"When you give me nothing to pull away from, and I give you something to turn to, and you pull away."

When you give me nothing to pull away from, and I give you something to turn to, and you pull away, a matter of centimetres across the sheets, a matter of a surface area of skin dilating by inches. A matter of two simple slides that slip across the eyes. These are the only things that keep me out, that come between. I want to cuddle like puppies, like lovers, like two people who are stuck on the same life raft. Like hostages hatching a plan. Like enemies drawn together by necessity. Strangers with a common goal, like light that twists against a shoal of fish who move as one... but you pull away from me and leave me nothing to pull away from.

I can be strong, I can be the one to take the weight, even when I can't carry my own freight. I can be the guy who takes the brunt, who brings the light. I can love you harder than you ever have been loved. I can be your family. I can know you inside out, I can see you perfectly, crystalline; rely on me. If we're a team then learn to need me when you need me. Be a whole and not a half. It will never be too soon to make a joke so long as the punch line makes you laugh. Taking all your feelings and burying them in sleep only makes you weaker and makes for darker dreams. I can't lie here and pretend that we're ok when our friendship isn't enough to take the rough with the rougher. I believe one thing: that neither you or me should suffer. Let me be the buffer, let me be enough to hold your stuff, the dam to take your bursting - do your worst - I'll be nurse, take the curses, just promise when the cloud disperses that you'll let me bring the remedy, send chemicals that run steadily, that make you realise that you're human, that you're my man, that the hand you're holding's still my hand.

Just don't pull away from me, don't refuse the crutch you need to lean on. I know you've been crushed, sometimes you feel you aren't enough. You are enough, you'll see, that if you take what you need, I'll be doing the thing that makes me feel strength the length of which I never understood could exist in the aftermath of a broken wish. But don't pull away from me, when in 10 minutes you'd be healed if you could trade your lonely journey for a journey with me. Baby please, five minutes in my arms and you won't have to explain what you feel, just let it go, release, shout it, beat it, sneeze it, so we can turn on the tv and laugh at something funny, and be the best that we can be - it's that easy - it's so easy - "it's too easy!" It doesn't have to be. We don't have to rile. Cause it's never too soon to make a joke, so long as the punch line makes you smile. If I give you something to pull away from then don't pull away from me.

I be tha uncovered:

F rom this post, this blog should be considered under construction. Much like my life right now. Not that anyone is reading yet, but the last year of my life I moved away from any kind of metropolis to Tinytown, Co. Bumfuck in Northern Ireland; a place I got the fuck out of and ran from at top speed as soon as I left school. In order to do what I want to do - which was return to New York, after the 4 months I spent there last summer - I had to come back, work, save - the most disciplined thing I have ever done. But in a matter of days now, that will have come to an end.

Perhaps something of an introduction is in order, just in case anyone is popping by this blog any time soon. The title of the blog, 'werunnaked' is a past tense version of an anagram of my full name. I how that's cryptic enough to keep the stalkers off my back. I studied in Dublin for 4 years, and when I say studied, I mean school of life - not that I didn't go to college, but that was hardly the ultimate in where I got my education. In fact, it was pretty much the end of passion for me.

Going to New York last summer for four months wasn't the revolution that people expect it might have been. I blew off steam, but ultimately I found it calming - The City that Goes to Bed at a Reasonable Hour. That's what I call it. However, when a graduate visa raised its head, and returning became a viable option, that idea mixed with a steadfast refusal to return to Dublin, sent me home to save. To save for the year away. I've always wanted, see, to travel or lie somewhere alone - or I have in the last few years anyway. When I moved to Belfast at 18 or Dublin a year later, I was utterly alone and I thrived off it. I've made a home in Dublin, but something in me still has a need for fear and newness. A brief meeting with a college councilor (trying to get an extension, obviously) once lead me waxing lyrical about what it is to be a Libra and why I want to travel alone. He replied to me, or rather, cut me off, saying:

"Perhaps you want to travel alone so you can see how those weights balance without any outside influence - to see how you weigh up."

DING DING DING. Give that man a coconut.

What I didn't realise when I came back to Tinytown was that forcing myself through some dreadfully lonesome times, and forcing myself to reconnect with the stuff that made me run in the first place, went a long long way to achieving the goal I hoped I would achieve in New York. Not to say that I don;t still want to go. If anything I want to move into the next phase of my life WITH what I have learned - and I will just try and be thankful that I shaved a year off learning it, without even meaning to.

I'm still not 100% sure if I'll be approved for the visa, due to the quality of my passport - but when this came to light I wasn't pissed off. I wasn't fucking livid that I had 'wasted' a year, as I felt I was doing throughout the solitude of what has just passed. I came to see that I have two options in front of me: Going to NY and plundering the fuck out of it, or getting out of here to elsewhere, and plundering the fuck out of that instead. Right now I feel what is most important is that wherever I end up, I have myself to rely on. And that whatever I do, it is something challenging that will continue to shake my spirit out of hibernation and get me the fuck out of the restaurant industry by the age of 28. Yeah, that's my new scary age.

