Gay Rabbis Night Hosted By Jewish Journal

Luke Ford says:

Why would clergy, of all people, want to go public with their sexual preferences?

I am a humble blogger. I have no responsibilities. But you don’t see me tearing up the blogosphere talking about my sexual orientation. You don’t read long horny blog posts from me discussing what it was like to be a hound dog in Seventh-Adventism, Judaism and the academy.

No, sirree, I believe these matters should be private.

Why would one want to talk to the world about one’s sexual tastes?

This seems particularly inappropriate for clergy. For bloggers and novelists and actors and musicians, fine. But people who are supposed to be moral leaders?

Why would morally serious people want to identify themselves to the world by their taste in sex? So you’re a bloke who likes to bugger other blokes, why preach that from the pulpit?

Everyone I know has particular sexual preferences. Some like to be spanked. Some like it in the context of adultery. Some can’t get excited unless there’s pain. But these people don’t identify themselves to the world by what they like in the bedroom.

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Cornered By A Shiksa

Luke Ford says:

Monica’s “Martinis and Melodrama” cocktail party is called for 7:30 p.m.

I walk up to her door and knock at 7:30 p.m.

I’m the first guest.

Her dog Eliot Epstein barks furiously. Last time I was here, he bit me.

Monica says the right things about putting him in her car for the party but of course she does nothing of the sort and we’re treated to his annoying yaps for the rest of the evening.

I head straight for her dining table and start heaping my plate with tabuli and pasta and humus. I haven’t eaten this well since LimmudLA.

Soon Monica’s two graphic designers show up and the three girls talk about martinis for 30 minutes.

I’m going out of my mind. Boring! I hate alcohol. I hate trivial conversation. I want something meaty to sink my fangs into.

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Pacific Union College Pool

Luke Ford says:

One of the ways I classify places is whether or not I ever made it there.

I only ever made it in LA, Sacramento, Orlando, Vancouver, Las Vegas and Big Sur (beside a cliff overlooking the ocean underneath a loving sun).

I never did it in Australia. Never got further than a hearty kiss and some gentle fondling above the belt.

I just reconnected with an old acquaintance from Pacific Union College Elementary School — Rod. He was in the grade below me. He played quarterback. Like me, he had a smart mouth.

I just posted on his Facebook: “Dude, did you get laid in Angwin? I felt like I was the only one who never did… SDA girls were goody girls as far as I found. I was a virgin until I was 22… You were always precocious, playing quarterback…slick with the girls. How old were you when you lost it?”

An old friend responds: “”Luke…the girls weren’t goody girls…they were just smart!!”

I never did anything naughty with a Seventh-Day Adventist girl. I never did anything naughty until I was 22.

(Rod did it first when he was 15.)

The closest to naughty I ever got was the summer of 1983 when a bunch of us got in the hot tub one Shabbos afternoon. There was a girl with us in a bikini (my age, we’d all known her for years). And about five guys.

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When The Loss Comes Rolling In

Luke Ford says:

Most of the time, I’m the happy-go-lucky moral leader you all love and enjoy.

A moral leader for the whole family!

I strike dramatic poses. I say dramatic things. I get into dramatic conflicts. I write out my dramatic feelings.

Oh, it is all such fun. So grand! So childish.

And then the loss comes rolling in. I’ll be silly on my blog, I’ll be clowning on my live cam, and then I realize that I am 43, never married, no children, tenuated ties to others, little community. And that feeling of loss keeps expanding until it weighs down my heart and I just feel hollow inside.

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I Just Want To Be Close To You

Luke Ford says:

I have a hard time sleeping with someone. I feel like it is against the Torah. I feel like I am not living up to my highest ideals. I feel like my dad might walk in any minute and say, “Son, what are you doing?”

So I normally like to kick my ladies to the bottom of the bed and have them sleep at my feet. Then in the morning, when I’m awake, I bring them up for a quick cuddle before I shower and say my prayers.

But there was this one woman who wouldn’t be kicked away so easily.

She was taking Ambien. And she was a very snuggly cuddly girl.

And we’d snuggle and cuddle until I got sleepy — our sex lives had ended weeks before (love of chess extended our relationship by about six months) — and then I push her towards the bottom of the bed.

She didn’t get the hint.

So I grabbed her little feet and dragged her to her rightful place and gave her a comforter and a pillow and told her to rejoice in her lot.

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Seventh-Gay Adventists

Luke Ford says:

That’s a great title for a movie.

I was raised a Seventh-Day Adventist. There were no out homosexuals in the religious communities I grew up in (Avondale College and Pacific Union College). We would’ve dragged them behind a pack of kangaroos until they were cured of their disease.

I remember in sixth, seventh and eighth grade at Pacific Union College Elementary School, “fag” was the dirtiest word you could hurl at someone. I used a lot.

Guess that wasn’t very Christlike of me.

Here’s more info on this movie:

This film explores the complex intersection of religion, identity, and sexuality through the stories of gay Adventists who are often faced with a gut-wrenching decision. They must choose between the church they were raised to believe is God’s true remnant church and their innate desire for an intimate, loving relationship. Or is there a way to reconcile their faith and their identity?

Why Make This Film?

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What Must I Do To Be Saved?

Luke Ford says:

I’m reading a terrific book addressing this question — Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones, a professor of Classics at Brown University and a teacher of Alexander Technique.

From page two: “For the Alexander Technique doesn’t teach you something new to do. It teaches you how to bring more practical intelligence into what you are already doing: how to eliminate stereotyped responses; how to deal with habit and change. It leaves you free to choose your own goal but gives you a better use of yourself while you work towards it.”

“Alexander and his brother, A.R. Alexander (1874-1947), developed a way of using their hands to convey information directly through the kinaesthetic sense. They gave their pupils an immediate “aha” experience of performing a habitual act — walking, talking, breathing, handling objects, and the like — in a non-habitual way. The technique changed the underlying feeling tone of a movement, producing a kinaesthetic effect of lightness that was pleasurable and rewarding and served as the distinguishing hallmark of non-habitual responses.”

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