Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: 08 March 26 @ 1147

I can remember a time when being bisexual was a joke because, given our social and moral outlook on sexuality, people were either straight or they were gay and there was nothing in between. It was said that if you were bisexual, you were on your way to being gay and there was no sense in denying your “ascension” from heterosexual to homosexual.

I can remember a time where I spent a lot of time telling those who insisted that I was really gay that I am not gay. I would get to hear a lot of sexuality bullshit about being bisexual, sometimes from straight people but mostly from gay guys and some who had a problem with me being bisexual – but didn’t have a problem having sex with me. From the ones who were of a mind that they weren’t a fan of a bisexual man, I would hear all kinds of shit; I would sometimes have a gay dude ranting and raving at me to admit that I’m really gay and repeating the bullshit that no one in their right mind would want to have both.

And their explanation for me – and like I needed them to explain my bisexuality to me – was that I was on my way to being gay. Just admit it. But, as my parents had taught me, I’m not admitting to anything that doesn’t have anything to do with me. As I’m growing into adulthood, I’m still hearing the same sexuality misconceptions and other bullshit that I had started hearing way back in the mid-1960s – and saw that bisexuality was being equated with homosexuality and I would be miffed at the many people who didn’t seem to understand that bisexual and homosexual were two different things – but that persistent bullshit that said if you act like you’re gay, then you must be gay.

Having to listen to this crap from girls/women who, when I’d tell them that I was bi, would immediately assume that I had sex with guys because I was into men which really meant that I had to be gay because, inside this… limited mindset, only gay men had sex with men. Some women didn’t mind; a lot did and to this very day, I don’t pretend to understand the problem these women had with bisexual men outside of the misperception that we were really gay.

I’ve spent decades explaining – or trying to explain – that almost 95% of the bullshit you hear in opposition to bisexuality has been around before I was born and all we’ve been doing is repeating and rehashing it – and it is about homosexuality. Indeed, I would see that some folks would hear “bisexual” and automatically think “homosexual” and start spouting anti-homosexual rhetoric… to someone who isn’t homosexual and, um, excuse me but what part of “I’m bisexual” didn’t you understand? I remember telling this one guy who was spouting all the tired-assed anti-homosexual bullshit, “Do you not understand that I love women?”

And, ah, apparently, he didn’t. Now, one of the perceptions about gay men was that they hated women and they definitely hated sex with women… and even if they’d never had sex with a woman. It was confusing because there were a lot of gay men who were trying to be more woman than the real thing and… I would find out that there were some gay dudes I knew who would sneak around to have sex with women and making me correct my own perceptions and making me understand that telling a naysayer that I love women didn’t have all of the weight I’d once thought it had since, duh, gay men are men… and some gay men like pussy. Call them a 4 or 5 on the Kinsey scale but do not dare to call them bisexual because as far as they were concerned, they were still very much gay, thank you very much, honey.

I was learning that being bisexual alone was “bad enough” as it was but the anti-homosexual rhetoric being tacked on wasn’t helping and when it was “officially” said that bisexuality was real, it seemed to me that all the hatred and angst that was once solely the “property” of gay men had now been transferred to bisexual men and with some new stuff added to make our vilification complete.

Before “biphobia” was coined, there was (and still is) homophobia and the rhetoric was vicious and about as ugly as anything you could hear and, little old literal-minded me, learned to ignore this bullshit because I knew they were talking about homosexual men and… I’m not a homosexual man. The downside, of course, was that people didn’t want to be bothered with the seriously glaring difference; if I’m having sex with a man, then I must be a homosexual.

One of the problems I had to address when talking to a new guy about going both ways or his desire to have sex with a guy that came out of nowhere was all of the anti-homosexual rhetoric that was older than my great-great-grandparents and who know how long it has really been around? Guys would fear a sexual act with another guy because if they did, they would instantly turn into one of the much-hated homosexuals. That persistent misconception that to have sex with a guy or, gasp, to have romantic feelings for a guy means that you’re really homosexual would terrify and traumatize new guys and while I could give guys the truth about this shit along with the suggestion that they don’t give it any weight because if they did, it would fuck with them and prevent them from doing what they know they want and need to do.

Public perception has stopped many a man from realizing this bisexuality. The fear of being homosexual still exists in 2026 and so does all of the rhetoric and anti-homosexual bullshit that’s been heaped upon bisexuals these days… and you would think that by now, we would know and be better. We have made progress but not enough to dispel the stigma and to banish all the anti-homosexual crap but we still live in a society that has a lot of angst toward anyone who isn’t heterosexual.

On the forum, a question came up asking guys who are or have found their sexual desires shifting towards men and when this landed on them. One of the commenters keeps citing all of the negative shit that’s been assigned to bisexuals and especially married bisexuals and while there’s no debating the fact that what he’s saying is true, if there was a member of the forum who was, indeed, finding that their sexual desires were now including men (and how the fuck did that happen?), this guy’s comments aren’t helping things as he spouts all of the bullshit rhetoric and citing all of the negatives. I’ve said to him that by citing all of the bullshit and negatives, um, what does this have to do with a guy waking up one day and finding himself craving an erection… that belongs to another guy?

This guy is gay, by the way. He got… badly traumatized by the anti-homosexual rhetoric and… he can’t seem to stop bringing all the negative shit that, at least in my own opinion, would go a long way to make sure that the guy who wants to find out what it’s like to throw it down with a guy… never gets to find out. He’s not “helping” and I tell him this and he acknowledges that, yeah, this shit ain’t gonna help a new guy in his quest for cock… but he keeps putting it out there.

