I've Been Tagged by Thivai Abhor... Please Bear With Me.

I usually don't play, (well with others) but since it's Thivai Abhor... well...
Dialogic: A Quick Game of Blog Tag

Let's see, 5 things about me... hmmmm...

1). I am the oldest of 3 boys. When we were young, I had to 'watch' my brothers because both of my parents worked. Needless to say, our house was the neighborhood 'hangout' for all the kids on my block. Looking back now, I can see that we were the "crazy family down the street", and the other kids' parents restricted their kids from playing with us.
That never stopped any of them, though...
...And how the hell did I get into cooking?
Well, if I didn't cook, we didn't eat. Simple...

2). When I was in second grade, our Nun told us a Bible Story about how Jacob burned a lamb on the altar, to atone for his sins. Later that day, I remarked in the playground that I had never seen our altar in the Church on fire with or without a sacrificial lamb burning... A few of the older kids heard this, and egged me on to start the altar on fire, which I did (I was totally obsessed with fire when I was young). Well, I got beat so badly by the Nuns, the Priest, My Parents and my Grandfather that I couldn't sit down for a week. You would think that that would have cured my obsession with fire... Today, I'm a saute cook and I have absolutely no use for any 'organized' religion, whichever one it might be, go figure.

3). In college I studied Comparative Religion, Philosophy, Yoga and Art, I was a wild little Hippie. If there was any cause that meant anything... I'd be at the demonstration. You could bet on that. When Kent State & Jackson happened, I was out in the street demonstrating. When Jane Fonda and the anti-war movement came to town, I was there. When Angela Davis was thrown in jail, I was that white brother on the street corner asking for your signature on the petition to free her. I was all about getting the Communist Party on the ballot in CT for election year 1972 (even though I ended up voting for Geroge McGovern...) And when I was the only white person there representin'... That never bothered me. I was out there in the community doing service with all the Black Panthers and the Welfare Mothers... Always colorblind and still am after all these years.

4). Finally settling down (only an opinion) in the mid-seventies, I became that Pagan bartender at the local biker bar, you know... the one with the dancing girls, and after being kidnapped quite a few times by our local chapter of the EZ riders club (very rough trade), while beating the clientele back from the 'stage' with a stick, I met a girl I thought I could settle down with, but she took me on a journey half way around the country and back again; and it seemed that there was more to life for both of us than just that. Our son is now 31 (and lives next door to us in the apartment), and my ex and I are both 'remarried' (or re-partnered, whatever the hell you'd like to call it - it's the same damn thing); she to an 'ex-gay' man in Arizona, and I, being the 'Heathen-Pagan Deadhead' that I am... to a certain ex-Ukrainian Orthodox Priest from Texas. (but that's another story...)
In the mid-eighties (1985), I attended my first ever Gay Pride Parade in NYC as a member of BWMT (Black & White Men Together) New Haven Chapter, and got involved in the AIDS awareness campaign (SILENCE = DEATH), since my best friend & roomate from college was infected; and it seemed that the whole universe was ignoring the fact that this fucking disease was stealing more & more lives away every day. Back then herpes got the biggest promotion as disease of the century, not that it's not a serious condition also, but that's the way it was in those God-forsaken "Regan Years"...
(RIP Alfons... I still MISS & LOVE you with all my HEART, Bro). Not a day goes by that I am not thinking about our lost brothers & sisters. I think most all of us have lost someone we've cared about over the years to this dreaded killer with no boundaries...

5). And now... I've been in the restaurant business nearly 35 years, and I'm still trying to find a way out; but I think that I'm cursed to live out the remainder of my time in the Old Cooks & Waitresses Home. The 'culinary field' was a good outlet for me to use my artistic and creative talents earlier on - and it has always been the one thing that I've always happened to fall back on - but now I just want to do paintings and sculpture, which I have denied myself from doing for various and sundry reasons all these years. My interest in music has also been supressed, and has also been rearing it's ugly head here of late...
It's no use, though... I'll probably be buried with a silver spatula up my ass...

[:::]

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IN THE AIRWAVES:

THE MOODY BLUES - "A QUESTION OF BALANCE" (1970)

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