Goodbye?

Blogs, blogs, blogs everywhere. Well thats how it used to be. When I started to blog I was an avid reader of blogs and thought why not start my own. I was seeking support at the time but also an outlet. For those purposes it has served me well, made some new online and offline friends, i've been mentioned in other blogs. It's been a bumpy ride, plenty of highs and lows. I've been told this sometimes reads like a sex blog, and that may be so, but i always felt like it was a window to my life. Kind of like my diary if i'd had one.

Fast forward over 5 years from when I began and i'm in a very different place in my life. I haven't blogged in 9 months! Not saying that nothing has happened worth blogging about, in fact lots has happened that I could've blogged about, but I haven't felt the need to. I think after 220 posts, 875 comments, over 100,000 words, maybe it's time to hang up my keyboard. So for those who've come along for the ride, thanks for reading, I may even surprise you with a post somewhere down the track, but no promises!

Me

I fucked up :(

I fucked up, big time. I've been chatting to a guy online for a while and we'd been trying to make plans to meet up and things just never worked out. Finally after about a couple months we finally were able to plan some drinks. Date and time was set, Friday night at the Greyhound. Easy enough. I met him there and we got a drink and started to chat. And suddenly it became clear to me. OMG he thinks my name is Jay. Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck!

Let's go back to the very beginning. My name is not Jay Murray. I guess you could call it a pseudonym I came up with years ago, back when no-one knew I was gay. It became a fake identity. It's the listed author of this blog, there's even a fake facebook account. But none of it is real. People that have actually met me, know who I really am. If I chat to anyone or meet anyone these days they know who I am, if i'm chatting on grindr or manhunt they get my real name (except the one guy who saw me on grindr and is my 'facebook friend' who thinks I'm Jay... kinda awkward to correct you so i've let sleeping dogs lie, sorry!).

Anyway back to this guy. I've got a profile on Aussiemen.com.au, I made it years ago but rarely use it. I've never met someone from it, and the people who message me on it aren't people i'd ever want to meet anyway (pretty much 17 year old twinks who want to be barebacked or 60+ year old men - no thanks). Anyway so one day I get a message from a random profile on there. Not much by way of info, and no pics. Thats always a bad sign, but I replied to his message anyway for some reason. He said he didn't have pics yet as they were awaiting approval (they always are) but he could email me some. Mmm, what if it ends up being some creep who I'd rather block? Do I really want him having my real contact details? I don't even know what he looks like! So I gave him the email address attached to the profile of this blog's author... Jay Murray.

We swapped pics, seemed like a nice guy. Emailed a bit, then I found him on grindr and we chatted some more there, eventually swapped numbers and chatted some more. If I wanted to meet someone I don't usually let things drag on so long without actually meeting them, but he was sick, then I was sick, then he was away, eventially we were able to make plans. Initially he'd wanted to hook up but I asked if he was up for drinks. He seemed like a decent guy, why does he need to be just a shag?

Fast forward to Friday night, around 2 months after his first message. We're finally meeting. And he thinks my name is Jay. Fuck! I'm 99% sure at an early point in our chats over the last couple of months i'd told him my actual name. But here it was biting me in the ass. I told him the whole story and the reasons for doing what I did but he was very weirded out by the whole thing. So I gave him an out, I told him i'd walk away then and there and call it a night if he wanted. But he didn't. So I thought things were ok.

Funnily enough we actually got along really well. Similar age, similar interests. Everything was going great. Drinking, maybe a smoke here and there, a bit of a shuffle on the dancefloor, met some other people it was all going well. Or so I thought.

At about 2.30am we were outside in a small group, and he went inside with another guy and a couple minutes later so did I. I couldn't find him, but eventually I found the other guy who told me he'd left the building. Well that was a dissappointment, I had no interest staying there any more so I left myself. I checked Grindr and couldn't see him anymore so I figured he'd blocked me. I sent him a text apologising for the situation and wished him well. Well that was kind of a waste of a night.

The next morning my phone vibrated and it was a message from him. The time stamp showed it had been sent the previous night and said -" I've had to leave, thanks for a good night". Well what am I supposed to make of that? Is it i've had to leave because you're a weirdo? Thanks for a good night lets do it again sometime, or thanks for a good night but never contact me again? Was Grindr playing up and had he really not blocked me?

So I asked. And I was right the first time. What a dissapointing way to end and the only person to blame is myself :(

Enough to make you want to turn straight!

I may sound like a whiny bitch, but life can sometimes be a struggle. Not sure if it's worse in the gay world but it sure feels like it. With everything going on, I thought I really need to meet some new people. I need to make some real friends. Real gay friends. I didn't think it was too much to ask, this post will recount some experiences i've had over the past 10 months or so that just make me question everything.