The bullshit exists. As far as I can tell, it has always existed since homosexuality was declared to be a mortal sin. I know that back when I was growing up, I was being told to hate homosexuals even though this wasn’t my parents’ stance but, yeah, being gay was a sin and I was to not associate with anyone who was gay… except one of my best friends was, as it was said, “gay as a three-dollar bill” but everyone tolerated him and us kids would do our best to protect and defend him against the “homo hating” bullies that were everywhere.

The bullshit isn’t going anywhere and the proof of that is that it’s still around in 2026. When asked how I deal with the rhetoric and biphobia – and a new phobia that makes me shake my head because, fuck, homophobia was bad enough and now we have biphobia – my answer is, “I don’t give it any weight. I’m aware of it but that doesn’t mean that I have to pay strict attention to it because no one gets to tell me that I can’t be bisexual and if they don’t like it, they can kiss my sweaty Black ass.”

Yes, I am bisexual. No, I am not gay and without offense to those who are gay, I wouldn’t want to be gay, and I like where I am in this. Is all the shit being said against bisexuals true? The sad part is that some of it is… and the majority of it actually doesn’t have anything to do with bisexuality because it’s still aimed at homosexuals… and homosexuals are not bisexuals even if you pay attention to what homo and bi mean in this context.

One of the things I had realized early on was that as long as there was one person who hated homosexuals, the hatred, angst, and prejudice against anyone who wasn’t straight would continue to exist. I had realized that there was nothing I could do about this and people were going to believe whatever they wanted to in this. However – and just the same – this hateful rhetoric couldn’t fuck with me as long as I didn’t pay attention to it and give it power over me. Again, I know about it. I got better and more important things to be concerned about other than this tired-assed anti-homo/bisexual bullshit.

You don’t help new bisexual guys by beating them over the head with shit that will wind up fucking with them. You tell them the truth that, yep, our society is anti-homosexuality all the way and while we’ve made some progress in the direction of acceptance, don’t hold your breath on this one but, instead, work on figuring out how you want to be bisexual and how you can be. Know that the rhetoric exists; do not assume that the horror stories that you’ve heard will happen to you. Do not buy into the premise that in order to have sex with a guy, you have to be in some kind of relationship with him; this “stinks” of the moral imperative that the only right, legal, and moral sex is relationship sex.

You can be romantic with a guy if that’s how you’re feeling but if you’re not feeling this, it doesn’t mean that you can’t have sex with a guy. Don’t let stranger danger keep you rooted in place; do not believe that casual sex is fatally dangerous and like a lot of bi guys believe – and that belief is keeping them sitting on the bench and in abject fear of jumping into the pool. Is it true that you can catch something bad? Yes. Is it a guarantee that you will? No.

The problem with this is that the perception will be believed over the truth. I happen to know and am familiar with the peculiar feeling that when I had sex with a guy, it felt like everyone who laid eyes on me knows that I got laid and it was with another dude. But, ahem, how could they know that unless I told them or the person I had sex with did the telling? A huge crowd of people I didn’t know had no way of finding out that I just spent the last two hours sucking dick with a guy until neither of us could get it up.

My family and friends can only find out if I – or someone else – tells them. Yeah, some of them might correctly and accurately know that, ah, I’m not as straight as I appear to be and I don’t look like the type – and they’re right because I don’t look like the type… because the “type” is gay and I am not gay… but I can have sex like I am. When negotiating with guys for sex, so many of them were/are terrified of being outed; terrified of their family and friends finding out; and I’ve asked them, “How are they going to find out unless you tell them? I’m not going to tell them because I don’t know them.”

And even in the case where I did know their family and friends, I wasn’t going to tell… because it was none of their business. But it’s shit like this that prevents guys who feel the pull of bisexuality to not be bisexual.

Fuck. A tremendously huge sigh. There’s this thing that says if you’re not going to be part of the solution, don’t be part of the problem and it’s difficult to be part of the solution when you stand to be beaten about the head with anti-homo-bisexual rhetoric and the misconceptions that I learned about when I became bisexual and that have existed way before I – or anyone in my family – was born. Because the bible says that God said it was a sin and such sinners should be put to death. I used to give myself headaches trying to make sense of this because, okay, the bible says what it says although I failed to understand how or why God would tell someone about this so they could write about it and even despite the fact that homosexuality is a mortal sin (and still punishable by death in some countries), it didn’t and still doesn’t change the fact that homosexuality is very much alive and well.

So is bisexuality. Given this, there’s no reason to give the bullshit any weight and power over you because if you do, finding out what it’s like is going to be harder than it already is.

The Daily Prompt: 08 March 26

I am named after my father. Not Junior but the second (II). I don’t exactly remember anymore the moment I learned that I was named after him but I hated my name.

As I write this, I don’t even remember why I hated my name. I had wanted my name to be anything other than what it was. Being around my elders who thought it right and proper to be named after him but then, a few years later, I found out that when my mother was pregnant with me, they had been hoping for a girl first and had already picked out a name for her!

My sister, who was born second, loved to give me grief because had I been born a girl, I would have gotten her name. Sisters. A brother’s Kryptonite. That gave me even more angst about my name and more so when (1) my father kept calling me Junior (gag me with a huge spoon) and when I was really old enough to tell people my name, like when I got my Social Security card when I turned 13, even though I’d shown them my birth certificate – which has Jr. scratched out and II put in its place – my first Social Security card had Jr. on it and I raised quite a bit of hell telling them that this isn’t my name. They’d gave me a new card with my correct name on it, and I think this is about the time when I stopped disliking my name.

