a book about the dynamics of traditional family life,   it’s a good book, really  it is!   Howeve,  as I read onwards towards the end,   it’s become more and more apparent – the lack of traditional ‘life markers or milestones in my being.      I’m sure I’m not alone, I’m sure this is true of many gay man, especially edging towards my age and older,  in which it get’s harder to measure our place in life as the years travel on.      Not for me and my kind  are the usual milestones in life, the usual markers that plot our path of success in life.

I’ve not got the ‘significant’ other in my  life,  and thus, we’ve not fallen in love,  and equally we have then not made it to the next stage,  the next milestone,  of meeting the friends!  Which of course leads to the next –  the dreaded meeting the parents!         The cohabiting stage after going steady for a long while hasn’t happened, which is most often the next milestone of relationships and of life.   And that milestone  itself has not lead on to the grown-up and inevitable step of putting down a deposit on a flat or house in which to create the next phase of life.  Oh yes,  these life markers come thick and fast at that time of life,   most often in late 20′s and early 30′s.   The next phase in the traditional method of life would then follow.  a major  milestone of which the passage of life is measured,  indeed somewhat expected, the procreation, yes the fucking for more than just pleasure,  the fucking for the creation of another life.    It may sound silly but, the effectiveness of ones life,   or rather how well someone is doing in this thing we call life is often measured by such things, you know the growing up, the falling in love, the first house, the first child, the moving to a new larger house, the great career move, progression, promotion and evolution.   Then usually comes the second child and there we have it.    The wife, the two point four children, the nuclear family, the whole dynamic of what society as a whole sees as  ’success’,  for some it’s the  whole reason for ‘being’.  Yes for some,  all the work we do,  is all for leading to this end,   the very meaning of life.  Eikks,   that’s pretty scary!

Then what follows are the other markers of how successful in life you’ve been, the turning of those bundles of sleeping, feeding and pooping into well adjusted well mannered,intelligent mini versions of ourselves and while they sneak out to have a crafty fag or bottle of cider down the park with their friends we escape to the sanctity of the golf or the tennis or the squash club or other status symbol destination that marks our worth in traditional or  dare I say straight society.

Our lives are already mapped out, to some degree or other, for us, there are the signposts, the yardsticks, the milestones, the measurements society as a whole mark our lives by, to show how well we’ve done, how much of a success we’ve made of it. Then there are the questioning looks, the puzzlement, the sense of expectancy when, for whatever reason there may be, we haven’t quite reached the standard or milestone expected of someone of our age. That can hurt, it can really sting, you know, to know that in the eyes of another we’ve failed, we haven’t exactly hit the right spot, that we are falling behind of what’s been expected.

My married friends with their children tell me how lucky I am not to have the burdens of responsibility of children, husbands, wives, mortgages and pets. They say the envy my happy go lucky nature, my ‘ come what may’ attitude,   the ability to just sod off to Florida for a few months.    Yet, every so often, although hidden from their voices, but present in their eyes is that look of some deep emotion mixed somewhere between sadness, pity and wind with just a touch of contempt  -  it’s that look  that  comes that seems to say I’m not following societies path of righteousness, of living by the ‘rules’ of not having the markers of successful living and growing up to reach and pass and tick off the list, the list of what a successful person must achieve in life.

How can my life’s worth, my successful navigation of it’s trials, tribulations and hardships be calculated without having all those milestones passed, or  markers ticked off?    How can they see if my life has been a success or a big fat F for fail on the master exam paper?

I dug my feet into the warm sand, looked at the waves of the seemingly unending ocean,  feeling the sun upon my already sun kissed face, and powerful  blue sky overhead glimpsed through the spiky leaves of the palm swaying in the breeze.  ”So fucking what”   I thought,   I may not have all those milestones to pass, their life markers to successful living to  check off the list,  but is that a bad thing?     I think not.

Now,  I really  wish I’d remembered the sun screen!

Jason’s personal blog www.seafrontdiary.com

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This  month long festival is designed to  showcases the very  best in Lesbian, Gay Bi and Treans art and culture, which includes  dance, film, cabaret, writing,  poetry,  literature,   and a few exhibitions.

This year for the very first time there is a youth strand in the festival,   called Right To Love,  which promises to offer an interesting insight to the mind of the young.

Other highlights include a reading by leading lesbian author Stella Duffy, the comedy and music night Lavender Girls and the play Mother/Son by Jeffrey Solomon.

The pull of this event is widening,  with a an exhibition in Turku, Finland, while the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and British Embassy in Ankara are funding research into the possibility of holding a Homotopia festival in Turkey.

Festival director Gary Everett said: “Homotopia offers a veritable smorgasbord of entertainment for everyone of all ages. From the hilarious, outrageous and subversive to the thought-provoking and challenging.  International artists from Italy, Mexico and the US rub shoulders with writers and performers from Wales, Scotland and Liverpool. We are now the only LGBT cultural festival in the north of England – come and find out why.”

Jason Shaw

But for many it still is an issue, which is why it’s still be battled over.  But one post on The College Voice sums it up nicely.

According to the post:

Gays and lesbians are people too, and they should have the same rights afforded to anyone else. The fact that this has to be said in 2010 is pathetic to say the least. It’s mind boggling that discrimination is still the law of the land. We should be ashamed of ourselves that we allow people to face such prejudice in this country.

Read more here!