Author Archives: adventurerliberated

I’m still glowing from the joy and satisfaction of going skiing yesterday for the first time again in over eight years, and for the first time ever in America!  I went with one of my climbing buddies who also got back into skiing this winter after a decade’s break. And he had reassured me theContinue reading “Reclaiming another piece of myself: skiing”

[Trigger warning: death; loss; abandonment, rejection, neglect.] Yesterday my boy-chest turned 15 months. Something I was hoping to celebrate with the gay guy with whom I had my first date last week and was planning to see again last night. But I ended up having to attend to the wounded boy in me, instead ofContinue reading “The wounded boy”

There’s another extremely important thing I want to register & put on record today.  On Tuesday, I was a wreck. Partly, I was probably just feeling the exhaustion from the weekend’s efforts. But also, I had a conversation with my boss in which he confirmed that he cannot renew my contract past this July andContinue reading “The light side of loss: Liberation”

[Trigger warning: some explicit, though limited, sexual content.] This almost feels like a whole new “coming out” for me.  I know I’ve already felt, and written about, my attraction for masculinity, one of my main identities as being a “gay boy”, while also using other terms to describe myself, my identities, my sexual orientation, includingContinue reading “I’m a gay guy — Heck Yeah!”

We did it!!!  A couple months ago, I started looking for a spring half-marathon trail race for me to do and the only one I could find that was within reasonable distance for me (and not racing on paved roads) was the one in Fruita, CO. It looked perfect: a timely date for me, aContinue reading “Run with Pride: Non-binary & Unstoppable!”

“Fight for the things you care about. But do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” [Ruth Bader Ginsburg] This is one of my favorite quotes. And I guess I’ll get to practice it this weekend, for the first time in a long while, at least at such a (potentially) largeContinue reading “Activism in athletics: round #1”

Today I feel that I’ve been made whole.  I think this was sparked by listening to the poem by Dean Atta, “Some men have vaginas”, last night.  Throughout the night, in the sparse moments of lighter sleep, the phrase “some men have vaginas” kept coming back to me, to my mind, to my heart, toContinue reading ““Jagged Tao””

“ He said he was a gay man with a vagina and I, penis heavy and light of foot, wondered if gay meant the same to him as it did to me, wondered if man was in mind or body. Because I wear my man,  strip down bare to my man.  In the mirror, there,Continue reading ““Some men have vaginas””

[Spoiler alert: some details about the movie “Moonlight”.] Last night I finally watched the movie “Moonlight”.  I think it’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen. It presents profound coming-of-age themes made more complicated by male homosexuality in the marginalized black community. There are many instances and explicit scenes of bullying but the violenceContinue reading “Moonlight manhood”

[Trigger warnings: loss, death, grief.] It can often be useful to have a brain that literally works like a calendar.  And it can be very powerful and even wonderful to have such an innate connection to seasons, dates, recurrences, such a natural or instinctive sense for anniversaries and celebrations as I do.  But it’s aContinue reading “Springtime grief”