On the Pulse of Mourning

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Instagram

You wake up the next morning, Wednesday morning, and you hope it has been a nightmare. The rain falls outside in the black Oregon morning like tears and you realize it was not a dream. You log into social media and see the grief, the fear, and occasional glib comments, the jokes about moving to Canada. There is little uglier than the gloating of uneducated white people when their side wins.

How did we get here? you think to yourself. I thought this was locked down. But that’s it, isn’t it? You had been living in an insulated bubble for so long with like-minded friends whose values were the same. You lived in Los Angeles for 12 years before Portland, and now having been in Portland for 3 1/2 years; it has been easy to think that the rest of the country could see through the charlatan peddling snake oil. Hell, it appeared sometimes like even he was incredulous about his odds, that he was there just to symbolically show everyone how ridiculous the system was. On election day, you went to work with confidence bordering on hubris. That evening, as you headed to a bar to meet friends to watch the results, you stared at your phone with a creeping dread and disbelief. Continue reading

When Three’s Not a Crowd

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Instagram

You bike home from the coffee shop in the crisp early fall drizzle, your legs pumping the pedals as fast as they will go, which is not very fast. You have a rainjacket on but you also know that you’ll be soaked by the time you get home. This was not a Good Date. It started inauspiciously anyway, when he told you that he just came from another date. Having a date tell you he just came from another date is like watching someone coming out of a bathroom stall chewing on food. Continue reading

A Very Long Engagement

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I’ve been in Portland three years. I love the summers here; they seem like they go on forever and then disappear in the blink of an eye. They say summer is a great season to fall in love. It’s been a while since I fell in love. I’m not on the dating apps: they alternately bore and frustrate me. But once in a while, someone catches my eye in real life and I give it a go. This is one of those stories, this is a story of my worst date, if not ever, then certainly this month. This is the story of my date with Mike Schneider. Continue reading

How to Break Up

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Instagram

Damnit. It’s over. I know it in my heart, I can feel it every time he and I touch: the magic is gone. What do I do when our love has reached its expiration date? How do I tell someone who trusts me completely and might still be crazy in love with me that I don’t feel the same way? 

Okay, hold on a sec. Is it actually over? The more empathetic you are, the earlier you’ll be able to tell when the feelings are fading for you. If you catch it early enough, you can talk it out with your partner and see if the fading feelings are mutual, or if it’s something just one of you feels, and the two of you agree to try to rekindle the feelings.

Uh but the feelings are fading, dude.

Um, did you just call me “dude”? Anyway, don’t confuse fading love with just being in that comfortable, “boring” stage: Continue reading

Pride

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Instagram

You do this: you ride the bumpiest, smallest plane on the planet from San Francisco to Albuquerque. You have white knuckles and the Xanax is taking the edge off the anxiety you feel, but just barely. You wonder if the plane falls out of the sky will it spin or tumble. Maybe it will just dive down nosefirst, and for a beautiful minute everyone will be weightless in the freefall inside the cabin. You decide that if that happens, you will unbuckle your seatbelt, you will enjoy the last few moments of your life like an astronaut. Continue reading

Digital Witless

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Instagram

It’s usually like this: you catch his eye, usually it’s online, maybe it’s in person, you get his attention. He sees past your currently questionable facial hair choices to the real you. Maybe he is good at texting back, though more often than not he’s not: “Sorry I’m bad at reminding you I’m interested in you wait why am I still single?” You flirt back and forth and you’re excited for when the two of you spend time together, which is frustratingly seldom because your work schedules are opposite. You’re eager to explore this because this one is local, for once you’re not FaceTiming or coordinating time zones or coming up with clever photo ideas to send him selfies. A few hours before a dinner date with him he texts you his apology and promises to stay connected. “I didn’t feel the chemistry but let’s still be friends” is nice to hear, but it’s also the sound of never hearing from someone again for the rest of your life.

