My year of Bliss: The boy

I met Danny on August 4th of last year. There was an instant animal magnetism between us, he was very sexy and full of buoyant energy. As soon as we met we were attached. No, not just in the physical sense (dirty birds), but we immediately started talking and laughing and we saw eye to eye on tons of things…even though his eyes are a good 13 inches below mine…



Our first “date” as it were, was about a week later. He came into the city to hang out with me while I went shopping for a new DVD player. After going to several stores looking for just the right one, we found one and got it. All the while he was shamelessly flirting and dirty talking me… As we were walking to the car I feel this cold finger caressing my cheeks (yeah, now is the time for dirty minds, not the cheeks on my face). I was mortified to realize that at some point in the day my shorts had ripped down the back seam and my ass was basically hanging out for all to see. Klassy.



Danny found this utterly adorable and had resisted molesting me until we had gotten outside in the parking lot. He thought I had planned it and that I was a dirty bird myself that had no qualms about letting my ass be seen by all in a mall… While I am a dirty bird, this was not planned, and I had to throw that pair of shorts right in the trash! Dammit!



We continued to hang out a lot for the next several months. I have never dated anyone before so this was all new to me and Danny was more than happy to experiment with being in a relationship with me. Yeah, ok, I know several of you just read that last sentence over again with sheer disbelief. I will now answer the standard set of questions that I get when I tell people that I have never dated anyone…



I came out when I was 17. I started going to gay bars when I was 18 (I promise mom, not before that!). I lost my virginity as an adult at 19 with the stage manager of a show I was doing (again, sorry mom…technically I lost it when I was 12 to a girl, Desi, and a boy, Terry. No not at the same time! Dirty!). I spent half my twenties in the navy sleeping with lots of guys (mom, maybe you should just skip this paragraph…) and when I got out of the navy and moved to SF, I continued that trend. Only difference really was that after the navy I thought “this is the One” with most of the guys I met, which is probably why I never saw a lot of them more than once.



The main reason, or at least the one that makes the most sense, is that I was a fat boy. And the majority of the gay community is not attracted to fat boys. This of course led to a bitter phase, which of course perpetuated my constant singlehood… blah blah blah. So, I found the bear community which likes lots and lots of different body types and I was off… and back to the boy.

For the first few months of dating we were reluctant to call ourselves by any particular label. Partner, Boyfriend, Lover, Fuck Buddies, Significant Other. They all have other peoples baggage attached to them. We just liked each other and liked hanging out. Eventually however we decided to call ourselves boyfriends, mostly because it is the simplest way, for us, for you, for common understanding. We decided not to follow the rules of “Relationship” that most people apply to themselves.

I always wondered; why do we conform to the standard accepted breeding patterns of heterosexuals? Why do we as gay people say I want the same thing that everyone else wants… a husband/wife, a house with a white picket fence, kids and pets, and the good money making job. I don’t want to do things in my life just because of tradition and habit. I can’t tell you if it is good for everyone, but by defining our own rules for our own relationship, Danny and I are happy and have not had a single fight since the day we met.

Anyway… kidna going off on a tangent there…

In case you haven’t met him, Danny is my tiny dancer. He is 5’3” to my 6’5”, Descended from Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez late dictator of El Salvador, his mother fled from death with him in her womb. Like me, he has siblings he has never met; a sister taken by his father when they were very young that he has never seen again. He reads, dances constantly, and is always making me laugh at something. Recently he has taken up knitting… I’m hoping to have a scarf by Christmas.



So Danny and I are boyfriends. He met my parents at Christmas (although we were still just dating at that point) And even though my parents had no idea that we were dating, they loved him just the same. So here we are just over a month away from our one year anniversary, and I gotta say, I am happy. He makes me happy.



I saw these two cars parked in one parking spot across the street from my house and it made me think of me and Danny...

My Year of Bliss: the job

February of last year I left yet another meaningless job that I hated going to in the first place. Nothing too special about this one… nothing to write home about… I was managing the office services department of a law firm that practices almost every type of law but an interesting one. I didn’t like the company, the work… well… just call me Sisyphus. About ten months in I realized that my boss, though he talked about it often, was never going to leave. And therefore the position I was hired for and was waiting to fill was not going to be mine after all. Goodbye.

So there I was unemployed. I had one month rent in savings and could wait maybe 3 weeks tops before starting a new job not to mention finding one. I went to all the usual agencies and submitted my resume to all the likely employers, but my heart just wasn’t in it. A line from this song I know kept playing on a loop in my head and it was all I could do just to tune it out during interviews.

“I want to live beyond the modern mentality, where paper is all that we’re really taught to create.”

I didn’t know what I wanted to do except that I didn’t want to be stuck in a soul killing office again, doing endless meaningless paperwork for someone else. I just don’t get it… there are jobs upon jobs upon jobs that exist just so that people can have a job and make money. They don’t enjoy them, they don’t like the work, it makes little to no impact on humanity, and people spend their ENTIRE lives doing them. It is not what I consider living life.

So I started telling my friends this opinion and I looked for some office job that might prove to be the exception… I did not find it. What I found was the best job I have ever and may ever have; courtesy of my friend and chorus conductor Stephanie.

The Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco has been for over thirty years a rock of faith for the gay community. If I were ever to attend another church in my life, it would be this one. It is a unique environment that says we don’t care what you believe, just THAT you believe.

Stephanie told me to apply for the part time position of Program Director, I did, and they hired me on the spot to run their Simply Supper program. My new job was feeding the homeless, the elderly and the destitute twice a week.

We had two programs when I started; Prevention Point needle exchange, at which we gave out bag lunches, sandwiches and soup; and the Simply Supper meal on Friday afternoons that was a gourmet vegetarian meal that even I (a die hard meat fanatic) couldn’t resist devouring. Over the year we branched out and began feeding the AIDS Housing Alliance and The Living Room, a place for homeless gay youth to get care, food and rest. At its height the programs fed over four hundred people a week on just over $2 each.

Then the other shoe dropped.

It cost roughly 40k to run this program each year. They hadn’t gotten more than two grand in grants in as many years, so the entire cost of the program was coming out of the savings account. May 15th was my last day with MCC. After ten and a half hears of service, we hung up the pots and pans and closed the doors. It was a sad experience though necessary to the bigger picture. So now, MCC is doing better and not constantly running in the red, and I am out looking for a new job. I know I won’t find one like this again… I’m just hoping to find something that keeps me interested... After spending years in thankless company jobs it was like breathing in happiness to be able to say "your welcome" four hundred times a week and truly mean it. I dont know how often you come by a job like that...

Shane J Kroll

15 seconds in my face

This is what happens when you stick a camera in my face.


















Stop taking my picture!!!!!

Yeah... I know... I got a face... it makes faces.