Haydennet.com – Joseph Andrew Hayden, Juris Doctor

After some good dialogue with the webmaster at Bearwww, I’m happy to report that he has come to see my side of the story and I will document the great ideas that we have been sharing with each other about how everyone can be happy and he continue (hopefully with my help) to improve the community even in parts of the world where men still feel like they have to remain closeted.

I highly recommend that all of those fellow disenfranchised men who thought bear411 was the only site where they could meet men of our ilk, consider just using the bearwww to increase the critical mass there, which is far more rational and just as potentially useful as bear411 is to meeting men locally and transnationally.

Understimulated with my usual Safeway and Lucky choices for groceries, I decided to splurge a bit and do some really good organic hunting for food (the ketchup remains to be tried for edibility). I didn’t even bother looking through the peanut butters. There are just some things that I think are worthless without corn syrup, sorry!

The moment I walked in, I struck gold (not grocery-wise)! What before my eyes did appear? A woofy fully-bearded man in a kilt — but it gets better! He was an EMPLOYEE. This is Castro Valley, a relatively conservative suburb near a working class suburb that I actually live in, although it’s relatively progressive compared to many parts of the world and the country. Then I started observing that some of the other employees were bearded and handsome and seemed to love working there, and I know one of them did a double take when he saw me. He was a ruggedly handsome, silver-haired foxy cub type and I felt coy when he seemed to followed me down some aisles with the excuse to sort some product, which required that he step away from his register. He was adorning shorts and spandex sleeves (which are pretty sexy). I had never seen attire like that before, but I suspect they were to keep his arms warm while still being able to wear a short-sleeved shirt to mitigate the draft as the registers are right by the automatic doors. It does get brisk in the evenings in California.

We made idle chit-chat and hopefully he noticed I waited in a longer line just to have him be my cashier. Among other things I said, “it looks like it’s fun to work here.” With all the creatively-pierced guys working there, and the metrosexual and gay guys who come in for their macrobiotic food, I can only imagine that it’s a hospitable place for flirtation, even if just an oasis outside of the Mecca of San Francisco across the bay.

So on a daily basis since I first got online at the very beginning of what we now know as the internet and came out, men have contacted me without a face, even though it’s almost impossible not to have a digital image of yourself these days. I usually tear them a new one and go ballistic, and have been criticized for it, but my logic is: I’m never going to meet these people who are that closeted anyway for innumerable reasons, nor is there any chance I’d run into them at any gay venue where they’d have to show their face without adorning a bag over it, and they were de facto rude to me first, so I have nothing to lose by trying to teach them a lesson that their neglectful parents didn’t teach them about common courtesy.

Once in a great while, one of them will understand my humor and come around to realize that they are completely rude and should atone for their contacting me under those shady circumstances, but I won’t hold my breath for anyone who took the time to post a faceless profile and seek me out.

A few days ago I was asked for my email address so that one of these headless torsos could send me his picture. I had started off with my usual, “if your face is too fucking ugly to post and you’re too dumb to even post a private picture that you choose to unlock for me, you are not worth it,” but he was insistent that he could email his face to me (behind his wife’s back, no doubt).

So I feigned acquiescence by providing one of the creative addresses I come up with for these people and for my own amusement, assuming that they would get my point. This time I said:

“Sure! Go ahead and send them to yourmotherisawhore@closetfreak.com”

Would you believe he wrote back “sent”?

Now that the military’s sad DADT policy has been stricken, they decided just now that they will not allow gay weddings on military bases.  This is a ruse.  The Repubs are looking for anything incendiary that they can talk about on CSPAN and Fox “News” sound bites.  Shouldn’t the more important question be:  ”Why are ANY marriages allowed on base?”  As a purportedly liberal taxpayer, why should the facilities of the military be used to celebrate “holy” unions between opposite sex couples OR same sex couples?!

Bobby and I decided to take the dog and drive it, instead of fly, despite the high gas prices these days, and we had a great time seeing friends and family along the way.  My best friend from law school and his partner hosted us in Seattle.  Their two cats were kind enough not to eat Monte, and they all pretty much started getting along by the time we left.

I saw my Aunt Sharren.  She’s the sweetest thing, but she wouldn’t let me take her picture!  We stayed overnight at her place and did some major catching up through breakfast the next day.  I hadn’t seen her since I was probably about five years old!  Fortunately we chat regularly online.  Our two little dogs got along surprisingly well.

The road trip back was the slow one, and it included lots of beaches, redwoods, gorges, sand dunes and lighthouses.  Besides spending several days in Seattle, we made stops in Portland, Astoria, Canon Beach, Florence, Port Orford, Eureka, Orick, Fort Bragg, Mendocino, Guerneville and countless other unmarked places on Highways 101 and 1, mostly.

I split up the galleries to consist of one with people and dogs and one that consists of views and vistas.

[Show as slideshow]

[Show as slideshow]

Unfortunately it looks like the video part of my expensive Nikon 5100 is going south, as did my photography portion of the camera several months ago. I’ll see if there is a way to increase the contrast and decrease the flushed areas of sand and sky that seem to blur a lot of the details in some of the videos.

We had a great time at (the last?) IBR last week, and now we’re all booked to go to Seattle for Spring Thaw in early April, during which time we plan to take a side trip to Vancouver, BC, which will be my first trip to Canada EVER!  We’ll be staying with close friends, and it should be a great experience.