Why is it that we're all that and a plate of cheese to someone who holds no interest for us, and yet, we can never find someone to be interested in who feels like the heavens have wept, the clouds have parted and the angels sung that we are interested in them?

Today, I had two emails - one from a very nice and successful man in Italy who told me I was his dream man. Uh - the LAST time someone told me that, he turned out to be a crackhead who loved old, fat men who were married and had enough money to keep him in baggies and cocktails without his actually having to work. And that was shortly after Clinton's re-election.

Another from a fine gentleman in the UK - who was just wanting to send a friendly note.

Mind you, neither of these boys would have garnered my interest except as a conversational partner over a few cocktails while remaining fully dressed and at arms' length.

Why is it that my heart beats pitta-pat for a married guy who's totally non-potential? Or does it? Actually, after my boyfriend up and died on me back on August 11 (Hmm .. I need to write his mother, I haven't heard from her in weeks) I was questioning whether I had felt anything for him at all. He didn't make my heart race, but he sure was wonderful to be with. I miss him. I was missing him earlier today. He was a companion; someone who had found the person he could safely be with, who he could be open with, and with whom he could start making some plans for a new life.

And then - ka-whammo. He's gone, replaced by the detritus of eleven EMT technicians, two doctors and a fire department captain in my living room, as they rolled him out with the bedsheet from my bed.

I still haven't replaced that (note to self.)

Yes, he was handsome, and he was flirtatious, and funny, and wonderful to be with. I slept so soundly when he was here - just like the dead. I never heard him when he got up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, chatting on the internet until near dawn. He was an amazing chef, and could be so fussy, and so particular about everything from bruschetta to reduced wine sauce for ice cream.

I gained twenty pounds while I was with him.

It's almost gone. All that's left of him is his cowboy hat, this little tschotke that he gave me the week before he died, and a picture of him in a frame. And eight more pounds.

I put out the Christmas ornaments over the weekend. I hadn't decorated for Christmas in years; always writing it off to a lack of space, or a lack of time, or a lack of anyone to care. It was probably a matter of having the family drama come to a complete and final end about the time that I moved into this apartment in 1998. This was to be the first Christmas that I (we) was going to go all out; buy a tree, put up lights outside, play Christmas music .. the works. Johnny (that's the boyfriend) loved Christmas, he said, and he was talking about what all we were going to do to make our first Christmas together special.

I didnt even get a first Labor Day weekend, let alone a Christmas.

But, I digress.

Is this why I'm fascinated with bois who want money, boys who have girlfriends and wives, and perfect men who live in another time zone, in another climate, in another country?

The political climate here (in the US) is getting very scary. The replublican leadership is talking openly and wistfully of segregation, and the mainstream press (and the Democrats, who deserve to die a political death for being inept, incompetant and unable to focus on anything but bringing in enough money to be re-elected) says NOTHING. N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Here in Texas, the state sodomy law (which applies only to same sex match-ups; opposite sex wrestling matches being apparently sanctioned by the church and the lege) is clearly going to be overturned by the Supremes sitting on high in DC. The Governor has said publicly and on the record that the sodomy prohibitions criminalizing same-sex behavior was "appropriate."

To quote the Texas Tourism Bureau, "Texas - It's like a whole 'nother country."

Try "Nigeria" We have oil, we spend little or no money on public infrastructure, and the churches and political leaders build piles of stones with which to smite anyone who colors outside the lines.

Okay, now I have myself worked down into a state where I should just go to bed. I'm sure they can't arrest me for that. Yet.

Has anyone else noticed a disturbing similarity between events in the US over the last two years and the events in Germany between 1933 and 1935? The establishment of a new, unified internal security structure? The establishment of a new "military" legal system in which even US citizens who are declared to be "combatants" (so far) can be prosecuted without having counsel, a jury, or open proceedings? The establishment of holding camps for undesireables who are not charged with any specific offense?