Continue reading

Oh, the Places You’ll Go

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEMAxEZujdB/?taken-by=blcksmth&hl=en

 

You’re in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, you are called in by a tight-lipped nurse. You sit in the examining room, look around. It’s the usual suspects: the boxes of latex gloves, the canister of cotton swabs, the paper-covered vinyl-cushioned examining table. The doctor’s assistant comes in, updates your information. She’s warm and sharp as a tack: she remembers that you live in the neighborhood, that you moved from California a few years back. She notices you haven’t had a refill for the Xanax you take to fly lately, asks if you need  more. “No,” you exhale, “I’m not flying as much anymore. That relationship ended.” Suddenly without warning David’s ghost is there in the room with the two of you, standing behind her. He never says anything, this ghost that appears sometimes, his blue eyes just stare at you. Continue reading

Synonyms For Spring


Instagram

You do it like this: you get through the anniversaries, one at a time. Your first FaceTime date, his first trip out to Portland from Milwaukee, your first trip together to New York. Sometimes your brain plays tricks on you, you dream of an alternate universe where the two of you are still together, but it happens less and less often. He’s like an actor making appearances in your dreams that the writers are trying to write out slowly, making just cameos, then finally his contract running out.

In the meantime, you cautiously put your toe back into the dating waters. The last time was way too soon, it was a disaster and you weren’t ready yet, you took things too fast (dated pop-culture references not to say when having sex with someone for the first time: 1. “Brace for impact”  2. “Can you smell what The Rock is cooking?” 3. “Autobots, ROLL OUT!”). This time you decide to take it slower. It’s funny, you muse to yourself before a beer with a handsome guy you met on Tinder, I was one of those guys who used to be like “Let’s go on a date, let’s not call it “hanging out”. Now you realize that this is all the energy you have for anyone anymore. You can’t call it a date yet. Maybe you’re waiting for the thunderclap that hit you when you first saw David in person for the first time. Maybe you’re scared you’ll never feel that again for anyone. Continue reading

Dear BLCKSMTH: Bad Advice For Good People

 

Dear BLCKSMTH: What’s the biggest mistake you’ve regretted?

Tweeting a comparison last week between the death of the baby dolphin in Argentina and the demise of my last relationship. Haha! Heh. Ugh.

Dear BLCKSMTH: You look really young for your advanced age, and you seem so full of energy! What’s your secret?

Honestly, between my day job and the writing, I don’t even know when I find time to hate myself so much! But the secret to looking young:

  1. Cry a lot, it’s nature’s “collagen injection” for the area around your eyes!  2. Get in debt  3. Rub your face in silky cat fur at least twice daily  4. Cry some more!

Dear BLCKSMTH: I’m on Scruff and I’ve noticed a guy who I would really love to get with. He’s really flirty and seems genuinely interested back, but when I see him out, he clams up, doesn’t make eye contact, and seems really awkward. What is going on? Signed, J. in Portland Continue reading

My Own Worst Enemy

 

You keep it together like this: you wake up, you get groceries, you pick up cat food for Ned from the vet. You do this all successfully without crying! You celebrate these little victories since the breakup, these small signs that you’re getting better. You get online on the dating apps (major shout out to the dudes trying to look serious and smoldering in their profile pictures, who come off looking crazy and murder-y). You look at the New York guys to see who might be available to date once you move out there, but instead you’re interrupted by a vivid mental image of every single one of them taking turns on your ex who lives there, all of them lining up for a chance at him, the line extending around the block, extending across the Brooklyn bridge into Manhattan, all the men eager with hungry, mean eyes and bodies far more muscular than yours, and at the head of the line your former love’s door, occasionally opening, letting one out, letting another in, him closing the door gently like he used to with only you, and now a revolving door of sex with anyone but you. You shake your head of this image, grab your keys, head to your first therapy appointment. You have no clue what you talk to therapists about, it’s probably a bad fit because he’s not even gay and what the fuck would he know about your life. You go up to his office, greet each other, look at his walls lined with books. Maybe one of the books has the right sequence of words to make you better again, the magic incantation to make you as good as you were with David. The therapist says: “What would you like to talk about?”