A couple were friends that I just expected more from. In Judaism after someone passes away the initial mourning period is called the shiva and lasts for 7 days. Traditionally during the shiva family members gather in one home and receive visitors (thanks Wikipedia). I guess there were some people I expected to see during the shiva. Some of those did visit and it was very much appreciated. Some (well one) told me he would come and I fully expected to see him. Only he never showed and it was dissappointing. Maybe I just expected more from someone who is Jewish because he knows what it's all about.

Another friend wanted to hang out and it was just bad timing, so i told him to try me in a week or 2 i'd be up for it. I next heard from him 6 months later. Maybe i'm being too critical, but these are people I just expected more from. They were considered my friends!

The rest I don't know what I expected. Gays in Melbourne who happen to be assholes probably outnumber the normal ones. The first guy was from Grindr. I told him i wasn't in the mood to date but looking to make friends. We made plans to meet up and and in the process of chatting it became clear that he still was looking to date, but willing not to call this a date. On further discussion when he finally got that I didn't want to date, he decided he couldn't be friends with me either. Whatever...

Onto the next one - this time a guy from manhunt. We'd been chatting a while and decided to meet for a drink. We set the date but not time or place. I'd given him my number but never got his. On the day we were supposed to meet I messaged him online and he replied that he was at a mate's place and when he got home he'd be in touch and we'd confirm everything. That was the last time I heard from him. He dissappeared for about a month, then reappeared all apologetic about what happened. Had some stuff going on, ok fine lets try again. Made plans the next week. Same thing happened, just dissappeared off the face of the earth.

The next one was from Scruff. Chatting for a couple weeks, eventually became facebook friends. As soon as I mention the possibility of meeting for a drink. Boom, radio silence. The next guy - can't remember how we first contacted each other but made plans to meet for drinks. Of course the day of the said planned meeting I message him to confirm that we're still on. No response. I gave him a few hours before messaging again. Still no response. I called, no answer. Figured this wasn't going to happen, so instead of heading towards where we were going to meet after work, I headed home. Later that night he called and made some lame excuse. Whatever, and then he gave me grief when I wasn't so excited about trying again.

Who should we pick on next? Ah yes. This guy first chatted on manhunt, then grindr, chatting for a while, made plans to meet for a drink. The day of, he messaged that he had to cancel. Very apologetic, he said it was unlike him, he wasn't the kind of guy that cancels at the last minute. He was definitely interested in meeting up with me and would reschedule. I'm sure you know how that ended. Messages never got replies. Mr 'I don't cancel on people at the last minute and really want to meet you' became 'Mr i'm going to ignore you'.

What the fucking fuck? Is it just guys in this city? Is it just gay guys in general? Where are the nice guys and why can't I find them? I'd like to think i'm one of the nice guys, but maybe we're all just assholes. Surely it can't be this hard for straights.

I'm not always such a complainer. Next posts will have some positive results :)

Untitled... just because

Shit fuck shit. There's really no other words for it. It's been a crazy shitty depressing 6 months. So many things are flying through my head right now I don't even know where to begin...

In August last year my father was diagnosed with leukaemia (yeah that's how we spell it). Come December he was gone. Just like that. 3 and a half months of hope, faith, optimism and hopelessness, anguish and despair. He was only 63.

Diagnosis began with a bit of a shock. No symptoms or anything that someone might think he had a disease of some sort. It came up in a blood test he had, which was clear only 3 months earlier. Diagnosis was confirmed with a biopsy and suddenly he's having chemo.

I never expected it to go the way it did. He was having heavy duty chemo, I think for a week or 10 days straight. Surely that would help. But it didn't. It made him so weak and only destroyed a small fraction of the cancer that was there. There were periods where he was in and out of the ICU, dealing with pneumonia among other things.

Then it was time to try a different treatment. But he only managed one round before they said there was no point. He wouldn't survive the next round, and continuing it could actually hasten the end.

And that was it - there was nothing more anyone could do but wait and make him as comfortable as possible. Ensure everyone was able to say their goodbyes and wait. At one point when things weren't looking good, my brother jumped on a plane from the US and spent a couple weeks here. When things improved slightly he went back and returned with the rest of his family. He made it back just in time to have a couple days before dad started to rapidly decline.

I never want to have the need to visit that hospital again. I spent so much time there, visiting on the way to work, during lunch, after work. Weekends and Jewish holidays I stayed at a hotel to be nearby. Towards the end I was sleeping at the hospital at night. Not that there weren't nurses there to take care of him, but if he woke up agitated, he needed someone familiar to help him calm down. Someone to convince him to allow them to give him pain meds or oxygen. Otherwise he'd just refuse.