My first day of high school, I had to check in with the office to get my initial schedule before seeing my guidance counselor, who’d help me fill out the rest of it. I told the secretary my full name and she says, “I can’t find your name in here!” I wanted to go back behind the counter and find it myself, but a lightbulb appeared over my head, and I had said to her, “If you’re looking for ‘Jr.’, you won’t find it: I’m the second – Roman numeral two.”

She found it in two seconds. Face blushed red as she said, “I just assumed you were a junior.”

“I am not,” I said, feeling quite miffed but I’d gotten over it as I made my way to my guidance counselor. I… had a serious crush on her because she was beautiful, I loved the sound of her voice; when she shook my hand I think I almost creamed my underwear. And she got my name right and even told me what my middle name meant: “Strong as a bear.”

I got my driver’s license and despite having had to show them my birth certificate and other documents with my name on it, they put Jr. at the end and I pitched a small bitch and even though I showed the woman that she’d gotten my legal name wrong, she just rolled her eyes and said, “As far as I’m concerned, you’re a junior. Next!”

I took me years to get my correct legal name on my license. I didn’t have this problem when I enlisted in the Air Force; my recruiter saw the correction on my birth certificate and said, “I see your parents decided that you weren’t a junior! I’m named after my father, too, and I’m not a junior but my parents always call me that! I can’t stand being called Junior!”

“I can’t either but only my father calls me that,” I said morosely. I was required to sign all paperwork with my legal name and as it appears on my birth certificate and given all the stuff I had to sign and the length of my full name, I’d gotten a cramp in my hand from writing it so much. I had a stray thought that I didn’t like my name again, but it passed.

What’s in a name? I know I used to tell people, “I’m named after my father but I’m not my father…” and more so when, one night, I’m walking home from my girlfriend’s house and the police stopped me, asked me where I was going and where I was coming from, and then asked for my ID. I gave them my license and stood waiting as they checked. One officer gets out of the car and pulls his cuffs out and tells me, “There’s a warrant for your arrest!”

“What?” The question exploded out of my mouth because, as far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything for anyone to put an arrest warrant out on me. The office cuffs me and sits me in the back of the car and starts telling me some information and asking me to repeat my name and birthdate, which I do. Both officers look at each other perplexed and, in a moment of desperate inspiration, I knew why they had that look on their face.

“If your information has my birthdate as – and I gave them my father’s birthdate – do I look like I’m that old?” I asked. They get on the radio and gets someone to repeat the birthdate on the warrant and, sure enough, it’s my father’s birthday. I get taken out of the, uncuffed, and sent on my way but the one officer said, “This is one of those moments where being named after your father isn’t a good thing. Oh, by the way – do you know where we can find him?”

I knew exactly where he was… and I wasn’t going to rat him out, but this little problem would crop up often enough to make me want to legally change my name… but this was my name, not his; he’s the first one, I’m the second (and only one) who bears that name and a name that I worked hard to bring “honor and glory” to. Not to his name but to mine. And a personal reminder that if I was going to make it in this world, I had to, indeed, be as strong as a bear…

Living With… Stuff: 07 March 26

Healthwise, I guess I’m okay but that’s not what has been messing with my head here of late. I was just in the kitchen and grabbing something to snack on when I was looking at the refrigerator and saw the magnetic clip we have our upcoming appointments/lab work request hanging when I see the one coming up in April with my nephrologist that has my name, birthdate and it says, “70 years of age.”

And I thought, “Who are they talking about?” Anyone who is 70 and older are probably reading this and having a good laugh at my expense but when I turned 50, eh, it was just another day. When I turned 60, I honestly don’t remember what I may have done that day other than what I do every day. I turned 68 while in the Dominican Republic and it was a very thoughtful day with a birthday cake and presents that reminded me of my late mother and having me deeper in thought about having cancer and having to jump into getting rid of it when I get back home.

The day “The Shit Hit the Fan.” Y’all know what happened from my point of view and, a year later, I’m 69… and having a laughing good time because my head is all in the gutter about 69. I went to one appointment, and the nurse asked me how old I was and I said that I was 69 and did so trying not to laugh – and I could see in her face that she knew why I was trying not to laugh. The Shit Hit the Fan left me with a lot of shit I had to deal with on top of the shit I was already dealing with having the stroke and finding out that my kidneys look like footballs in my abdomen and in a Stage 3 (Moderate) stage of failure.

Daily chemo and radiation and with tattoo #15 smack dab in the upper middle of my chest and is a constant reminder every time I’m washing up and looking in the mirror that, yeah, all that shit around this fucking cancer really did happen but if that wasn’t enough to fuck with my head, I… turn 70. Writing “Living With… Stuff” isn’t just about the physical shit I have to deal with and how I wound up being stuck with; it’s also about the things that tend to mess with me when I least expect them to, oh, like going to the kitchen for a snack and being reminded that I’m 70.

My mother died twenty days before I turned 68 and I remember sitting and waiting for her to call and give me the bizness about being old but, of course, that call never came and never will again. Sometimes I find myself sitting and wondering about how much she’d be laughing at me turning 70; while dealing with the aftermath of shit hitting the fan, I would wonder what she would have said to me were I able to tell her that I have cancer; what she would have said when the shit hit the fan and I came out on the other side.

She would have told me that God is good and that, obviously, He wasn’t finished with me yet. She would have called to wish me a happy birthday when I turned 70 then asked me how I was feeling about it… and me not being able to say much other than it good to be able to turn 70… then getting ready for her to give me da bizness about being old.