You burst the fuck into tears. Continue reading

My Brother’s Keeper, My Brother’s Killer, Part 5: The End of Everything

 

Part 5 of 5. To read previous parts, click here for Part 1.

It’s the holiday season in 1991, and I’m a freshman in college. I’m coming back home to Albuquerque from spending time in Los Alamos, New Mexico, with my first boyfriend Max. I met Max’s family there, saw Star Trek 6 with him in an empty movie theater while I whispered the complicated galactic politics to him. We secretly made out whenever possible: to this day, I have a soft, nostalgic spot for the Drakkar Noir cologne he wore. We get back to our dorms on the UNM campus, and I get the call from my sister: something is wrong, come to the house right away.

I open the front door to my parents’ house, and my life is never the same after that. I see my sister’s tear-stained face, she’s in the living room with her husband Bob. My Dad is stoic but barely keeping it together while my grandmother shuffles around in her slippers, not understanding exactly what happened. My mom is wandering from room to room in the old Victorian house, incoherent, apoplectic, wailing with grief. I know then that my big brother John is dead. This is what it looks like when a family explodes from the inside out. Continue reading

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

 

I was honored to be interviewed for Matt Baume’s Sewers Of Paris podcast series. *Thrill* as I recount stories of my childhood sci-fi crushes! (I didn’t give Quantum Leap-era Scott Bakula’s legs due credit in the podcast; apologies Scott) *Wonder* as I recall formative music of my youth like Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814! *Cringe* as I audibly start crying when I talk about my ex! My gift to you is the feeling of being profoundly uncomfortable, so please click here to listen to the podcast.

Back In The Saddle

Tears of happiness stream down your face as you think: thank you God. You are sitting across from him on his bed in his apartment in Bed-Stuy, you flew here a week after he called you and said he was sorry, that he’s had a rough time without you in his life, that he’s missed you since the breakup. You didn’t tell your friends about the call, you secretly flew out on a redeye after work one day. You went to his apartment, and after hasty greetings to his roommates (who scrammed the fuck out of there quickly), the two of you went to his bedroom and talked about everything: the expectations, the communication that was absent until it seemed too late, the pressure that social media puts on a public relationship. You find a common ground, you make commitments to mend what was missing, you hold hands, you cry together. The two of you call your families, your close friends, agree to keep it off of social media for the time being, maybe forever. Later, you hold him in your arms, you smell the familiar smell of his neck, of his hair and his sweat, and you get a full night’s sleep for the first time in almost two months. Continue reading

Life, the Universe, and Everything

 

Do this, exactly: Wake up on your forty-first birthday in 2014 on Thanksgiving, and finally feel happy, feel ready for what’s next. Realize that although there’s a lot you have in common, break up with a very sweet man who you’ve been seeing for a few months. Hunker down and make some fun art, take some silly pictures, spend Christmas in a snowless Portland winter. Spend time with friends, miss your family who you can’t see very often around the holidays because of your day job. Continue reading

How It Ends.

 

The text appears mid-afternoon, when you’re at work: “Hey, can we talk?” You go home in a daze, set your things down, lift the phone to your ear when it rings. He says words, you say words back, hang up. Just like that, it’s done: you woke up this morning in love with a man you’d loved for almost a year, whose family you had met, a man you thought you would have a long future with, and tonight you will go to bed no longer in love with him, you will go to bed alone. This is how things end. Continue reading

Dear BLCKSMTH: Bad Advice for Good People

 

First appeared in PQMonthly.

 

Dear BLCKSMTH, how many glasses of red wine can you mix with Xanax?

All of them.

Dear BLCKSMTH, what’s with the no vowels?

It’s a dated holdover from when I thought that was cool a few years ago, and that’s what I called my blog. Keep in mind, this was years after omitting vowels from words was actually cool. It’s a silly and charming affectation, like people who wear suspenders, or glasses without prescription lenses, or vegetarianism.

