A thread to muse randomly about whatever is distracting you...

[Belegon]

I'm in a weird place. I haven't been writing much, and I've been alone more in the last couple of months than I have in many years, maybe ever.

This is due to a list of somewhat random occurrances. For example, I lost my medicaid coverage Dec. 1st. There was a paperwork deadline I wasn't aware of and I missed, involving a re-evaluation of my eligibility... Mostly financials based. I got notification of it about a week before it actually ended and I did get the needed paperwork submitted, albeit a few days after my medicaid was actually canceled. Then my paperwork was looked over and they came back in early Jan. with the news that I made too much money to qualify for Medicaid unless I was disabled. Now, how they couldn't piece together that my ONLY source of income was Social Security Disability payments with the fact that I AM disabled, I'm not sure. Especially considering that SSD is quite a hard status to acquire, and many, many people who are honestly and truly disabled have a very hard time negotiating the various pratfalls and traps along the way. I only managed to get qualified after hiring a lawyer who specialized in it to help me negotiate the roadblocks and difficulties. They verified all the information about my diagnosis and my limitations with my doctors, independent of me by actually going and making contact with my physicians themselves. It was quite a process. Anyway, I have not yet received the results of my appeal.

I also find it interesting that i am too rich to be on Medicaid despite the fact that the amount of money I do receive from Social Security monthly is barely, and I do mean barely, enough to let me survive WHILE sharing living expenses and an apartment with my adult son. Without his help I would be effectively homeless right now. (not really, as my family would find ways to get me somewhere to live with someone, but you get the point as regards my financial status, I hope.) I am currently broke, as in my checking account is overdrawn and I don't even have food money until next Wed. when my next SS payment hits the bank. We're talking ramen and water broke. Can't even afford McDonalds.

All of which being a long way to explain that I haven't had a chemo appt. since late November and that is relevent because a decent portion of my social life over the last 18-24 months has revolved around medical appointments. Certainly the majority of my social interaction with the female of the species over the last 2 years has been with my nurses at the cancer center. This is not to say that I have dated or attempted to date any of them, but their smiles at my poor jokes and their kind words have been a big part of my self-esteem.

I did visit with my brother in South Dakota at Christmas, but my ability to make that travel was at the hands of my mother, who wanted to see me and was willing to put the money into my travel to enable her to do so. My mother, through good fortune and wise investing, is in a considerably stronger financial position than I am. However, since leaving my brothers home, my only contact with other people has been with my son and a couple of brief evenings at my best friend's house, one in celebration of New Year's and a second for Super Bowl Sunday earlier this week.

Other than that, 2026 has been an entirely solo affair. Me and the two cats, who still haven't quite accepted me as belonging in their presence although it's been over a year since my ex-wife expelled me from our shared home and I landed here in the apartment with my son.


I'm not looking for sympathy, although I would probably accept it. What I am actually bringing up is that I have had lots of time to think. And much of that thinking has been remembering my younger days, including some recall of events I had not brought to the forefront of my mind in many, many years. Some of these remembrances could serve as inspiration for some decent stories, If I were to desire to place those times before the wider world.... and some of the ones that would make the best stories I find myself reluctant to adapt, because other parties involved in the stories would be certain to recognize the events were they to somehow stumble across the stories, even if I were to change names and dates and settings. Some things I might say might even be construed as not mine to reveal, although I have no intention of talking of anything second-hand. I feel like if I was involved, I am talking about MY experiences and have the right to say what I want.

So, I have some things I would like to put out there in a limited audience situation. I want to hear feedback or get discussion about some of these things, but I don't want to expose them to greater distribution. And, for better or worse, when writing these things down I will find myself much more motivated to do it in a productive manner if I have some idea of an audience that will hold me accountable to at least a modicum of craft.

Which led to the idea of creating this thread. I'm certain the vast majority of you have no interest in my petty tales, but there is always the chance that one of you will be utterly bored some evening and find at least a moments distraction in my re-telling of things about my wild younger days. Not all that wild on a large scale perhaps, but certainly different in many ways than a lot that happens now or that may have happened to you. It is my intention to mostly tell truth. Thoughts and impressions, as well as actual occurrences, about a time that is gone. A time before cell phones and text messaging, though I'm not promising that my recollections won't occasionally drift into my late twenties and early thirties when such things did become available.

I certainly encourage anyone else wanting to indulge in such a way to also contribute.

 

[Belegon]

as a beginning, let me talk about how I acquired this apparently rather unique screen name and my writing nom de plume...