There were times I was scared. Being in the same room and thinking he looks in such bad shape I think he's going to die tonight. And i'm here alone, i've never been more scared in my life.

He passed away early on a Sunday morning, only hours after most of us had left the hospital to go home to get some rest. Most of what came after that is all a blur. I know it happened, but I don't feel it.

I don't even know why I'm even blogging about this. Maybe I needed to get it all out of my system so I can try and move on.

Goodbye Dad

Making new mates part 2

It's been a while since I last blogged, been alot of stuff happening, which you'll find out about in the next blog post, so you gotta stay tuned. Making friends is always a bit of a mixed bag.

I've been hanging out some more with the guys mentioned in the previous post. I met up with J for dinner one night at Pelican on Fitzroy St. It's a nice little tapas-style, share plates restaurant.

We had a good time, and gave him a lift home. And thats where it ends for some reason. We texted a bit back and forth after that but eventually I just stopped trying. I don't know what I did or if he wasn't interested or what. I guess i'll never know.

Moving onto S. S started things of with a bang. So many things he wanted to do, make new friends, meet new people, hang out. It sounded perfect for a new gay mate. It started off well. One Friday night he decided he was having a pyjama party. He lives just up the road so why the hell not. They were watching Bridesmaids on DVD, and everyone has to make a dessert.

 Mmm, when was the last time I baked something? Ages ago, and never in this oven. Time to test out a recipe. I walked over in my pyjamas, as one does. It was a smashing success, rich, decadent, chocolate brownies. Though I think I had chocolate overload that night.

Lots of chocolate, lollies, cake, wine and more wine. Got to meet some new people (funny thing, the host had met everyone there on grindr, except his fag hag). Since then things have sort of started to tail off. We've hung out a bit but more in a group setting at the Greyhound usually. I don't know what it is, we've just never managed to hang out 1 on 1 since then.

Moving onto the next guy. This will be J #2. J #2 is an American guy who moved to Oz not long ago. He hosted a friday night Shabbat dinner at his place a couple months back. Again, I had a nice time, meeting different people, the food was great and then I made my way home.

And then we have J#3. We met on grindr, chatted for a bit, ended up at his place for a few drinks one Sunday arvo. And that was basically it. We bumped into each other a few times at the railway hotel since then, but other than that, pretty much nothing. A random hi hows it going on grindr but thats pretty much it.

Lastly we have D. A guy i met at the railway, eventually said hi to and swapped numbers. We tried to meet up a few times and he always cancelled. Eventually I stopped trying...

I don't know if it's me, or its the people gay guys I tend to meet, but more often than not I end up thinking why bother in the first place :(

Making new mates, part 1

As i've blogged about time and time again, i'm always looking to make new friends. You just can't have too many and these ones are all normal!

The first one i'll talk about i'll refer to as B. I woke up one Sunday morning to a message from him on grindr. Yep i'd fallen asleep with without closing it so had quite a few. He was visiting from Sydney and wanted to know if I wanted to meet up with him and his mates for a drink that arvo. I had to think twice about it, its one thing if you know one of a group, but to not know anyone, I wasn't sure. But I bit the bullet anyway and met them at Wonderland on Chapel St.

It turned out he was a really nice guy and a few of his others friends were there too and we hit it off. They loved stories of my suicide bomber friend from the night before (see here). Of course B was flying out that night so after a good few drinks he caught a taxi and went to the airport. I stuck around with the others, met some others who were there, and then suddenly B calls. His flight is cancelled due to the volcano so he's coming back to rejoin the party. And rejoin he did, i was probably there drinking for 7 hours or so, lots and lots of wine. It must have affected the other guys quite a bit as twice someone kicked the table and ended up spilling wine all over me, but it was still a fun night.

The next guy I'll call D. I met him on manhunt. We'd been chatting a bit before I left for London, but decided to make some plans once I returned. This time we met at Orange Cafe in Windsor. Again, a really nice guy, a bit interesting and quirky, turns out he was Jewish too. Had some food and glass of wine and made plans to meet again soon. A week or so later we met up for lunch near where he worked. And then he gave me a tour of his office. I won't elaborate more on that, lol. I haven't heard from him in a while and haven't attempted to make contact but it's all good.

The next ones are S and J. They're kinda intertwined in that I'd been chatting on J who I met on Manhunt but was yet to meet him in person. The I met S on grindr (as one does). Anyway we'd been chatting for a while (still talking about S here) and OMG his profile pic is amazing. Torso only but wow! Just by looking at a pic like that tells me 'chat all you want, but he's way out of your league'. But chat is fine, a little flirting here n there, a few pics, and then he says to me that he knows he's going out on a limb but would I be up for meeting socially. Would I ever! (and no I wasn't thinking befriend him first, shag him later). Well we spoke first, we have very similar senses of humour, full of little pokes and digs at each other, we got along really well.