Hey BLCKSMTH, my boyfriend and I have been together for three years, and have been talking lately about opening our relationship up. What do you think? Continue reading

Love In The Age Of Scruff, Part 3

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Instagram

Disclaimer: I don’t consider it particularly noble or funny anymore to post photos of screenshots of private conversations on dating apps. Nevertheless, this series of posts strikes a chord in a lot of people, so I have kept the screenshots in.

You know the old story: boy breaks up with boy. Boy, single, downloads a dating app at the suggestion of his ex. Boy stays single for three years but at least get a lot of writing material out of being single, writes a lot about simultaneously pooping and sexting. Boy meets boy on the app. Boy invites boy to visit, and boys fall in love and start a relationship. Boys discuss deleting app, but then boys do something unexpected: they stay on the app. Continue reading

Deliver Us

 

Day 1: You’re at your job, and flying out to see your mom in San Antonio the next morning, something that you’re little nervous about. Not because it’s your mom and you have a complicated relationship with her, but because it’s flying during the day. You prefer red-eye flights because a few years ago, flying through the Rockies, you and an airplane full of strangers experienced the worst turbulence you ever had in your collective lives, and after that you refused to board a plane for a few years. You could only go as far as you could drive or take a train, so your traveling circle was pretty myopic. You eventually had to travel for work, so you went to a doctor, described your fear in tangible physiological terms, got prescribed what you now laughingly describe as horse tranquilizers. They were way too powerful for casual travel, so you’ve since downgraded to Xanax, which helps you sleep on red-eye flights, but again, this is different. This will be a daytime flight, you probably won’t be asleep. Ugh. Continue reading

How To Get Your Ass Kicked

 

I’m getting off the A train in Brooklyn around Hoyt, and I look back to see if David is following nearby (he is). He’s wearing a bright teal t-shirt, and I’m wearing my short shorts with a white and blue striped pullover, so naturally we fit in among the sea of navy and black bustling around us. “Why are you walking so fast?” he asks, probably in Italian or German. He’s obsessed with learning and speaking other languages. I’m obsessed with frustrating him to tears by pretending I don’t understand or can’t hear him. “Because New York” I say, and he silently nods his understanding.

I look behind me again to see if the G we’re connecting with stops here or further down the platform. The G’s I’ve been on so far are frustratingly tiny for the amount of riders in this part of Brooklyn, so much so that it’s sometimes just two cars. It wouldn’t surprise me if the MTA reduced service to just a Little Tykes train that holds a few toddlers, running over the rats along its route with its plastic tires. Ok, yes, the G stops further down. I start to turn around when I notice a guy in a pristine white t-shirt and basketball shorts gesturing at me. I think at me? I’m not sure. Until he shouts “Yeah, you!” Continue reading

Fight Or Flight, Part 2

 

Part Two of Three. Read Part One here. First published in PQMonthly.

When I woke up that morning, getting into a physical altercation with a bigot was the last thing I thought I would be doing. I had been minding my own business, puttering around my house, when the word “faggot” came through my open windows on that hot day. It was barked in a harsh male baritone in the context of a conversation, and then it was repeated again. It had startled me so much to hear that ugly word in my own space, in the last place I would expect to hear that word of hate, that I had spontaneously stood up from a sitting position in the middle of my living room. I stood there for a minute, let the feelings wash over me. Continue reading

An Open Letter To My Enemy

 

Dear ___________,

Good morning! Long time no see. It still seems surreal, doesn’t it? Just one week ago, the SCOTUS ruled in favor of gay marriage. A lot of my friends have been celebrating, and even if there’s still a long way to go (like securing rights for trans persons, and the sinking realization that we’re seeking validation from an archaic, broken, systemically racist system…awkward!), it was a monumental day. Of course there’s my more cynical side that reared up and equated the rampant “rainbowing” of people’s profile pictures to a kind of armchair activism (if you care that much about it, where were you when we were marching in the streets for equality? for that matter, where was I?). But all in all it was a good thing. Progress.