I call it unique because a google search under Will Belegon will actually lead back to me, although one under the name on my birth certificate would not do so until quite a number of hoops and hurdles had been negotiated. I have never met a person with the real, government recorded name of Belegon, although I suppose it is possible that there is such a family out there.

My screen name is the result of a couple of conditions of my teenage years. One of those is that I had delusions of granduer as regards to perhaps becoming famous in some way. Many of the sidelines I pursued while negotiating through my adolescent years were connected to worlds where assumed names were fairly common. For example, I had the quite common dream that I might become a rock star. I never pursued this with the intensity necessary to actually have a chance at accomplishing it. I'd pick up my guitar on pretty much a daily basis, but I would pluck away at it for maybe an hour before moving on to another distraction, not nearly enough daily practice to become truly competent. And I never had much of a singing voice, although I enjoyed singing. The only real remnant of those dreams is that most of my early forays into creative writing of any sort were attempts at songwriting.

But one of the things that is true about many rock stars is that they don't use the names that they were born under. Adam Ant is actually Stuart Goddard, Ringo Star is Richard Starkey, etc. And I wanted a more catchy moniker. I started with the idea of taking the parental juvenalizing of my actual name into an ending with an "e" sound and changing the spelling. Thus Richard to Ricky to Rikki. Rikki looked much more like a rock star name, but also was, at least, something I might find myself turning to look if someone called it out. But what to do about my surname?

Along with being very into music I was also head over heels in love with Tolkien's middle earth. (still am) I first read the LOTR at eleven years of age, perhaps a bit advanced for me but I was fascinated and The Hobbit just wasn't enough. I was still just as intrigued with that world at sixteen. By then I was well into analysing the Silmarillion. In the back of the Silmarillion is a small Elvish glossary.

I knew that Richard was old anglo-saxon, as is my middle name, William. One means powerful or mighty ruler, one powerful warrior. I crossed that knowledge with my tendency to browse through the elvish and discovered "beleg." Sindarin for "mighty", which was close enough to powerful. I also discovered that the suffix -on indicated royalty, as in Turgon or Fingon. Thus, by pairing Beleg with the -on suffix, I had a word that I liked the sound of that was also kind of a backwards translation of my actual name. So Belegon is kind of my name as expressed in the fictional language of Beleriand. I sometimes referred to myself during my teenage adventures as Rikki Belegon.

Later, I began using just the back end of that as a signature on the poetry I was starting to be more serious about. That lasted for years and when I started to write fiction here at Lit and needed a name to register under, I registered as Belegon. After a few years writing here, I managed ( with the help of my dear friend and future partner Impressive) to actually sell a short story an epublisher. They wanted something more than just Belegon. They wanted something that sounded like a real name. I didn't want to jump back to Rikki, especially after that spelling had become associated with Rikki Rocket of the band Poison, so I decided to use my actual middle name. Thus, I became Will Belegon. That name is now so much a part of me that I have dear friends who I've known for many years who, if you asked them about Rich XXXXXXXX, would give you a blank stare -- but if you ask them about Will, they instantly make the connection and start spilling stories about some drunk idiocy I engaged in at a Romantic Times Convention in Houston or Orlando.

 

[Jackie.Hikaru]

Its a rotten thing that you have to fight to receive your earned social security with a lawyer. That's incredibly unjust and angers me to hear. Sorry

I can't say I have any words of encouragement for you, and I don't consider myself qualified at all to give any advice... but I will just say that the past year hasn't treated me well to say the least, and I find that I've also been reminiscing ALOT as a result. I've been told (by a qualified expert lol) that I should try to write down my memories, and try to write them down with a coherent narrative structure (expressive writing). I can't say I've taken much action on that guidance, but they say it helps lol. It seems you have the same idea...

Anyways, rooting for things to get better for you. If it helps any, here's a nice quote from Anaïs Nin:

Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.

 

[nice90sguy]

Hi Belegon. "Sub Joe" here. Know and love you and Imp well. You're one of the couples that Lit was a Cupid for.

 

[Belegon]

Hi Belegon. "Sub Joe" here. Know and love you and Imp well. You're one of the couples that Lit was a Cupid for.

Imp and I were together for several years. We are no longer romantically connected, but I still Consider her one of my dearest friends and try to meet her often for lunch or a drink. And I am still living in the town I left San Diego to join her in.

I will forever be grateful to Lit for connecting me into her life, and to her for expanding certain horizons.

Good to know that's you, bra... I've only run into a small handful of friends fromn "back in the day", although i do still have some connections with some of the old gang outside of Lit. Abs and I are in touch on Facebook, for example.