One night he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Now that could've been a euphamism for something that I wasn't aware of (should've checked urban dictionary before I accepted), but I agreed. Since we met on Grindr after all, I knew he lived fairly close, and he was taking his dog for a walk. I'm not a dog person in general but he has the cutest little dog you've ever seen, it almost looks like a toy. We had a good walk, about 5km, chatting about everything under the sun. Of course he's jewish too, lol (who do so many people turn out to be jewish?!?). At one point he decided to take the dog to Alma Park for a bit as we were passing. For those that don't know, Alma Park is known to be a cruising area, especially at night. At the back of my mind I was thinking what is going on over here? Are we really going to Alma Park at night? What exactly is he trying to do? Heck if he wanted to do what this place is known for, all he had to do was ask, lol. But no, he just wanted to let his dog run around about, but it was too dark so it stayed on the leash, we did a circuit and left. Eventually I dropped him off home.

I think thats a great friends score if there ever was one. Will there ever be anything more? Probably not, we're sort of sexually incompatible, lol. But a good mate is a good mate :)

I made plans to meet up with J that weekend. We decided on the Greyhound which I hadn't been to in ages. And when I say ages I mean at least a year! Back then it wasn't the greatest place, but they'd done a renovation since then so I was curious to check it out. Of course then S texts me asking if I wanna go to the greyhound. So the night turns into a 3some (no not what you're thinking). I drove there with S and we had a drink till J showed up fashioinably late. Mmm what can I say, he's a really nice guy and it was a really enjoyable night. Drinks, dancefloor, drinks on the dancefloor (you don't wanna know), sometimes 2 of us, sometimes 3 of us. J and I stayed till they closed at 3. What else is there to do when you a place like that at 3am? Get a kebab from next door of course!

Now i'm not one to get carried away, but he was a nice guy :) Fast forward to the next morning where I made my way home... and that's the end of that episode. More coming soon!

J

The date from hell... that wasn't

Just so we're clear, it wasn't a date. Now that's out of the way I can begin.

A guy messages me on gaydar, and of course we start chatting a bit. As you know i'm keen to meet new people and make new friends, so why not. He lived in the northern suburbs but one weekend he told me he was going to be near where I live, so we made plans to meet. I suggested a drink, he said how about coffee? And coffee it was to be.

We planned to meet at Chocolateria San Churro which is best described as a chain of chocolate cafes, which in addition to the usual cafe fare they have Spanish hot chocolate and churros, I've loved churros ever since I first had then in Buenos Aires. There is one on Chapel St which is close by.

Well I got there, and the place was packed, and he was sitting on a bench nearby so we got a table outside. I had a hot chocolate, he didn't want anything. We this is going to go great I thought. He was honestly one of the rudest people i've ever met. For starters he cruised every single cute guy that walked past. Actually, make that every guy. He didn't just check them out, he literally stared at them. Literally turning his head as they walked by. I mean really?!

Things didn't get better at all. He was an Aussie but of French/Palestinian heritage and had lived both in France and Gaza for many years. He was wearing one of the Yasser Araft teatowels as a scarf, lol. I didn't tell him I was Jewish, I figured he might press the detonator.

Don't get me wrong, i'm not a racist person. I'm generally a very friendly person and get along well with most people. But this guy was just an asshole. Apparently he doesn't get on with anglos well because all they do is drink and think about where their next drink will be. He gets along more with people from a similar background to him. He also said he didn't have many friends and then told me about one of his good friends he'd planned on meeting up with but they had to cancel. Then it turned out this friend was a cousin.

One of the great quotes of the night was that he would only become friends with a) people he could have an intelligent conversation with (which is a bit overboard but whatever) and b) people that were open to his political views and beliefs. Within 15 minutes of meeting him he'd already told me his thoughts on September 11, the wars on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Israel was killing all the Palestinians. He worked in pharmaceuticals so I'm sure he had something to do with chemical weapons R&D, lol.

I was dying to get out of there (lest he detonate, lol) it was just too awkward. Any conversation between us was started by me, otherwise we would've sat in silence. After almost an hour I figured enough was enough, and we went our separate ways. And he wonders why he has no friends....

Had it been a date, I would've called it the date from hell. Alas it was just a random stranger from gaydar who probably will never have any friends unless his social skills improve immensely. The moral of the story is to try to be more picky when it comes to meeting random people for a bevvy. Or just chat more before you decide to meet. And maybe stick to people on this side of the river :) I'm glad though in further blog posts things have improved immensely.

Jay