I look in the mirror and… there’s that old guy staring back at me. I take off my T-shirt so I can wash under my arms, and my eyes first go to #15, then to the stoma that remains from where my feeding tube was, then finally to the stoma on my throat left over from the tracheostomy. I realize that I still feel traumatized from The Day the Shit Hit the Fan; it sits at the back of my mind like it’s a placeholder or something. It’s not really fucking with me but I know it’s there just the same and I can ignore it… most of the time.

I’m laughing to myself as I remember something from my yearly CAT scan regarding my repaired AAA: Gynecomastia was seen on the left side of my chest means, essentially, that I’m grown man-titties on that side… but not on the right? Aging and a hormone imbalance can cause this and I wondered – and as I was almost giggling to myself about having man boobs – if chemotherapy or maybe even radiation could’ve played into this but, then again, it just is what it is. The old guy in the mirror has a tat he really didn’t want but had to have and… man boobs. Because the old guy in the mirror is 70.

And I’m having a bit of a problem adjusting to him. The guy in the mirror is 70; the guy looking at the mirror… doesn’t believe that. I think my mind is stuck at being 35 or so but I’m not thinking like I’m 70 but, yeah, whew, the joints popping and cracking and I turned to look at something and tweaked my back on the left side a little bit – enough to be reminded that I am, indeed, 70

I don’t want anyone to worry because mentally, I’m fine – I just had to get this out of my head before I forgot it… because I am 70.

The Daily Prompt: 06 March 26

Daily writing prompt
What is one question you hate to be asked? Explain.
View all responses

This is easy. I hate being asked why I’m bisexual. The explanation is kind of simple: I’ve spent large portions of my life answering this question only to have my inquisitors not understand the answer.

The answer is simple. I got introduced to sex with guys and found it very much to my liking and it went well with having sex with girls, too. While “pick a side and stay on it” was very much the mantra of those who had issues with human sexuality, I found myself to be on the side that most people seemed to think was insane – the middle of the road.

Do I like guys like gay guys do? No, I don’t… and trying to compare my bisexuality to homosexuality is, well, does that make any sense? And do you not know that they’re two very different things? No? Okay, let me explain it to you…

After a while, you get sick and tired of being asked this question and then trying to answer it for people who believe that people are either straight or gay and there is nothing in the middle. Okay, um, if there isn’t, how do you explain me? I’m not all that straight and I’m definitely not gay but, honestly, I do enjoy having sex like I’m gay… because it’s sex.

You get tired of people telling you that you need Jesus when you answer this question. I got to the point where and when someone would ask me if I was bisexual and I’d tell them that, yes, I am (and have been since 1964) and as for why? Because I like both. And no: I am not in denial of being really gay. Do I ask you why you’re straight?

Stop asking me questions you don’t want to hear the answers to…

KDaddy’s General Observations: 05 March 26

I was looking through my stats the other day and noticed that my most read post is… “Asking for a Bro-Job.”

Honestly, I was surprised! I’ve written well over 3,000 posts and the one I wrote about the bro-job is leading the pack. I normally don’t look at my stats but I had seen where one of my post had been read and I clicked on the link, thinking that I’d see the post (because I didn’t remember what it was really about) but instead of going to the post, it brought up the stats so, oh, what the hell, since I’m here, let’s take a look.

On the other hand, I wasn’t that surprised at the #1 post of all time since there’s a lot of interest in guys blowing each other and especially if both guys are straight. I can remember opening my Dashboard and seeing that “Asking for a Bro-Job” kept showing up in Top Searches or that it had been read a number of times, and I mean it showed up every day for months. Then it would vanish, only to show up later on.

I’d see this ‘trend’, smile, shake my head, and go on to do whatever I was going to do. At the same time on the forums, guys were asking how they could ask their bro if they could suck his cock or, gasp, would he give the bro-job to, you know, help a brother out. I remember having read an article [somewhere] that talked about straight guys who suck cock and the question of whether or not they’re really – and still – straight or… are they gay or headed that way. One of the things I learned is that two guys sucking each other off isn’t necessarily a sexuality thing, but it could just ‘simply’ be a sex thing and I had thought, at the time, that I only knew two guys who did not believe in oral sex and especially having their dick sucked.

I remember writing that I’ve given out a lot of bro-jobs and I’ve been on the receiving end of a lot of them but as bisexual man, eh, it’s not all that unusual that I’d want to suck a guy off or kick back so a guy could suck me off but, yeah, sure, I’ve had straight guys ask for the bro-job and after clumsily hinting at it and I’ve had them suck my dick like they’ve been doing it just as long as I’d been doing it… and they maintained that they were straight and definitely not bi or gay.

Some say the straight guy who sucks cock is in denial of, at the very least, being bisexual. I used to maintain that if you do it once, nah, no one would say that you’re bi but if you keep doing it – and it doesn’t matter when you do – yeah, you could very well be bisexual and it didn’t make sense to me why a straight guy would participate in some cocksucking and keep insisting that he’s straight… unless he’s doing it just because a blowjob is… just sex.

Hmm. In related cocksucking posts and discussions over the years, I’ve maintained that you don’t have to be into the guy in order to want to have sex with him – you just gotta want to and when I thought about this and thought about the fact that a blowjob is, at the root of things, a sexual act. Even I had to recall the times I got into a bro-job situation with a known straight guy and I’m happily sucking him and he starts tugging on me to move… so he can suck my dick and, okay, he said that he wasn’t into sucking dick but he’s doing me like a pro! But he’s straight. A blowjob is oral sex even if there are people who don’t believe that it’s sex.