 

[Belegon]

I find that I've also been reminiscing ALOT as a result. I've been told (by a qualified expert lol) that I should try to write down my memories, and try to write them down with a coherent narrative structure (expressive writing). I can't say I've taken much action on that guidance, but they say it helps lol. It seems you have the same idea...

Yes, that sounds right to me. this idea came to me specifically because I started writing down an old story about my past as a facebook post and then decided that it was a bit TOO personal to put out on that platform. I have no belief that the young lady involved in the recollection would be very likely to stumble across it, but certain personal details were, while from my first hand recollection and thus, IMHO, fair game for me to talk about were also pretty intensely personal to HER and thus I didn't want to put them out there so broadly.

 

[Belegon]

Hi Belegon. "Sub Joe" here. Know and love you and Imp well. You're one of the couples that Lit was a Cupid for.

Also, some of those cupid couples ARE still together. Min and Mat are still married and living on the Isle of Man.

 

[nice90sguy]

Not much of that in the AH anymore, it got a romancectomy a few years back. I looked back at some of the mid naughties posts here, boy they were so much fun (for me anyway).
I had a major crush, and got pretty close to one woman who connected up with me in RL. The thing I notice from my own posts is how I worked through a lot of my real life problems here, and there were a lot of wise and trustworthy ppl here I could talk to. When my father died, the first people aside from my immediate family I told were my AH friends.

 

[nice90sguy]

Yes, that sounds right to me. this idea came to me specifically because I started writing down an old story about my past as a facebook post and then decided that it was a bit TOO personal to put out on that platform. I have no belief that the young lady involved in the recollection would be very likely to stumble across it, but certain personal details were, while from my first hand recollection and thus, IMHO, fair game for me to talk about were also pretty intensely personal to HER and thus I didn't want to put them out there so broadly.

FB is a bad idea -- and I did a bit of that too, at the tail end of marriage #1.

 

[Belegon]

Not much of that in the AH anymore, it got a romancectomy a few years back. I looked back at some of the mid naughties posts here, boy they were so much fun (for me anyway).
I had a major crush, and got pretty close to one woman who connected up with me in RL. The thing I notice from my own posts is how I worked through a lot of my real life problems here, and there were a lot of wise and trustworthy ppl here I could talk to. When my father died, the first people aside from my immediately family I told were my AH friends.

I certainly consider myself lucky in that I met some wonderful people who have become friends of great length. Lucky-E-leven and I are still in contact very often. Gwen Masters and I have had a close friendship lasting more than twenty years now... (she is actually an editor for a New York based magazine whose name you would definitely recognize). There are others I talk to or communicate at least weekly if not daily. I also have many friends I met during my brief foray into being a "legitimate" romance author who are still very good friends.

The writer's life has actually been pretty kind to me.

 

[Belegon]

So, I started writing about the same girl whose personal kinks led me to thinking it was too personal for me to out on Facebook despite the highly unlikely chance she would ever see it... which led to , instead of me writing about her, me putting down about four pages about the first truly sexual relationships of my life. the interesting part of that is that even in covering only the first three women I ever saw naked ( I still haven't even reached me losing my virginity) I've found some experiences leaping out at me as I recall them and saying to me, "This could be a good story!" Remember, I just said I haven't even gotten to the night where I lose my virginity.

it makes me wonder how many of us have such strong remaining sexual impressions about experiences that happened BEFORE that supposedly all important First Time. I can vividly remember some things that happened forty-five years ago better than i can remember some things that happened five years ago. I know THIS part isn't unique because I've heard others address the same issue. And it does make some sort of sense that strong experiences that are first times of things like the first time I saw a naked breast, the first time I ever tasted a woman, the first time I ever had a woman go down on me... sure those would be strong memory makers, and could easily demand more attention than a much more recent but not nearly as definitive sexual event.

anyway, i wrote four and a half pages of first person babble about various moments between March of my senior year of high school that I have zero real intent of publishing in story form. ( Don't worry, I turned 18 in December of my senior year of high school. So I'm not breaking the under-18 clause. I got a late start compared to many in my generation but as soon as I turned that corner I had the accelerator to the floor and I had a lot of things happen in that first year of actually being sexually active... all without even losing my virginity until about three weeks AFTER my nineteenth birthday.)

We placed such importance on it at the time... I was actually kind of embarrassed for many years that I didn't lose my virginity until after high school AND I was actually a legal adult before I did. But so many of the experiences I had in the months surrounding that event I wouldn't trade for the world now. so glad that when that event did happen for me it was with someone I really cared about, who I was with for about a year after it happened. In a bed, and we spent the whole night together. No wham bam thank you ma'am in the back seat of my Chevy with a girl where that particular hook up would be the ONLY thing I would remember about her.