Forced Relaxation!

After Panama going home to Miami was actually more like a vacation than the "vacations" I had been on. Living two blocks from the ocean, one block from my gym, and walking around in the steamy Miami Beach weather is bit of peace at home. My home vacation was cut short though when I had to fly to LA on July 4th for 3 days to set up my distribution business. I was able to hang out with my friend Sam on the 4th and then catch up with Scotty during the day working hard to get things up and running and then hanging out at night and running into Blake Riley and Jonathan Chang. I flew home on Monday and then Tuesday took a quick one day trip up to Minneapolis for some unfinished business...now finished! A few days at home and then off to Oregon. Yes, my right-wing, back country father lives in the outback of Oregon. Every time I come here it is forced relaxation because his computer is on a 56K modem, no wi-fi, and spotty cell service. So I basically kick back, talk politics and catch him up on the missing 6 years of my life......ok, you want the story, here's the story:

When I was 18 my brother told my father I was gay even though my brother was secretly gay himself. I'm sure my brother peeks at my blog, so George, if you disagree, post a comment, but I basically feel it was a social experiment on my brother's part since he is 5 years older than me. I really think he wanted to see how my father and step mother would react. I did not find out my brother was gay until I was 27. My father did not react well and I, in turn, reacted equally bad to his reaction to me being gay. This issue was just the icing on the cake of numerous issues I had with my father while growing up then compounded by me being a hard headed left winger and him being a harder headed right winger. The result being absolutely no communication for 6 years. My mother or my brother delivered absolutely no messages to me from my father and vice-versa. So when I decided to implement communication with my father and step mother again it was, well, a weird, but rewarding process. When I saw them for the first time after 6 years they told me they would not have recognized me if they would have passed me on the street. I would have recognized my step mother, but I'm not too sure about my father. Fast forward 9 years and now I have a very good relationship with them that is progressively getting better. They know I own a porn business, that I was involved in porn, and they, well, my father, is coming to closer to accepting me as being gay (my step mother already pretty much does) but he still struggles a bit with having two gay sons. A right-wing, Bush-can't-do-anything-wrong, excommunicated Mormon from a white trash family man that broke free as much as he could from his white trash roots with 16 brothers and sisters, as he could to accept a left-wing pro Obama, porn star, porn company owner gay son.

So here I am picking blueberries in central Oregon.....and you all thought Dubai and India was interesting? hhhmmmm.

Panama!

Well, what better to do when getting back from a two week major international, half way around the world, vacation, but to take another vacation! Sometimes I am not very smart when I book travel. I see a cheap fare, book it, and then forget about it. This time, a trip to Panama I booked a while back jumped up on me a few days after I arrived back from India/UAE/Bahrain.

I had just enough time in Miami to clean up some business issues, make a few reservations for the trip to Panama, and take a swim in the ocean just 2 blocks from my place....ahhhh...the life! Rich and I boarded our noon-ish flight out of Miami to only sit in American Airlines' VERY uncomfortable 757 slippy slope first class seat for about 4 1/2 hours as a thunderstorm quickly approached and stopped all departures and all but essential European arrivals for over 4 hours. The only benefit to being in first class was that we were given food and liquored up, but believe me, the coach seats on the 757 are WAY more comfortable. American seems to slip on the 757 and not install a simple foot rest or cloth ergonomic seats.

After arriving in Panama very late we were too exhausted to do anything but veg in the hotel room. Oh, and Panama has the WORST road signs ever! I think you are just suppose to know where to go, kinda like Beirut, but really no signs that lead an outsider into the center. It is easier getting around Syria! Over the next few days Rich and I met up with a friend of a friend of ours that showed us around. He took us to the Panama Canal, showed us the gay nightlife and helped book us at an all-inclusive in Playa Blanca. At the end of the trip we drove up to stay at the Melia Colon. Everyone told us, and I read several times, that Colon is very dangerous, but Rich and I always love checking things out for ourselves. The Melia was easy to find and in a secure compound just outside of Colon, but the hotel is quite lackluster. The smell of mold and the feeling that we were caught in "The Shining".....creepy cakes! We did make a run into Colon and take a walk through the secured free-trade zone the city created, but it is mainly filled with cheap Chinese junk and likely not worth the jaunt through the decrepit crime ridden center of town.

Now I have been back in Miami for a while and plan to settle down for a bit and get out my new release “Serbia” that you can find on my new website http://www.worldofmen.com/.