Justin in Bed

Good God I love him lol

Closets

Wow! I'm not sure how this short film never came onto my radar considering it features one of my favorite Whoniverse actors Tommy Knight aka Sarah Jane's son in 1 of the lead roles. This is a really heartbreaking but touching film with a kickass concept and it would make a fantastic romance or comedy if expanded to feature length. Watch and enjoy :)

Eulogy for Dad

My Dad passed away several weeks ago after a short battle with cancer. I posted a Facebook status about his death explaining the hows and whys and included a really lovely picture slideshow. Not to toot my own horn but I was quite satisfied with the end result. My brother even commented how he was speechless. I was happy I had pleased him. Initially I had every intention of writing a follow-up "eulogy" so to speak, even though Dad was being cremated and didn't want a service so really didn't require a eulogy. But I felt like I had to say more about the passing of a man who helped to create me and shape me in my childhood years, for better or worse. But the worse part held me up for a while. I decided not to post this on Facebook at all. People on Facebook are happy watching their funny cat videos. Complications and moral ambiguities not so much. At least that's how I see it. My Dad was never an easy person to love or keep a relationship with. I know that I am so very much like him and that worries me sometimes. But I also know that despite having my father's simmering temper I also have my mother's enormous and generous heart. He never held me. He hardly ever complimented me (at least until he was close to death). Later in life, he never called me unless there was an emergency. He never suggested we hang out. It always had to be me calling him to spend time together, despite the fact that other people told me he constantly griped about how little time he spent with my brother and I and his grandchildren. When we did speak on the phone, it would always consist of no more than 4 questions: 1) Whatever the primary reason for the call was 2) How I was 3) How my car was running 4) Did I need any money? That probably sounds amusing but that is the absolute truth. If I tried to interject something new into the conversation he would always cut the call short. And if you had anything morally complicated to discuss with him you'd better condense that shit into a fortune cookie sentence or you'd never get an answer. As it was, you'd have to repeat the fortune cookie sentence 4 times because he was 1) so hard of hearing 2) tended to talk over you and only pay attention to about one third of what you had just said. That's probably why I never came out to him. That and the fact that he often called Leonardo Dicaprio a faggot. I knew it would be a difficult conversation and extremely awkward after the fact so I simply bypassed the whole topic. I'm sure he knew. But we didn't discuss it. But I know that his response would have been positive had I decided to tell him. Positive in an extremely uncomfortable way no doubt knowing my Dad ("Hey Steve, my neighbor's son is gay do you know him?" sorta thing), but positive nevertheless.I should state here and now that this is not meant to be an airing of grievances against my Dad. I buried those long before I buried him. But it wouldn't do to memorialize him with just a positive whitewashing. Life is so much more complex than that. And Walter D. Shaw was no exception. One of the first memorable things I can recall him saying to me was "You wipe like a girl!". And his last words to me only 5 days before he died (expressing anger at being in a rehab center and not being able to go home) were "Thanks for shafting me." These are not the things that Hallmark cards are made out of. And yet, several weeks before he thanked me for shafting him, we had a long conversation about his time in Vietnam, which he'd never talked about before. I knew combat had changed him. I knew he was an atheist like me but when he got over there he started wearing a cross and praying to any diety he thought would listen. I knew he cheated on my mother with a Vietnamese girl and later confessed to her. But beyond that, he never spoke of it. Maybe that's because I was always afraid to ask. All I knew about the war was that it made him have horrible nightmares sometimes. And made him drink to excess every night when I was little. And made him angry at the world. An anger he would take out on my Mom and anyone else who happened to erroneously be in his way that night. Many times I recall being woken up to the sound of my mother being beaten or screaming for help. Several times we had to flee the house in the middle of the night and head in our pajamas to my Nana's house where we would spend a few days until the alcohol or his fury wore off. Once they divorced things settled down. His drinking fell to "acceptable levels" and his temper rarely revealed itself. He made a pretty decent weekend parent for a while. Several years at least. And then, something happened around the time I was 12 or so and my brother was 8. He suddenly stopped calling to come and pick us up for the weekend. I don't remember the