brotherhood of mah cult masonic blue

 

GAY MEN, MONEY, LONELINESS & THE LIE WE WERE SOLD A lot of gay men my age are quietly panicking financially and nobody wants to admit it out loud because we’re all supposed to pretend everything’s fabulous while eating a $27 brunch we secretly can’t afford. The reality is a lot darker than that. Many of us spent our younger years surviving instead of planning. I worked retail right out of high school. Then DJing happened very fast and I dropped everything because I was determined to make it work. I wanted the city life. I wanted nightlife. I wanted to become somebody. I had absolutely no real plan. I just jumped. Back then I lived day to day. I struggled constantly in the beginning and at one point I had no home at all. I was messy in my 20s like many of us were. Always partying. Always high. Always chasing excitement because slowing down meant thinking too much. But even then I hustled. When I first started in NYC I’d stand outside Roxy with a backpack full of burned CDs handing them out to strangers. I’d literally tell people: “I’m a famous DJ.” People laughed in my face. Some took the CDs anyway. So I kept showing up. Again. And again. And again. Eventually people started looking for me asking if I had new mixes. That part matters because younger people need to understand something: humiliation will not kill you. Quitting will. But nightlife also taught me lessons that took me decades to fully understand. In nightlife, people are often around you because of what you can provide. Drink tickets. Guest lists. Backstage access. Hotel rooms. Party favors. Status. If people can take from you, many will. And the painful part is you often don’t realize the difference between real friendship and convenience until your life falls apart. During low points in my career many people disappeared completely. The second things got good again? Suddenly they reappeared like ghosts smelling free vodka. That lifestyle blurs reality badly. As a younger gay man, I also wasted enormous amounts of money trying to buy friendship without realizing that’s what I was doing. Dinners. Drinks. Drugs. Paying for everyone. Covering tabs. Helping people financially. Trying to keep everyone happy. I confused being useful with being loved. And I know for a fact many gay men reading this right now are doing the exact same thing. A lot of us grew up bullied, rejected, isolated, abandoned, closeted, or estranged from family. So once we finally found community we became terrified of losing it. So we overcompensated. We become: the fun one, the generous one, the host, the provider, the fixer. Because deep down we’re scared if we stop giving people things they’ll stop choosing us. Loneliness causes reckless spending more than people realize. People spend money trying to buy: attention, affection, distraction, validation, and love. And social media has made this even worse. A lot of people are financially drowning trying to LOOK financially comfortable. Luxury apartments. Trips. VIP sections. Designer clothes. Cosmetic work. Body maintenance. Constant travel. Bottle service. Some people aren’t rich. They’re just committed to appearing expensive. And gay culture absolutely pressures men to stay young forever. Peter Pan syndrome is very real in our community. Especially in nightlife. Promoters want DJs desirable. Social media rewards youth. Apps reward appearance. And a lot of gay men become terrified of aging because they think invisibility comes next. But eventually reality catches everybody. Muscles are not a retirement plan. One of my biggest regrets was after selling my San Diego home years ago. Instead of investing more wisely I burned through money emotionally. I paid off exes’ debts. I spent recklessly. I lived in the moment because that’s all I really knew how to do back then. Ironically though, buying homes with my first husband also ended up saving my ass financially because we bought smart properties and later sold them for significant profits. That wiped out my debt completely. So even in my chaos there were still smart decisions hidden in there somewhere. And I have to give credit where credit is due: my mother actually taught me a lot about money growing up. We are estranged now and our relationship is complicated, but she was extremely meticulous financially and many of the habits that finally helped me later in life came directly from lessons she tried to teach me years earlier that I was too stubborn, immature, or distracted to fully appreciate at the time. That’s the funny thing about getting older. Sometimes you realize the people you fought with were still trying to prepare you for survival. The biggest turning point financially for me was after my second divorce. For the first time in my adult life there was nobody left to fall back on. No partner. No safety net. No rescue coming. It became sink or swim. That changes you very quickly. And oddly enough, working at UPS during the week changed my relationship with money too. As a DJ, money came in giant chunks from gigs. It never felt connected to time. But hourly work rewired my brain. Now I’ll look at something and think: “That’s five hours of my life.” Even if I can afford it, I’ll sometimes put it back. That mindset shift changed me permanently. People laugh when I say this but one of the biggest reasons I became financially responsible was because of Pooh. I promised him we would never live unstable again. That dog has been beside me through every dark chapter of my life. Relationships ended. Friends disappeared. Careers changed. Pooh stayed. Most DJs sleep in hotels after gigs. I usually take the first flight home because I want to get back to my best friend. And honestly many single gay men understand this more than people admit publicly. A lot of us don’t have children. A lot of us don’t speak to family. A lot of us live alone. So eventually financial fear becomes existential fear. “What happens when I’m old?” “Who takes care of me?” “Will I have to work forever?” “Will anyone even be there?” That’s the real panic underneath all this. And because nobody talks about it openly, many gay men silently spiral financially while pretending they’re fine. So here’s advice I genuinely wish someone had drilled into my head younger: • Save one full year of living expenses. Not three months. One full year. Especially if you are single. • Stop trying to impress people who would not loan you $20 during an emergency. • Learn the difference between friends and an audience. • Do not financially destroy yourself trying to maintain a lifestyle for social media. • If every hangout requires spending money, those are not real coping skills. • Learn investing early. Even boring investments matter. • Loneliness will convince you to buy things you do not need to impress people who do not care. • A second income is no longer embarrassing. For many people it’s survival. • Your future self deserves protection too. And if you’re older and financially behind right now: you are not a failure. Many gay men lost years to survival mode. Closets. Addiction. Trauma. Reinvention. Heartbreak. Partying. Trying to belong somewhere. Some of us were so busy surviving that nobody taught us how to build. But you can still build now. Even slowly. Peace is worth more than pretending to be rich ever was. Drew Does Dallas

