Tag: relationships

SubscribeStar Saturday: Cold Approaching

The Portly Politico8 Comments

Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Regular readers will know that yours portly is back on the prowl, a lonely hunter stalking the forgotten byways of twenty-first-century romance like a sleek panther ready to pounce upon an unsuspecting gazelle.

This time around I’m very much taking the approach that dating should be fun, and not something to be rushed.  Despite some of my anti-femite proclamations, I very much enjoy the company of women.  Yes, some of them are insufferable, and their blather about inconsequential trivialities—and their refusal to take proactive steps to improve their lives and situations—is mind-numbing.  But having a good meal with an attractive and interesting woman is a pastime I relish.  My general thought process these days is that, even if nothing comes of a date, it will at least have been a couple of hours of interesting conversation and delicious food.

That attitude has been somewhat liberating.  Yes, I’d love to meet a good woman to wife up, but if that doesn’t happen, no big deal.  With that outcome-independence—not investing emotionally or otherwise in the outcome of any given date or interaction—I have newfound confidence.

With that confidence I’ve been engaging in a challenging but very rewarding bout of cold approaching.

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Alone Again

The Portly Politico39 Comments

Well, dear readers, yours portly finds himself back in his natural state of being—single.

My very sweet girlfriend of the past eight months decided to break things off this past Sunday evening.  There was no bitterness or anger involved; it was simply a matter of logistics.  Due to our conflicting work schedules—she is a flight attendant, so her schedule varies wildly from week-to-week—and the two-hour distance between us, she decided to end the relationship.

Have no fear—yours portly is doing well.  In our discussion, she told me that I am the kindest, most thoughtful, and most mature man she’s ever dated.  I think she genuinely meant it, too.  But she expressed concerns about being stretched thin between her family, her friends, and me, so I was the one-third that had to be dropped.

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My Latest Earworm: “Johnny Get Angry”

The Portly Politico14 Comments

I love many kinds of music, but I’m primarily a rocker—I like swaggering, almost comically masculine hard rock.  I want to bang my head, shake my fists, and rock out to thundering power chords and hypnotic bass lines.  When I listen to rock, I feel like a panther taking flight on the wings of a phoenix.

But I also have a softness—a weakness, really—for late Fifties/early Sixties doo-wop and rock ‘n’ roll.  Sometimes—perhaps, embarrassingly often—that love extends to female torch singers (I promise, I’m an allegedly heterosexual man).

Lately, I’ve had the 1962 tune “Johnny Get Angry” stuck in my head—constantly.  Songwriters Hal David and Sherman Edwards wrote this bit of bubblegum pop for Joanie Sommers, and it was a modest hit for the songstress.

That 1962 version is pretty catchy, and the instrumentation is interesting—especially the kazoo chorus when the key changes from D major to E major—but the version that really got me into this song is from the 1990 film Nightbreed, specifically the Clive Barker-approved director’s cut.  Other versions of the film apparently were missing the song—performed by actress Anne Bobby in the role of heroine/love interest Lori Winston—which is a travesty, as it’s really key to highlighting the struggle inherent in Lori and Boone’s relationship in the flick.

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Alone

The Portly Politico47 Comments

It’s February, the Month of Love.  As such, it’s a good time to talk about relationships and such.

There was some speculation in the comments of this blog a few weeks ago about my relationship status.  Alys and Audre were discussing whether or not they should buy garish (they didn’t use that word, but I can only assume) hats for hypothetical nuptials.

Well, as these things do for a sensitive poet-warrior like yours portly, it all came crashing down—not with a bang (giggity), but a whimper.

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