MEAN?
MEAN?
ME?
The other night a real good friend of mine was speaking at the meeting of a local group and somehow or other I came up in a conversation and whomever he was talking to said of me that, “he didn’t use to be so mean.” Well, my friend was dumbfounded because he does not think I’m mean at all, but I can see where some folks might very well think that, especially if they knew me in the old days.
You see, I used to be the scene politician, the compromiser. I would follow behind the club president and pick up the pieces and try to keep people happy. And slowly but surely that kind of changed as I ran into things like the Obsolete Guard that really got me pissed and I began to take some unpopular stands, at least at the time, which rather surprised everyone. But I was still something of an organization man, very conventional, community, SSC, the whole bag of scene bull.
And I reached the point where I did not like it, or me, one little bit. But I was stuck. I was still the officer of a club that was dying and my role demanded that I take something of the interests of the club in my public utterances.
Then CDG died and I wanted to shout, “Free at last! Free at last! Great Satan Almighty I’m free at last!!!!”
So I decided to use my freedom. You see I have some advantages that a lot of people who would like to say what I say don’t have. I’m out, pretty much always have been. In fact being out helps sell my psionic stuff because that market appreciates me more for it. My wife works for a huge company that doesn’t care what she does in her spare time, in fact probably would support it, and I have no children while her son is grown and a dom himself. So I have no non-scene worries in this. As far as the scene goes—I’m pretty much immune from attack. As long as our slosh groups thrives and the folks there like us as people and we are welcome at our chosen play space, it really does not matter what anyone else in the rest of the country, or the whole world for that matter, thinks of me or my ideas. I can say just about anything I damned please and if gets too much for geocities (as some day it probably will) I can move the site over to zipgate with no trouble at all, especially since the owner is a sort of business partner of mine.
With that going for me, yes, I suppose I get rather nasty at times. I enjoy it. But it is better to speak your mind and sleep good at night than to spend all your time worrying about what people will think of you.
I call ‘em as I see ‘em and if that makes me mean, well stick around folks. You ain’t seen nothing yet.