exact circumstances or what he said when we called him to ask about it. But I was 12 I don't think I bent over backward to figure it out then. I just turned my confusion and hurt to anger and wrote him off. For about 15 years. We didn't see or hear from him. Didn't know if he was alive or dead. And then, one day I decided to give in to the nurturing part of myself that I inherited from my mother and write him a letter. Make no mistakes, if it had been the part of me I inherited from my Dad I would never have seen him again. My father hadn't seen either of his brothers for 20 years when he died. He was not prone to sentimentality. I don't remember what I said in the letter though I wish we had found it in his belongings after he died because I really would like to know. But eventually we reconnected, and my Dad got to watch his grandchildren be born and share so many life events with us. I think I'm proudest of that on a personal level. I brought that connection back even though I had deep reservations about it, and ultimately it was enriching for all of us. Despite all of his complexities, I attribute a lot of core character traits to my Dad. Certainly my love of music. He would always put a new record on the turntable and blast it through the speakers while my brother and I would run around the house like maniacs dancing to the beat. My love for cinema, most notably horror movies, started with him as well. When I was 6 and The Exorcist first came on HBO I begged him to let me stay up and watch it with him. He compromised, telling me he would wake me up when the movie started and that I had to go right back to bed afterward. You can debate the poor choice to let a 6 year old watch Linda Blair stab herself in the vagina with a bloody crucifix, but from that moment onward I was hooked on horror movies. I live for them now. That particular story comes with an amusing coda, though. I ended up being so frightened by the film that I couldn't go back to bed. All these years later, that movie still creeps me the fuck out. Some of the best makeup and voice acting in horror film history. But I can remember very clearly my Mom cuddling me in bed and telling me and my Dad that I shouldn't have watched the movie. And my Dad angrily telling me that he would never let me watch another horror movie. Spoiler alert: he did. He would also wake me up at 11:30 pm when The Honeymooners used to come on just so I could watch the episode with him and the two of us would crack ourselves up and then I would head back to bed. James Bond. Godzilla. We watched all of them together. And I still watch and treasure them to this day. I also remember during the "weekend parent" years of the early 80's Dad would take my brother and I to any movie we wanted to see that week, which sometimes made for interesting nights out. His little, unbeknownst to him, queer son (me if you've forgotten) saw a preview for this movie called A Night in Heaven which featured super sexy hottie of that moment Christopher Atkins not wearing very much at all as a male stripper who seduces his teacher. Dad thought it was pretty good but definitely gave me some major side eye afterward while asking "What made you choose that movie?" It still gets me hot. Then there was the time we went to see An American Werewolf in London and made it halfway through the movie until David Naughton started screaming hysterically while changing into the werewolf and my brother and I disappeared into the theater next store to watch Honky Tonk Freeway because we were scared but neglected to tell Dad where we were going. For years he would tell us "You abandoned me in that screwy werewolf movie!" In his later years, my Dad often helped me out with money when I needed it. When my car was hit on the street and totaled I called him up and he was there the next day cash in hand. When I needed a new computer and couldn't afford it, he sent me the money immediately. When I published my book (which happened to feature one story in particular written when we hadn't been speaking that featured a gay son who returns home to visit his dying father who disowned him when he came out that must have seemed really really familiar to him despite my still being in the closet), he bought a copy and promptly read it despite the fact that he never read fiction in his life, afterward telling me "Good job". Probably my biggest regret is never asking him why he stopped calling us and broke contact for all those years. When we did finally reconnect we simply ignored the question and started over fresh. But it forever nagged at me. As with most life mysteries, though, the answers I dream up in my head are probably much more fascinating than the truth. I'm sure being a weekend parent feels pretty thankless sometimes and he simply became bitter about it after a while. Now I'll never know. I do know that my Dad was proud of me and grateful for my presence at the end despite being angry at life for sending him out in such an undignified way. And that feels really good. Walter Shaw was many things. My Mom's first love. A war veteran. A proud grandfather. But most importantly, he was my Dad. He will be missed. RIP