I have a confession to make: I forgot we were still connected on social media! It’s been so long since we met, was it that we went to school together? Did we work at a former job together? In any case, the kind Facebook algorithms had hidden you from my feed; we probably didn’t have much in common, and we probably didn’t “like” anything from each other for awhile. I was reminded yesterday in the most jarring way, though: you posted something full of ugliness and hate, or a link to an ignorant article, or that creepy video where “Christians” (acting unChristianly) talk about feeling persecuted by gays gaining their rights. Continue reading

Laugh In My Face

 

I’m usually super dead inside, but I was thrilled when Hello Mr magazine and the Ace Hotel in Portland invited me to tell the tale of my worst date ever. It’ll be this Sunday, June 14th, 5 to 8pm at the Ace. There will be a DJ! There will be cocktails! There will be an opportunity to heckle me, laugh in my dumb, dumb face! There may never be a better chance to mock me before my slow, sad fade into obscurity. See you there! (Click here for event details)

Fight Or Flight

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Instagram

First published in PQMonthly.

It was a long drive back to Portland that morning; I hit traffic at Tacoma and Olympia, so I was already tired. I had been in Seattle for a few days, and spent more time downtown than I had in past visits (when you’re in love, even the downtown urine smells sweeter). And I’m sorry, but when I travel it’s like I don’t even know my own poops anymore. So yeah, I was in a strange headspace.

It was a warm day, and I had opened the windows in my apartment to get some breeze going. I made a sandwich, settled down at my desk (actually my couch…I didn’t want to admit eating on the sofa) and got ready to catch up on emails. That’s when I heard him from the sidewalk outside, just below my window. There’s a convalescent facility in my neighborhood, and often one or two of the residents would cross the street to rest under the big trees surrounding my apartment building. I’d chatted with a couple of them, they would almost always be friendly and chatty. This voice? I recognized his booming baritone; he had been in front of my building before.

The murmur of his voice outside was suddenly punctuated with words that rose out of the background noise of his speech in sharp relief: “…yeah, and all the faggots and child molesters moving into the neighborhood…”

My hand froze, holding the sandwich halfway to my mouth. My breath caught, I could suddenly hear my heartbeat in my ears, and my eyes widened. “…The fuck did I just hear…?” I thought. I shook my head, slowly lowered the sandwich. Then again: “…yeah and the faggots are all over the place…” Without thinking, I pushed off the couch and stood up, startling my cat off the sofa. Is this what fight or flight feels like? I wondered.

I was born in the Bay Area and my family moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico when I was five. Although no one in my family ever disparaged gay people, my dad was the son of a Lutheran minister, and my mom and grandma came from a Latino Catholic background: I had good reasons to stay in the closet. I don’t remember my first ever thoughts of being gay, but I do remember making my same-gendered stuffed animals kiss each other. A bit later in high school, I had a best friend Helen who was brassy and outspoken. I eventually came out to her after my junior year. In my senior year, I had a massive crush on Mark, a freshman (some things, it seems, follow a pattern). I passed many, many notes to Helen detailing my infatuation with him in the form of poetry and prose.

One day, Helen ran up to me breathless. It was a disaster: Mark and his friend were riding the bus with Helen, who was dutifully reading yet another note of mine. They decided they wanted to read the note, and grabbed it out of her hands. Knowing that she was the only person in my life I was “out” to, she heroically fought and grabbed the note back. When they persisted, however, she made a last-ditch desperate attempt to safeguard my secret, and threw the note out of the window of the moving bus. What she didn’t count on was Mark and his friend’s curiosity, and they got off at the next stop, ran back, and found and read the note.

When Helen told me this, my teenage chest tightened, every pore in my body closed, and my vision blurred. And now more than 20 years later I felt this again, listening to the voice outside my window.

“He’s not worth it”, that other guy had said, so many years ago. After high school I stayed in town, went to the University of Near Mom New Mexico and pursued a theater arts degree. It was here that I finally came out to my friends and family, and even though being gay in the early 90’s was easier than decades before, it was still Albuquerque. I found this out one night as some friends and I ate our weight in Moons Over My Hammy at Denny’s, a greasy-spoon near the school. I wore my Freedom Rings proudly around my neck, coordinating with my solid cobalt-blue flannel shirt (did I mention it was the 90’s?).