How do you ask your friend if he’d be interested in sucking cock with you? You find a way to ask him. What do you do if your bro asks if he can suck your cock? Well, I know that I’d let him suck my dick because I love having my dick sucked and one good turn deserves another, doesn’t it? I had to admit to myself that my bisexuality had me biased about cocksucking so I had to take a step back and look at cocksucking for what it is and… it’s just sex and, um, fuck, can straight guys suck cock and accept an offer to be sucked? Sure, they can and they do.

Because at end of any day, it’s just sex. You don’t have to be bi or gay to suck cock – you just have to want to. To get into a bro-job situation, you have to be brave and confident enough to ask your bro and you have to be brave, confident in your sexuality, and in need of release to accept a bro-job from your bro. It just tickles me that “Asking for a Bro-job” is the most read post that I’ve written.

The Daily Prompt: 26 February 26

The most ambitious DIY project I ever undertook happened not long after I bought my house. The sidewalk in front of the house wasn’t in the best shape; neither was the “sidewalk” that ran from the garage to the end of the house and, oh, lawd, the pad for the patio out back was pretty jacked up and “warped,” pulling away from where it was supposedly sealed against the house.

The HOA president (at the time) lived across the street from me, and she came over to introduce herself and made it a point to say something to me about the condition of the sidewalk and she had simply said that I need to do something about it. I spent the next day standing and staring at the sidewalk and wondering what it would cost to have professionals come and fix all of the concrete, compared to what it would cost for me to do it but the problem here was… I didn’t know shit about mixing and pouring concrete.

I hit Home Depot for all the stuff I needed to DIY. Wheelbarrow. Sledgehammer. Trowels. Wood for framing. Rebar. Plastic sheeting. Umpteen bags of Quickcrete. My son-in-law came over to help – he knew something about doing this – and there we were, shirtless and beating the shit out of the sidewalk to remove the old shit and putting it into one of those “construction waste bags” that my garbage pickup people said I would need before they’d pick it up.

Surprisingly, we got the sidewalk done fairly quickly because we had to hustle – the weather forecast, which I had forgotten to check, had called for afternoon rain and the dark clouds were gathering and urging us to get the Quickcrete mixed and poured. We got that done and covered with plastic just as the first fat raindrops started to fall. We were done… but we weren’t done.

We broke up the “sidewalk” that ran from north to south at the literal front of the house; the rain is pouring down and we’re thinking about pouring the concrete anyway since this part is under the roof. We stood there watching it rain to see if any of it was getting where we didn’t need it and since it wasn’t, there we were mixing and pouring this stuff which, by the way, they don’t call it Quickcrete for nothing. But we got the rebar set, got the stuff poured and, fuck – now we can’t get in the house through the front door! That meant that everyone would have to use the patio door to get in and out of the house until the concrete set enough to be walked on and, nope, I hadn’t really considered that.

Then it was time to do the patio pad. It had major cracks and like whoever poured it didn’t do something right. My arms, legs, and back were killing me between swinging the sledgehammer and doing my part to haul the debris to the waste bag. My son-in-law was out of action when he hit his foot with the sledgehammer; nothing broken but that was hurting him so bad that I was feeling it so I had to do the framing and rebar setting myself and I had really made more work for myself by deciding to do two pours of concrete instead of one because a single pour was probably what caused the cracking and huge gap between the pad and the house… that gave a snake someplace to live and hide.

That’s another story. Doing the patio pad was the hardest. Every time we thought we had it level enough to begin the pour, it would prove not to be all that level and it took a couple of hours to get it nice and level so that the pour could happen. Um, did I mention how messy doing this can be? I didn’t? My bad. I honestly couldn’t remember a time where I’d been that dirty and sweaty. We wore masks when busting up the concrete and doing the mixing and pouring and you could tell that both of us had something over our noses and mouth since we had dirt and dust all over us… and in a couple of places that had no business getting concrete dust.

As we had learned doing the main sidewalk, once you start doing this, you have to finish it. You can’t just leave it undone since people are walking up and down the sidewalk and I wasn’t trying to get sued for someone getting hurt because they ignored the yellow tape we had put up. Doing that pad in the backyard was a backbreaker to end all backbreakers and I was ready to give up… but like I said, I couldn’t leave the pad unfinished.

“You know, they’re right when they say it’s easier to destroy than to build,” my son-in-law said as we took a much-needed break to eat and drink.

“I know that’s right,” I said with a groan. “My body is threatening to sue me for abuse.”

But we got it done. I had had this overwhelmingly good feeling being a new homeowner and having to fix all of the concrete on my property put a serious damper on those feelings because if you can’t get someone to do it, you gotta do it yourself. The best price I got from general contractors was $5,000 and, oh, fuck no – I didn’t have it like that. What did it cost me to DIY it? A little over $500 for the Quickcrete and other stuff needed to do the job. But I learned something: Next time, hire someone else to do it.

But I did feel quite proud to have done it myself – and it got done right and nicely.

Living With… Stuff: 24 February 26

I’d been recording my weight and blood pressure for well over a month in a text file and thinking about my appointment with my nephrologist in April, I wanted to know if the practice had an email address that I could send the file to prior to my visit so I didn’t have to print out a ton of paper, carry it to my visit, only to have to toss it.

The practice called me yesterday morning (they were lucky that I was up) to tell me that they didn’t have an email address for this purpose so… the girl I was talking to wanted me to read the contents of the text file to her over the phone.

I can’t even tell you how long it took to read it all to her. As far as my weight was concerned, I was reading that and stating whether I was naked, undressed, dressed, or fully dressed (as in I gotta go outside dressed) as well as my blood pressure taken without my morning medications and then 2.5 hours later and after taking my medication.

