I don't remember the last time I was under 200 lbs. I'm thinking it's at least two years ago, though. But I hit that milestone this week, and this morning I was 198. That's a full weight bowling ball I was carrying around 3 weeks ago that I'm not carrying any more.

I scheduled my colonoscopy for next Thursday. I'm not looking forward to this. I won't be awake during the procedure, but the prep (clear liquid diet for 36 hours, and drinking whole bottles of laxative) doesn't excite me.

When I committed to blogging regularly about my progress in fighting diabetes, I imagined that there'd be so much to write about. In the beginning it felt like my entire life would be taken over with disease management--constant food monitoring, glucose monitoring, exercising, and preoccupying myself with thoughts of cheesecake and chocolate ice cream I was deprived of. But as it turns out, eating differently is becoming a habit. BGM is just a few days a week instead of every day. I take a good vigorous walk whenever I have the chance. And I don't really feel all that deprived. I'm happy about the weight loss and that compensates.

So maybe I need to write about other things besides myself. The situation in the middle east, maybe. The shooting yesterday at the Jewish Federation building. But there are so many other people blogging about those things. My blog was always meant to be my outlet for recording my thoughts about my life. Originally I thought I'd write about being out and perpetually single. Then I thought it would be about my health. But all of that is just bits and pieces of life. And it's my blog, so I can write whatever I want.

Last night I was at a party at Kevin and Linda's new house. There was a guy there named Bradley. The last time I saw Bradley was about 20 years ago. He was a student at Eureka College who, I think, graduated the year before I got there. And as I understand it from the stories I was told, he and another student named Rodney were responsible for bringing about the demise of Greg Upton, my predecessor at Eureka, and so, in a way, what Bradley did resulted in my coming to Eureka College.

This fact in itself doesn't make me dislike Bradley, but the stories I heard about him and Rodney came mostly from Greg's friends. Greg was certainly not blameless; in fact, he really brought about his own demise. I don't know for sure that he had an affair with Rodney, and it's a long time ago, so the specific details aren't that important. But here's what made me figure out why I think Bradley is a sleaze:

1. He spent most of the party chatting with Mike and Carl, a gay couple, and I sensed his "connection" with them.
2. My gaydar is not faultless, but it's pretty well honed, and, well, let's just say that the needle was all the way pinned to the far end of the scale.
3. He has a wife back in Japan.
   

I've always had an intolerance for gay men who live in the closet and who take wives as disguises. I know that the pressures of society sometimes lead men to make bad choices in this regard, but I do not respect these choices or the men who make them.

With Bradley, it goes farther in part because of what happened before I got to Eureka College, but, hell, you don't judge people by what they did when they were young and stupid. It was the conversation I almost got into with him last night that helped me make up my mind that Bradley is a sleaze, the same sleaze he was back then.

I was talking with Bradley and Luke, Kevin's younger brother, who were students at EC at the same time, though Luke was maybe a couple of years younger. Luke was asking "Whatever happened to..." questions. When he asked about one guy named Jerry, Bradley said, "He has a partner," and went on to provide a little more detail, ending by saying, "He's still a Republican," to which Luke responded, "Well good for Jerry."

I said, "What's good about being a Republican?" And Bradley said something about how there are some of us who think the Republican party has the right solutions to problems. I responded that gay people should not be among those who think the party who wishes to deny them their basic civil rights has the solution to anything. Then Bradley made some comment about gay marriage and gay rights, and I said, this is a conversation I did not wish to get into, so could we please change the subject. He kept right on, so I excused myself.

I am so not interested in conversing with, or even being polite to, hypocrites like Bradley. It's one thing to suppress your sexuality. But his brand of covert homophobia disgusts me.

It was a fun party, though.