A few things have happened in the last few days - a clear vision of an artistic project, a cal from a friend who breezes in and out of my life, the possibility of not getting what I've worked so hard for (the visa, that is). These things are colliding and awakening in me a creative kind of thought process that has felt all too distant for all too long. It's the thought process that is allowing me to look in front of me and see two clear paths - and a decision that is out of my hands. And what is so great about this? I don't mind which path I take, so long as I have myself to walk me down it. And I feel a lot more like I can do that now.

As for this blog, well, I hope this is me really starting to use it. I'm not going to delete the (awful) posts that are already here, but this should certainly be viewed as a cut off point. From here I hope I'll be able to lighten it up a little and use it for as the go to for the foundations of my video project. So, if I do have any followers eventually, look out for shit here. Slates.

Skinny Boys in Love:

Rooftops and roughnecks-
he’s looking at me
with a gaze what lingers longer with every lazy sip.
Black shirts and laughs out loud,
knees rubbing together between jeans.
A bet with myself
to pull the elastic of your boxers back
before the pink bleeds into the navy
of the river waving through the sky.
Shy boys with girl scouts hips,
hot rocks and burnt lips from spliffs
smoked down to the tip.
I hold it between twitching fingers as you-
as you suck it to the nub.
Itching to be licking the salt dried
in the reveries of ass cheeks and crows feet.
In real life I look the way you look in photographs,
atoms sketched as anatomy of boy as tethered task
reached hip flask as 1000 ships sail past the air around my neck
cold, and walking quickens, hoodies up
and head for home.

Clinton Chan and Teybama:

This recent development with the Obama administration is disappointing. It’s a fucking travesty actually. The most distressing part is that a minority feels like it’s been fucked over by a minority. Now there’s a black man in the White House and all them rap sensations are blinged up, I guess on the front of it all it looks less like a minority. Though that’s only the surface, and you know you’ve got to look at base level to see the truth.

I have to admit the American struggle for gay ‘marriage’ is something I have difficulty with - mostly the word marriage, which the US gay rights movement seems to want to keep a hold of. Way I see it, get the rights whatever way you can. But then I am not hyper-political, and certainly not all LGBT and screamy gay rights political. I forget sometimes, however, that being in Britain right now I can marry, and what that means; that someone fought for that right. What is happening now makes me feel as though maybe I should have done more when I was living in Ireland, where it is still illegal. But of course the quest for rights goes beyond ‘marriage.’ It’s the financial and health stuff that's really the problem, as it factors into marriage. I’ve seen plenty of people blogging that gays don’t seem to standing up for the fight. Maybe I am judging too harshly. Perhaps this is exactly what we need to understand the seriousness of the issue. The younger generation who are coming out of the closest, and in particular probably those who identify as post-gay, who don’t dig the gay pride thing, are the ones who maybe shy away from activism. After all, we are a generation that pretty much came after Stonewall or the HIV crisis. Kids my age or younger, though still suffering, have had a gradual sense of acceptance and recognition in the world and the media alike. In general things are alright, so this is a good kick up the arse.

Obama worship made this a particularly difficult member not to gag on, since the world pretty much had his thick black schlong jammed right down their oesophagus. And of course we should all have been more sensible to view him as a politician, you know, backtracking, shady and out to get what he can. With Hindsight I know some are wondering if Hilary would have done things right. The whole thing is sort of like the final of the last America’s Next Top Model. The judges expected little from Creepy Chan, so when she crawled through the tar in a Rosa Cha fashion show, shaking her little feathered tresses, they were blown away. Teyona was a little cyborg who ‘reverted back to model bootcamp,’ and yet she got the votes (from all, might I mention, except Paulina, now if only we could take a leaf out of her political book). So the black girl won, for sappy, ANTM-centric political reasons. She wanted it more, so she got it. But you sort of know she’s gonna fall flat as a REAL model. A bit like Obama as a real monger of hope for all. Creepy Chan may not have ticked the winners boxes, but you can’t help believe she could have been the right choice, if the competition wasn't based on Tyra's bent, internal politics. Maybe Hillary was the blond, unlikely Cover Girl after all?


Watching the debates is so frustrating, because the opposition is never going to see eye to eye with the fag on the podium. The real fight has to be fought convincing the kids, or those who for whatever reason don’t feel politics affects them, or that their vote matters. When it comes to gay pride, perhaps more time should be spent on, as Tori Amos put it recently "votes instead of floats." Gay Americans need another Milk, they need to be lobbying and getting into the positions of power that makes the decisions. The minority is never approved of, and never right - the majority of America will not agree with gay marriage until years after it has been achieved - when whatever our truly post-gay musicians are in the limelight with their irony-, rather than parody-, heavy bling (o hay Patrick Wolf!). At the end of the day, this isn’t about the best model winning, out of Creepy Chan and Teyona, this is about Kim Stolz getting to the final and stomping out an African american plus sizer. Or better yet, let’s get a lesbian African American plus size model to the final.