I get finished reading it all to her and I guess she said something to my doctor who may have been wandering by at the time, but she comes back to me and says that if my top number for blood pressure is 150 or higher or lower than 110, I should call them. Otherwise, I don’t have to record my weight and blood pressure any longer although she did say that she understood that some of my weights were dressed but, eh, nothing to really worry about.

I get up this morning and start my routine. Hit the bathroom and take care of the bladder issue. Pet the dog; get him some fresh water, check to see if he, ah, used his pee pads; clean my mouth and… I’m supposed to be doing something else but I’m looking in the mirror, and the 70-year-old guy needs to shave and that’s an indication that I need to change the blade, but I won’t do that until I get the new blades I ordered.

As I’m applying the sensationally scented Cremo “Bourbon and Oak” cream – man, I could smell this all day, every day – I think, oh, yeah, that’s right – I was taking my weight and BP after cleaning my mouth but I don’t have to do this, well, I was told to keep taking my BP but don’t write it down and my lady and I agreed that taking it every other day or so would be okay but it removed a part of my morning routine that, again, I’d been doing for well over a month.

I’m done in the bathroom; I hit the kitchen and wash the few dishes in the sink; check to make sure I put the paper filter in the reusable filter I use for coffee. Pet the dog. Put my onesie on. Pet the dog again and… I’m forgetting something… oh, no, nope, don’t have to do that anymore. Sheesh, this is going to take a moment to remove from the morning routine. I sneak into the bedroom so as to not wake my lady up, make up my side of the bed, put my slippers on, grab my phone and Samsung tablet, check to see if my watch is done charging – it isn’t – and pop my morning meds into my mouth before sneaking out of the room to swallow my meds with huge gulps of water, make some coffee, then come do… what I’m doing now while looking at my blood pressure machine sitting on my desk and unused for the first time in over a month.

I have the sobering thought to have learned that my late mother’s husband died… on 29 December 25 and because no one could get into his phone, my step sister couldn’t call me to tell me and it was because we hadn’t heard from him or could call him that I called her and learned that he had died… and I suspect it was due to kidney failure although she didn’t really say what the cause of his death was.

It just gives me some shit to think about. I don’t argue the point that keeping my blood pressure under control is important to the stability of my kidneys but even after all this time – and all the other shit I’ve been through – this PKD shit continues to irk me. Like, for example, I had put on a fresh T-shirt the other day and I realized that it’s one of my old medium shirts because it’s crawling up my stomach and makes me look like I’m wearing a sports bra. My lady thought this was funny, but I didn’t as I looked in my T-shirt drawer for one of the XL shirts I’d gotten back before I went to Mexico.

Sometimes, when I’m standing up, I realized that I’m holding my back like I’m pregnant and my abdomen sure the fuck looks like I am. I can laugh about it because there’s nothing I can do about it unless I happened to get a new pair of kidneys – and I don’t see that one happening. Or I’m sitting down and resting my hands on my belly – and especially if I have my bib overalls on; I just slide my hands in there and rest them on my belly and it works to warm my hands up, too.

All I can do is take my meds, drink as much water as I can stand to, grin and bear this condition and with the hope that it doesn’t become the death of me…

Living With… Stuff: 21 February 26

Here’s something that I only realized yesterday when, in accordance with my nephrologist’s instructions to log my weight and blood pressure, I noticed that I’m gaining weight. Now, you might be thinking, “So?” but I’m about to tell you why this is significant… and something that I knew about.

When I’d had my stroke (twenty years ago next month), my neurologist put me on transdermal fentanyl patches to deal with the horrible pain of the neuropathy that had landed on me and, despite what he had told me about this, it had decided it wasn’t going away.

The .75mcg dose I had worked up to did too good of a job of dealing with my pain, i.e., I would be so fucking stoned that I didn’t know I was in pain but, at the same time, it would leave me almost completely unable to function. I’d change the patch and, whew, man, I would be so stoned that I would just… fall asleep right in the middle of a conversation and I won’t get too much into how…, uh, how horny it made me and because of delayed ejaculation, um, I could fuck for hours before cumming.

Let’s step back from the gutter, shall we? Fine! It came to pass that my insurance company decided that it was no longer going to pay for the patches; I’d gone to refill the script and found that the price had gone up to $390 and that’s how I found out that the insurance company pretty much bailed on me. My neurologist, upon being told about this, put me on gabapentin and I was taking large doses of it and… it wasn’t doing a damned thing for the pain I was in so after being on the gabapentin long enough to be sure it wasn’t any better than taking Tylenol or plain old aspirin, he put me on Lyrica and the best it could do was to take the edge off of the pain – but I could function.

Bear with me because this will make sense. One of the side effects of Lyrica is… weigh gain. Once I started taking the Lyrica, I went from weighing 175 pounds to as much as 220 pounds and I think I’d gotten up to 230 at one point before, I guessed, my body got around to adjusting to the drug and my weight had settle in around 210.

What I realized yesterday is that I… suspected that I had cancer before I was diagnosed with it and the huge tumor appeared in my neck. What tipped me off? I was losing weight and despite still being on Lyrica. It wasn’t all at once and, as my memory serves me, it was a gradual loss until I was weighing in at around 180. I suspected that something could be wrong, but I was feeling good and trips to the lab and the doctor didn’t reveal anything other than me still being a bit overweight for a guy my height and age. But then came the diagnosis of cancer sometime later and, I realized, I never put two and two together which, in a way, made sense given that I had to start treatment for it and… the shit had hit the fan.

