Since I’ve been opening up to ya’ll like I never have in my entire life, I gonna use you as my confessional.
In 2014, under emotional duress, I left my comfortable home with a beautiful studio with a lighting system that took me years to perfect for the craft I love more than everything: my photography. I really do live and breathe for it, and especially my romantic and erotic contributions to the LGBTQ community. It was the blood that made my heart beat. It was the essence of my soul, my breath..the thing that gave me purpose.
Since that time I’ve been moving like a restless nomad from one furnished room in one apartment after another living with friends and strangers, hoping for the day I could have a home to myself again… to do my work again… to restore meaning and purpose to my life.
I’ve only been able to do three shoots since that time. And my heart aches with the loss…every day… I feel that loss…every day.
And now, rather than walk into hope, AND I had hoped by now I could resume my work, I am frantically looking for another furnished room in another home owned by strangers.
Back when I first left, I envisioned that by now, or earlier, I’d be setting up new and more beautiful shoots to share with you… that I’d be writing more stories that still long to be told… and that I could be inviting each and everyone of you to sit and join me on my porch for coffee and gossip.
This is hard for me. I have to acknowledge things that defy the dream I held so close to my heart as hope….
That noise you hear is a sigh… But I will never give up the dream.. Hope springs….
Once upon a time I was a photographer. My work appeared in magazines and on book covers and thousands of blogs. I used to say I was the most famous UNfamous person you could meet. People knew my work, but had never seen or known anything about me. I liked it that way. In my heart, I really am an artist. I like to be known for what I do, and not who I am or how I look or dress or live. I was very private. I liked it that way. Privacy let me write 13 books. They’re very good books. One of them, Memorizing You seems to be the go-to book that everyone directs someone to if they want to read their first gay romance. I am truly honored by that. After the Pandemic, I became mainly a book illustrator because you can’t photograph people when you wear masks and socially distance. So many things changed for me over the years. From a series of bad choices (people) I lost my home and studio and began moving around the country year after year trying to find a way to get back on my feet financially. Book sales won’t do that, I guarantee you, and when you don’t have a studio and then , of course, a Plague, my main source of income in photography was gone. Nothing I could do about that. So I cut corners, again and again and again. Got rid of my car. I couldn’t afford maintenance, gas, insurance and so it had to go. I moved in with a housebound man who I could take care of with a rent reduction and him paying the bulk of the bills and for groceries I couldn’t afford. He was a gay man and a friend. And had just got out of the hospital and I thought I could help get him back on his feet and healthy again. I thought it would give me time and space to try to earn back some savings and plan to have my own place again. Have my own life. Possibly date again. Everything I’ve given up for many moons now.
I dreamed every night of having my own home again, my own bed. My own kitchen to cook in. Having people over. Going on with a life I left behind like a decade ago when things took their left turn.
I spent the last few years I like to say.. doing my Cher imitation. Getting back into shape, taking care of myself… “turning back time”. I didn’t think I could do it, but I did. I actually have teenagers in the gym asking for workout advice from me because as one said: “When I grow up, I wanna look like you!” It was gratifying because it was one of those things I wasn’t certain could be done. I have people who have obviously want to date me, but I’m broke and I live in a home where no one can visit because of the man I take care of. Most people say, if someone really wants to date you it doesn’t matter if you’re broke. I have news for ya’ll.. It matters to me. I don’t want someone to support me. I want to have an equal relationship. So it matters. And so, here I am after all this time and work to get back into the dating pool….and I can’t. When I first met this man I am now caregiver to, I’d rented a room from him in a very large house which had several other men also renting from him. It was beautiful and comfortable. He was an out gay man who’d previously been married and had two grown daughters when he decided to come out, divorce and move on. We had several other gay men in the house with us, including one of my model friends from when I used to do my wonderful shoots. The man could move about then, although slowly with a cane. But then he fell ill and got sepsis and was taken to the hospital. He was there for several months and because of this, the big house was eventually shut down. He asked his daughter to find him an apartment close to her and he asked me to move into that apartment and wait for him to get out of the hospital and help with his recovery. He knew I was financially strapped and made the deal to cut my rent down a portion. All I had to do was pay the internet bill, along with my own bills, cook meals for him and help with his recovery. I knew I could do this. It was,as they say, a sign of providence. But life doesn’t work the way you think, or hope it should. Instead of getting better once he got out of the hospital, he was beset with one new health crisis after another. He began falling, and being over three hundred pounds, we had to call in the fire dpt. to help him get back up. Where I’d once been able to walk him to a shower to bathe him, ended with another fall and put him in a chair which he became dependent upon. We had a portable toilet that we put a couple of feet away from him rather than him try to make it to the bathroom. That worked for a while until he fell again. That made a solution: disposable diapers which I’d have to change regularly and bath him in his chair, Each new problem I believed could be temporary, if we both worked at it. However, over the course of the year, instead of getting better, more problems began to arise. Bedsores from being in the chair which I had to learn to clean, treat and dress on a regular basis. All of this new to me. I’d never done anything like this before. And time consuming, eating up hours and hours of my day which I needed to try to do my job and make money to get back on my feet. I was determined. I cannot tell you how deeply emotional I become on each passing birthday, knowing that I still have had no opportunity to meet or date or be with anyone because of all of this. I yearn for it. Let me tell you why: I’ve had a number of relationships in my life. But they were that. Relationships. There was no love story or romance. There has never been, in my opinion, anyone who ever expressed being truly in love with me. I have never been kissed by anyone who has said those words. Words that I have written in one gay romance novel after another. So I sense I’m getting older and yet no closer to ever hearing those words,,,or experiencing the one thing that almost everyone I have ever known has had…. to be in love. OMG. You have no idea how much of a fantasy that becomes when your life has emptied out because of everything else that has crowded in. So I work and work and work because I have that dream and I can’t shake it, break it, or give up on it. I take it with me to sleep every night, hoping I am a day closer to it tomorrow.
After the Pandemic tho, money became even more scarce. Book sales dropped, I was dependent now on selling cover art which sometimes took me a whole day to complete. And sometimes you could only make one sale every two weeks. So our household (mainly me) became dependent on my housemates Social Security. He could buy the groceries and I could cook and make them work for two people. I’d hoped I could nurse him back to health and be able to devote more time to my work and recover some income. But more and more health conflicts arose. Unfortunately, I don’t see this reversing now. Without burdening you with details, because I started this little revelatory escapade to share you with the private side of me no one ever saw, I will say: I am now facing a reality that is quite stark…more challenging than I anticipated and daunting. Should anything untoward happen, I do not have any savings to move somewhere else. I don’t even have a car to move. I have worked nonstop trying to remedy this, but to no avail. I refuse to give in or give up. That’s why I began this Ko-Fi site. It really is like a personal journey of one man who does not give up. I believe I have a thousand things to offer to my friends and readers…and hopefully, supporters. I promise you I will give you my all to make it the best…because it is the only promise I have of getting back on the road and once again finding Life…and cross your fingers… at long last…Love…
So there you have it… stuff I didn’t want anyone to know. But it’s like Scarlett O’Hara when you’re alone in the world… you become dependent on the kindness of strangers…(and friends)!
thatdarnmuse 