 

 

oh thank god my 6 out of 11 blogs are back online whew I did not have the slightest clue what to do they were working fine for years then suddenly a server error I had to threaten them with a $100m lawsuit lmao poor google has to deal with me lol everything I could research said it was an issue on the blogs end not mine all I have is the blogspot service and the domains they take care of the rest just agonize like is this it do they hate my porn that much lol

 

If you’ve followed me for awhile now, you should know one thing about me. I do not shut up, and I do not let go. I speak for the voiceless. 163 days. 163 days. That’s how long we held onto 10 birds, not knowing if they would ever truly be safe. Waiting. Hoping. Fighting for lives that could not fight for themselves. 163 days ago, it started with one, an African Grey. Broken. A fractured face. A shattered leg. Bone exposed. Pain written into every inch of his body. 163 days ago, that one bird cracked open the truth. What was supposed to be a “rescue” was nothing but suffering hidden behind a name. Hoarding. Starvation. Birds left in dark, unlit rooms with no windows, no light, no life. No real food. Barely water. Birds left to roam a “now” condemned house in conditions no living being should ever endure. Infection ran rampant. Bodies wasted away. Souls shut down. Some of the worst cases our vet had ever seen. Every bird smelled like dog feces and urine. They were forced to free roam the same narrow paths carved through junk piled to the ceiling, the same paths the dogs used just to move through the house. They were filthy. Coated in neglect. The smell was rancid, overwhelming. This is no way for an animal or a human to live. My House of Wings called themselves a rescue, but they were just as bad as hell. They may have pulled birds from one bad situation, only to place them into something even worse. A deeper, darker kind of suffering. A place where there was no relief, no recovery, no hope. 163 days is what it took to bring them back. To slowly add weight to fragile, failing bodies. To fight infection that should have never existed. To undo fear that had been carved into them. To show them, piece by piece, that life did not have to hurt. To teach them that they mattered. Because they are not evidence. They are not “cases.” They have names. Here are just some of their stories… Junior. The African Grey who started it all. Passed off as something to “wait out.” Left in an incubator, covered in filth and bugs, likely pulled from a mountain of hoarded debris. Half his leg bone protruding from his body. A fractured face. Sitting there, suffering, unheard. Arthur and Amelia. The two Amazons forced to live in complete darkness, in a windowless room. They learned to survive by feeling each other, by listening for each other, because sight was taken from them. A cage too small, breaking their feathers, breaking their bodies. When they first saw light again, it overwhelmed them so deeply we thought they were blind. Amelia’s wing twisted, damaged, likely from human hands that were supposed to protect her. Mr. Perriwinkle. A Hyacinth Macaw reduced to almost nothing. Underweight. Undersized. The back of his head bare. An old neck injury that never healed. The smallest touch made him cry out. Even under anesthesia, his wings could not open. They were frozen, locked to a body that had forgotten what freedom felt like. A Blue and Gold Macaw, starving, struggling just to breathe through infection. Two male Eclectus parrots, bodies marked by trauma, toes deformed, injuries likely from being forced to fight for scraps in a place where survival meant pain. Two Indian Ringnecks. One with a damaged beak. Another fighting a losing battle with gout, liver failure, and ovarian cancer. Every single one of them dehydrated. Every single one of them neglected. Every single one of them failed. 163 days later, justice spoke. Guilty. But this is more than a verdict. This is freedom. Because those birds, every single one of them, will never go back. They will never know that darkness again. They will never starve again. They will never be forgotten again. Say their name. My House Of Wings. No. My House of HORRORS. YOU DID THIS TO THEM. And I will never be silenced. I will be the voice for the voiceless, always. I will ALWAYS fight for them. Louder. Harder. Until there is nothing left to fight against. And to every single person who saw Junior’s story and refused to look away, who questioned, who called, who reported, who cared enough to act YOU were their voice when they had none. YOU exposed this nightmare. YOU helped save 19 birds from imminent death, from starvation, from suffering they may not have survived. This victory belongs to them. To every broken body that learned how to heal. To every terrified soul that learned what safety feels like. 163 days later They are alive. They are safe. They are free. And we won

 

nice and round