I think, after shitting hitting fans and the longest stay in a hospital I’d ever had – and along with chemo whacking my immune system (but I hadn’t started radiation yet), my weight was, at the lowest, 169 and once radiation treatment started, my radiation oncologist told my lady to feed me good food with lots of protein so that I could start regaining weight.

I was still being feed through my feeding tube; from there, I was able to eat some foods, but my throat was all fucked up so I was drinking Ensure and Boost and in some interesting flavors. My hematologist/oncologist told us that because my immune system had gotten wiped out during chemo, it was going to take some time before it returned to normal and, indeed, going to the labs – LabCorp and the cancer center’s lab – was slowly showing that my immune system was getting back into normal values. My palliative doctor upped my dosage of Lyrica to 150mg twice a day but while my weight was slowly going up, it was still far below what I was weighing before all of this came to be.

I wrote some time ago that I had noticed – all late and wrong – that when my facial hair grew back in, there wasn’t a grey hair to be found and the thing that made me realize this – all late and wrong – was seeing a selfie I took when I was in the DR for my birthday and my chin hair was grey… except, now, it wasn’t but as I had written, the grey was slowly creeping back in.

I took this as a sign that my immune system was doing better but then came the insanity with my blood pressure and the task of getting it back under better control and that’s when my nephrologist not only upped the dosage of the amlodipine I was taking, he instructed me to log my weight and BP every day until my next appointment with him in April.

I got on the scale this morning wearing only a T-shirt, underwear, my compression socks, and my glasses and I weighed… 194.2 pounds. Indeed, over the last week or so, my undressed weight has been increasing but I think that because I was “too close” to what I was doing, I hadn’t really noticed this… until yesterday and even then, it was deep into the evening before this whole thing had dawned on me. I’m not even sure what made me think about my weight before being diagnosed with cancer, but it hit me and made me say to myself, “Fuck… I knew this and didn’t pay it any attention…”

I really felt like kicking my own ass about not giving my weight loss the attention I probably should have given it but that would really be like closing the barn door after all of the animals have escaped; it would be pointless to berate myself for this lack of attention given that the events that would take place… took place. It all happened and is now over and done with and… I’m creeping back to weighing in the 200s and thanks to the Lyrica I’m taking… and this just might be what’s fucking with my blood pressure, but I’ll let my nephrologist work on this and see what he wants to do after reading my log.

I also thought that I’d better write this… omission down before I fuck around and forget it. The thing is that the weight gain is actually good news; it means that there’s no cancer “interrupting” how Lyrica affects me as far as gaining weight goes and that my immune system is continuing to improve.

We’ll see how this turns out…

Today’s Bisexual Thoughts: 19 February 26 @ 1442

The woman who would one day be my second poly wife and I had just finished having sex for the, um, second time that day when she asked me, “Why are you so good at eating pussy?”

“Well, for one, I’ve been doing it since I was ten,” I began. “And I suck dick.”

Can you imagine hearing someone blink? I heard her blink and waited for a storm to arrive – and another good relationship was going to go in the tank because the woman didn’t want anything to do with a guy who sucked cock.

“How long have you been doing that?” she asked.

“I learned how to do that before I learned how to eat pussy,” I said – then told her how I (a) got introduced to sex and (b) introduced to sex with guys. “As such, it hadn’t taken me much to figure out or realize that eating pussy and sucking dick are related so what might work for one could very well work for the other.”

“You’re dangerous,” she said before she leaned over to kiss me and take my breath away. Again. Which led to the third time for that day. What made going down on her so fucking good was that she had a very large clitoris that, the first time I saw it and wrapped my lips around it, reminded me of sucking dick. I’d get to a point where I’d lay her down somewhere, strip her panties off, and eat her just because do it to and for her was so fucking pleasing.

I’m in bed with a gay man and we’re in a side-by-side 69 and I’m working his dick over with gusto and even being a bit of an “asshole” because I wanted to see how long it would take for me to get him to stop sucking me and, for the record, it took three minutes for him to stop sucking me and start howling at the moon and another three minutes for him to spill his seed into my mouth. He went on to finish me off, but he had asked, “Why are you so good at doing this?”

“I’ve been doing it since I was nine and… I eat pussy,” I said, giving him a side-eyed glance… and saw the reaction I thought I’d see.

He wasn’t happy. He assumed that I was gay and if I was guilty of anything, I didn’t remember telling him that I was bisexual. He’d gone on an anti-bisexual rant that wasn’t different from any other such rant I’d ever heard, and he was kicking himself in the ass for being in bed with a guy who had sex with women and…

…I waited until he stopped to take a breath and asked, “Are you finished?”

He just glared at me and even tried to cover up his nakedness – and I wanted to laugh so badly.

“You didn’t have a problem with me sucking your dick until you asked a question that, obviously, you didn’t like the answer to,” I began. “You also didn’t seem to have a problem sucking my dick, either, so what’s really the problem here? You pissed because I’m not gay?”

Well, yeah, he was, as it turned out. It did not, however, stop us for going at it again and, well, it’s kinda like I didn’t give him a choice since I pounced on him and started sucking his very nice dick again and, well, I guess he figured, “When in Rome…” – and when we were done creaming each other’s tonsils, he went on that anti-bisexual rant again..

“I don’t see why my sexuality matters as long as you’re happy and satisfied with what I did to you,” I said and starting to look for my clothes. “For the life of me, I really don’t understand why people object to me being bisexual. Wait, that’s not true because I do know and understand why but to me, it’s a difference which makes no difference considering what the end result is.”