Our meal was interrupted in much the same way that my current sandwich was. Two guys at a table nearby, older and bigger than us, noticed my rings and started talking loudly: “What are you looking at, faggot?” “Stop looking at me, faggot!” My friends and I stopped eating, looked at each other with wide eyes, silent and still. Maybe we collectively thought that they would leave us alone if we played possum. Maybe homophobes’ vision is motion-based, like a T-Rex.

No such luck: they strutted up to the table, and the main aggressor repeated what he said before directly to me. His friend got uncomfortable, though: “He’s not worth it”, and pushed his angry friend away from the table, out the door.

It was that, that same feeling, that I was feeling now. Sure, I’d heard that word plenty before, but usually in public, and mostly in a way that I could walk away from. But here? In my own home? I couldn’t stand for this. Could I?

I couldn’t. I’d be damned if I let someone say that word in a place I was supposed to feel safe. I haven’t been in a lot of fights, but I know how to get ready for one. I took my glasses off, took my watch off. I got my phone ready in case I needed to record anything.

I opened my door and walked toward him.

Continued in Part Two.

 

 

If you liked this, you’re possibly broken forever! Read about my drunken tips for decorating, or listen to the dreadful music I like, or even about my dumb thoughts on monogamy. Let’s be horrible people together!

How It Happens

 

First published, in abbreviated form, in PQMonthly.

This is how it happens, and in retrospect it couldn’t happen any other way. You look at the dating app Scruff one day, having been single for three years, single at 41. All of these faces scrolling by. Some familiar ones occasionally post new photos, where maybe they have a little more grey, or they’ve lost or gained weight. Maybe they look a little more tired from the search, a little more cynical. Maybe they’re almost ready to press “delete” and just leave meeting people to fate and natural circumstances. Their faces say they’re ready to just trash every dating app and get on with living life, spending more time with their friends, creating more art. Maybe their weary faces say they’re a little scared that they’ve already experienced all the love they’re ever going to.

Or maybe that’s just me, you think. You open up a dating app, yeah that one, see a handsome bearded face. He has a boyfriend, because of course he does, and they’re exclusive. You chat a bit, and he won’t even flirt with you because he’s taken. He makes an impression on you but the conversation fades away after a few days.

All of a sudden, months later, Continue reading

Swoon

 

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Instagram

I was invited to give a 10 minute talk on the evolution of courtship rituals, both traditional and modern, for the JAKETalks in Seattle, on February 21st of this year. The following is a rough transcript of the talk, and the video is also below.

(Looks around at crowd) You are all less than 250 feet away from me. Haha, Scruff jokes.

I’m Michael James Schneider. I’m a writer for PQ Monthly and I write for my own wildly unpopular and awkwardly named blog. I write about a few topics, but lately I’ve been writing a lot about dating apps. In fact, so much so that people have started calling me The Scruff Whisperer. “Pause for laugh.”

In the fall of 2012, I found myself single and almost 40. I downloaded the Scruff app at the insistence of my ex. Now, I’ve been single for almost three years, I think I’ve become a professional spinster. I’ve taken the Buzzfeed “Which classic Dickens character are you?” quiz many times, change the answers I give, but I get Ms Havisham every time. Jokes.

To give you a little bit of background, what is this Scruff thing? A Scruff is a guy thinks he’s fly, also know as a buster. Wait no, it’s a dating app for bearded guys who want more Instagram followers. Wait no, it’s a location based mobile phone application that shows you a grid of available men who tend to skew to the hirsute end of the spectrum. Notice I said “available”, not necessarily “single”. I’m looking for something monogamous and long term. Not everyone is. Some guys are on there looking for friends and “workout buddies.” Me? I’m Alanis Morrisette looking for her next Dave Coulier. Continue reading