9/11 Firemen

On this, the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I will abandon my usual self-absorbed account of my gay coming-out and my posting of pictures of sexy men with big bulges. When compared to the horror of that day, my pissy-assed little journey is a non-event.

Ten years ago, some of us in our small Canadian town felt curiously isolated from the events nearly a continent away in New York.  As the events unfold on TV, it all seemed very unreal.

No one from my town died during 9/11 attacks.  I've never met anyone who knew anyone who died in the Towers. The chance of a terrorist targeting our small, remote northern(ish) town was, and still is, virtually zero.

The only direct effect of the attacks occurred when the North American airspace was shut down for four or five days following the attacks.  Two passenger planes were forced to land at our local airport   Civic officials across Canada scrambled to find accommodation and food for around forty thousand stranded passengers.  In one small town, Gander, Newfoundland,   nearly forty planes were forced to land.

Several members of my family have jobs in rescue or protective services including my brother, who is a fireman.  While I sometimes always envy his shift schedule which gives him blocks of four days off for every four day work cycle, I would never actually want to do his job.  I don't know what big-city firemen do, but as a small-town fireman, my brother routinely:

• carries unconscious people out of burning buildings
• retrieves dead, bloated bodies from the river in the springtime
• administers the Heimlich maneuver to choking victims
• uses a cardiac defibrillator on people having a heart attack
• uses the Jaws of Life to cut open cars after highway accidents to remove the mangled, bloodied bodies.
• puts out fires all the time, mainly grass fires in the spring and fires caused by wood stoves in the winter.

As well, my brother got to drive the firetruck down Main Street during our town's Christmas Parade last year. Such small town excitement! That was very cool.

When reflecting on the 343 courageous firefighters who raced to their deaths into the burning towers, I think of the gaps in the lives of those left behind:  parents, siblings, wives, girlfriends, partners and children and especially their children who had not yet been born. I think of the lovers and sexual experiences they never had and the babies they never conceived.

I especially think of the 30 - 50 firefighters among the dead who would have been gay,  I would imagine that many of them were closeted or only partially out or uncertain of their sexuality.  I've heard that firehalls can be a particularly macho, testosterone-fueled environment and not all are tolerant of gays.

These men will never experience the joy and freedom of living a life of truth, of finding a true connection with another man in every way, emotionally, sexually, romantically and socially.   To me, that is the saddest thing of all.

When a man becomes a fireman his greatest act of bravery has been accomplished.  What he does after that is all in the line of work.  ~Edward F. Croker

Peek

All pics from http://bananasling.tumblr.com.

To continue the short shorts theme from the previous post, one day in the early 80s when I was sixteen, I was alone in my parents' car and stopped at a red light.  A early 20ish hottie (similar to the guy on the left) pulled up beside my car window on his bicycle wearing very short cut-off denim shorts.

His midsection was just a foot away, framed in my car window. I saw ... oh my gosh!.... one of his low-hanger testicles was hanging way below the bottom of his shorts.  I just thought it was very funny, as he was so unaware of his exposure.  All that wrinkled skin!  Did he not feel a breeze?

That's what the 80s short shorts gave us, some of the time anyway, peep shows everywhere you went.  Fun times!   Does anyone have any any "peep show" stories they wish to share?

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My wife has missed out on a few houses which she was interested in because the successful buyers offered 10 - 20% higher than the asking price.   Our local real estate market is insanely hot right now, so for the next house, we agreed that she will have to offer higher than the asking price.We had a face-to-face meeting, our first in several weeks, to try to finalize our settlement negotiations.  My wife was in a bad mood going into the meeting.  She tried to manipulate the outcome (as is her habit) by being, in sequence,  aggressive, bullying, angry and then self-pitying, "I wasted 14 years of my life so deserve this money.... "

My visit to my lawyer strengthened my  resolve so I became aggressive right back, reminding her repeatedly, "We're here to talk about the money... this is only about the money..."

Although I was on the receiving end of a fair bit of anger, blame and name-calling,  it turned out to be highly productive meeting.  I forced the discussion and we came to an agreement on most of the contentious issues ... but my wife abruptly left as the discussion was becoming too emotional and difficult for her.  Only a couple of more items to go!

Here's what will happen: there will be a "cooling down" period of a few days,  Then my wife will phone to continue the negotiations in a much more pleasant frame of mine.... been there, done that!