“You haven’t lived until you have a woman bitch you out because she found out that you suck cock, too,” I continued. “It’s one of the reasons why I tell people to not ask me questions they don’t want to hear the answer to or, as my grandfather used to say, “If you don’t really wanna know, don’t ask!” But they ask and I answer truthfully and… they lose their shit just like you did, only worse.”

“What fucking difference does it make? Did you or did you not enjoy what I was doing to you?” I asked.

“Um, yeah, but…” he began.

“But what?” I asked. See, at first, I was more amused than angry at his anti-bisexual rant but now? I was getting seriously miffed and maybe a good five minutes away from losing my temper – and forgetting that I had told myself that I had to be tolerant of those who didn’t understand why I went both ways.

“I just assumed you were gay,” he said.

“You didn’t ask and I didn’t tell,” I pointed out. “As it turned out, however, whether or not I was gay didn’t make a difference until I told you that I eat pussy and that it gives me extra knowledge I can use to suck dick – and just like how I can use what I’ve learned about sucking dick to eat pussy!”

Now I was pissed the fuck off. I had wanted to suck him off a third time but, nope, because I wouldn’t have enjoyed it and like I had the first two times. I got up and started to get dressed.

“Where are you going?” he asked.

“Home,” I replied. “You have a problem with me being bi and I never, ever want to stay somewhere that I’m not welcomed.”

He’s trying to apologize and I’m beyond wanting to listen to it because I know that he said what he said – and he meant it… and just like the women who bitched me out about being bi did except most of them weren’t of a mind to apologize for cussing me out. My sexuality wasn’t a problem while we were having sex until afterwards. All holy hell would break out and now I’m all kinds of low-life motherfuckers and bastards and… I don’t need this shit. Bad enough I grew up listening to it, but you’d think that once you become an adult, you’d be smarter about some stuff.

It wouldn’t matter to some women that I sucked dick when I’d spend all the time they’d let me spend eating that pussy and having so much fun doing it. I got to a point that when a woman would ask me why I eat pussy so good, I wouldn’t tell her the truth other than to say that I’d been doing it since I was ten. Leave it alone before you find out something that you probably aren’t going to like.

I remember one woman who, to me, looked like she was about to have a stroke after I truthfully told her that I was bisexual and a cocksucker. She ranted, raved, threw shit (but not at me) and was pissed that I tricked her into having sex, so on and so forth and she wanted to know why I didn’t tell her this before we had sex.

“Because I knew you were going to act just like this,” I said. “You were just fine and dandy until I told you the truth about my sexual past… and then you lost your fucking mind over something that doesn’t – and shouldn’t – make a difference. And I’ll be another motherfucker and point out that you didn’t say shit about my sexuality while I was making you cum…”

They say that the truth will set you free and it will… and it’s not always something pleasant. People want the truth and when you tell them the truth – and a truth that you’d think wouldn’t make one bit of difference – then the want to lose their shit… because I told them the truth. I found that if I lied – and then told them the truth, that could be worse.

I learned that when you’re bisexual and in certain situations, you can be damned if you do and damned if you don’t and over something that doesn’t make a bit of difference but, yeah, I get that for a lot of people, it does make a difference. But you were fine with us having sex until you learned a truth about me, huh?

And people would say that I was the one who was fucked up in the head…

Living With… Stuff: 16 February 26

I was washing my hands in the bathroom when I looked up at my reflection in the mirror and saw… number fifteen.

In the blink of an eye, my mind flashed back to the day I got number fifteen and the tattoo that disrupted the symmetry I had with my other fourteen tattoos. I was at the cancer center to not only meet my assigned cancer team but to be CAT scanned and fitted for a mask.

I’m used to being CAT scanned and being in MRI machines, so this part of my day wasn’t anything to write home about. The mask thing, well, that was different and that’s being nice about it. The nurse technician handling this part of my budding relationship with the cancer center was very good at her job and she explained the mask thing to me and I’m like, “Um, okay…” and she told me that it would be a bit warm.

A bit warm my left nut – that mask was a bit hot! Of course, she had told me not to move, and it was all I could do to stay still while the hot plastic of the mask’s material molded itself to my face. I wanted to laugh when she poked holes in the mask where my nostrils were given that the mask is a mesh and she had to work quickly to put “finishing touches” on the mask before it fully cooled.

I thought I was done. I was about to get off the CAT scanner table when she came over to me and said I had to stay put because she had to give me a tattoo. “This is something you should be familiar with since you have other tattoos,” she said.

That’s when she told me that she would be tattooing a targeting dot on me that the radiation machine would use when targeting the cancer in my neck… and that the dot would be permanent. I remember frowning upon hearing this because with the other fourteen tattoos I have, I got them in pairs and, symmetrically, seven on the left side, seven on the right… and now I have a fifteenth tattoo in the middle of my chest.

This whole radiation treatment thing just got very real and more so when I was escorted to the Infinity I room and the Infinity radiation machine that would be zapping me every day for seven weeks. The machine itself didn’t look daunting although when the technicians who would be zapping me got me on the table for a practice run of being on the table with my newly made mask, I was… having doubts – but I was committed to this process.

Then the shit hit the fan and, well, y’all know how that went and to the best of my ability to remember. I’m not sure why I had this flashback since I see number fifteen every day in the bathroom mirror and several times a day depending on my trips there. I see it, I know why it’s there, and… that’s about the size of it. The only other thought I had about number fifteen was how it messed up any plans I had to get eight on the left and eight on the right; with number fifteen on the front, would number sixteen have to be… on the back?

Lemme get back to you on that one…