It is too easy for people to say “shady negro,” especially if you oppose any kind of stereotyping. It is also unacceptable to allow Obama to rest on his laurels, no matter how much good he is doing. A serious promise is broken - if anything, I hope the developments will somehow push us to push him, because that’s how to get the job done. It might get you fired, like Paulina, but integrity and being in the right are (probably) worth so much more than Pushing the 5” 7 and under cause. When even the likes of Dick Cheney is suddenly to the left of the left, because the left’s moving goal post has suddenly shifted to the right, the Tyra’s and Miss J’s might think that maybe they should have picked a president who could actually work in Europe, and book proper editorials, rather than just satisfy a quick African American fix on the cover of 17 magazine.

Generation Y bother:

Our generation is fucked. Really, we are. Our generation being Y. Let me explain. Generation X riled against growing up with grunge and slackerdom. They made being nothing into something to be. The iGeneration is at the other end of the spectrum; these kids know who they are. Artistic persuasion is no longer for slackers, it is a viable career path that one can realistically make money from, make a life out of. There is no shame in deciding to write or blog in your spare time, study fashion, study film, become a part of a performing arts troupe. Or going on reality TV. In fact the things that were once considered the hallmark of the slacker, the 'zine or the band, are now not only the norm, but almost required to matter. Everyone blogs, everyone makes music on their Mac and shoves it onto Myspace, everyone has an opinion and everyone let's you know on youtube. There's never been a better time to be you, as long as you are good at being you.

Problem is though, for those just on the cusp of either end, we're conflicted, we're guilty, our confidence is shot to bits and we keep oscillating between going for it and holding back. The constant outsiders. For the duration of our late teens and early 20's we were told to work hard, be sensible, rile against our artistic notions and get a degree, because there is no way to get ahead in life without one. Anything else makes you a slacker. But we come out the other side, where the kids behind us are so confident and self aware, who already know not only what they want to do, but that they can do it. They don't need no convincing. They have access to the same entitlement rich kids and Americans have, simply from being born when they were, where regardless of wealth (for the most part) everything was available. I'm from a four TV channel house, a no mobile until you're 16 house, an an-hour-on-the-internet-at-the-weekend house and still sometimes I feel disabled by access. That now it is all around me, I can't feel the urgency anymore - getting to surf the web at my friends house for a night! The hectic printing off of websites as my two hours on a Sunday raced towards its close. By the same token, the most rebelling I ever did was making a point of going to a school and college where I could study Drama, but I'm still at odds as to how I fit this into my life and not be a big fat failure.

No one wants to grow up, and before you had to pick a side. But now the the game has changed. Tying not wanting to grow up with not wanting to be a failure. You can see it being done. It's funny now I get to saying that, I start to realise how the two feelings could be mutually beneficial. I'm starting to think about a pattern among people I know.  The girl who taught me all about drugs, she got her head down, she's working in a nice, warm European country, teaching kids Spanish, but when I spoke to her the other day on Skype, she was on her morning spliff and it seemed as though she was doing the same as always, except rather than snaking it into her life, the two things were united. I have a friend who has just completed her history degree and jumped into the second year of a fashion course. Another is speeding towards a music career, after five years of struggling through an education system that favoured those who were willing to tongue it's arsehole. And I'm the same- a faggoty art queer who was just totally overwhelmed by trying to fit the circle of peers that I ended up totally lost - these people I went to college with were hard workers, they were sociable. I think those are two things that I excel at, and yet I was so repelled by their attitude. To be me, who at the beginning was naturally inclined to push the envelope, and to not find kinship should have pushed me to do it on my own, but it didn't. It paralysed me. Made creativity a chore. And now I need to recover.

Even writing this blog post, something I did for years until the last two left me cold, was a chore, but I'm coming to relaise you have to push. That the go getters get becuase they go and get, and they are tough competition. For me to want to push boundaries takes ten times as much effort as it does for my ex class mates to succeed. Because if I don't do that I'm not succeeding. And the thing is, if I was pushing boundaries, and working hard and feeling switched on, I wouldn't feel as old as I do. I would not be growing up. I'd be growing out, and that's the goal really. When I was 10 years old I thought everyone had a kid at the age of 30. and that all mothers were the same age as mine, and they all cut their hair when they got married. Now I am shagging 30 year olds, and some of them aren't even married. Redefining the idea of what a successful, driven adult is, in my own head, is something that I need to do, and something that many people I know seem to be doing. For those who have been failed by the education system, where they have felt backed into a degree or haven't found a college that can support or nurture them, the process of rediscovering your love begins again. I'm glad I'm not the entitled kids who are only figuring out that their chosen paths may not lead where they presumed, be that because of the profession or the recession. Education already knocked that out of me, so here I am, starting from scratch, with an overly serious first post on my blog, realising that it will take a lot before I am good at it again. But at least it's the first step. So says Rumi or someone, I'm sure. Doink.