The Kite Runner and cetera

[drscott]

Sometimes it seems like everyone I feature here has been published. Just happy accident in most cases....

Off to the doctor today. My doctor recently became a semi-celebrity for his first novel, The Kite Runner, which is the tale of a spoiled Afghan boy who betrays his best friend, then returns from California years later to rescue his best friend's son. The book is great, the reviews are glowing, the sales are good enough for a paperback edition and a lengthy publicity tour of Europe and the US.

I took the book along hoping to come up with some nonembarrassing way of asking him to sign it. He spotted it right away under some test paperwork I'd brought along, so we talked about his success and the demands of having two careers, at least for now. I told him I didn't think he would be doing as much for people seeing patients at Kaiser as he would writing full-time given his obvious talent for storytelling. And I wasn't sucking up to him.

So I'm losing a doctor and gaining an author. Which is too bad, since he's the rare doctor that realizes I probably know as much as he does about any problem I have going in and doesn't get his ego in a knot trying to prove he's right -- we just talk together and get an action plan going.

After that it was straight to the gym for shrugs (360#) and some cardio. Ran into East Bay George, an ICUii friend, and engaged in a little mock punching/shoving foreplay (not too shocking for the straight guys to handle.) Then home to meet up for dinner with my partner Mike (who's started a LiveJournal) and excessor (who had plenty of good stories about his ex, who is starting his move out of their house tomorrow) at the local Chinese restaurant. Good times....

Comments

[excessor.livejournal.com]

“…mock punching/shoving foreplay…?” That's definitely hot.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

...which gets back to the oddity of how straight guys show affection through horseplay or even supposed sexual teasing. Just about any ambiguous act is fine now if you pull it off with elan. You can't pull down their shorts and go from there, but anything up to that point is fine.

One of the more stressful things about my junior high lockerroom experience was the realization that a few of them were using the teasing as a cover for serious propositioning. Which at the time I was far too scared to respond to. Yikes.

I even had a recent experience like that -- a guy propositioning me then denying he actually meant it. Talk about cowards.

[excessor.livejournal.com]

Horseplay it much more ambiguous than most of us give credit for. At a gym, it's fairly common to watch guys play; whether or not the overtones are intentionally sexual might be more subjective. Lots of guys have sex with guys and yet don't, won't, or can't self-identify as homosexual or gay.

I find that many truly straight men have lots of questions about being gay. They have lots of preconceptions about us and I like the honest discussions. Then we all know or know of so-called straight men who are just taking the first steps toward male-male sexual experiences. The problem is that you often can't tell the difference between the two groups and the boundary is more fluid than we generally accept.

Do you still see and talk to your erstwhile suitor? The topic might come up again within six months and he builds up his courage again.

Oh, and do tell about it. Think of this as field work for male bonding research.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

I just coined a new phrase to describe it: "implausible deniability!" I like that. :-)

Nope, we don't talk, and until he puts a little more of himself on the line, we won't.

For another odd example, we have the continuing evolution of our mutual trainer acquaintance who (at least when he was still coming in the afternoons) started demanding hugs. He need for attention being s lot greater than any worry about what people might think. And he's genuinely concerned about that client of his.

[nobody but us is readng these comments by now!)

[excessor.livejournal.com]

A lot of the straight men I know don't get from their straight friends the emotional validation they want; curiously, they find they can get it from their gay male friends. The problem is the verbal fagbashing they do when we're not around. Our mutual trainer acquaintance did not (when I knew him personally) play nicely.

It's ok if no one reads the comments. Years from now, when you've gotten your Book Award, I'll be able to say I knew you when.

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

> ...I'll be able to say I knew you when.

When I was still sane?

Yeah, the use of fag bashing as a safe way to establish your maleness used to be fairly common among the steroid-using set. However most of those folks no longer come, and the atmosphere seems to have improved a lot even in the four years I've been there.