About Buckcub
Click the cub to see a picture of me (fair warning, I only have jockey shorts on! 
Click HERE to see me in boy-cub uniform with a leather jacket and a leather collar. YOU WILL NEED TO CLICK THE "BACK"BUTTON ON YOUR BROWSER TO RETURN TO THIS PAGE!
Click here to see a tasteful (nonexplicit) nude pic of a very sleepy BuckcuB! You WILL need to click the "BACK" button your your browser to return to this page.
Click HERE to see a pic of me with my Daddy Bear! You will need to click the "Back" button on your browser to return to this page.
That's what I look like after a weekend with the bears! Hmmmmm, when WILL those bears stop giving me drinks to make me act silly?
Well, what to tell? Hmm, that's always a tuff one. My name is Teddy (if you're my mom or one of my friends) or Ted (if you're a co-worker or IRS agent). I was born March 11, 1962, which makes me a Pisces. I'm five feet nine inches tall, but I usually wear hi-top basketball shoes or cowboy boots which add two to three inches to my height. I weigh (right at the moment) 151 pounds. My "ethnic derivation" is something like this: 40% Irish, 30% German (Teutonic, not Aryan), 10% English (Norman, not Saxon), 10% Norwegian, 5% French and 5% Scottish.
I have one famous relative: Mary Stuart (Mary, Queen of Scots), to whom I'm related through my mom, who is descended from the dukes of Derwentwater's Radcliffe progeny (they were cousins of James I).
I have one infamous relative: "Black Sal" Simonson was my great-great-grandmother. She was a whore in the Port of Philadelphia, and murdered a sailor who didn't have the money to pay her by stabbing him to death with the ferule of her umbrella (c'mon, could I make that up?!?!?) She was hanged for her crime.
Here's a pic of my grandpa with the rest of the band he was in, the "Saxsons," in 1925. He played the piano. It was a Dixieland/jazz band that played in speakeasies -- he got caught in some raids!
Just goes ta show ya that there's nothin' like a li'l contrast in life! (grin)
I live in Bucks County, a suburban/semirural community northeast of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is very GREEN where I live, and some people keep sheep -- not for the meat or wool, but because they look pretty grazing on their front lawns. Hmmmm.
I grew up on Philadelphia's "Main Line," which is a grrrreat place to grow up! When I was a very little cub, most of the Main Line consisted of freakin' ENORMOUS estates where all the rich people who owned stuff in Philadelphia lived -- like the Dorrances (Campbell's Soup Company), the Pews (Sun Oil Company{SUNOCO}) and the Scotts (Scott Paper Company) and a whole buncha railroads). I did not grow up on an enormous estate, but a nice house which had to be very large 'cause I have five brothers. If you want to see what the Main Line looked like when I was a li'l tiny cub, go to the video store and rent "The Philadelphia Story" starring Katharine Hepburn. She plays a character based on Hope Montgomery Scott (recently dead) -- the Scott's 650-acre estate "Androssan" is now being cut up into nice 10- to 40-acre building lots priced from $1.5 million to around $9 million, if you're looking for a nice place to build a home! (grin)
I am MARRIED. Whatever the right-wingers, and the politically-correct folks, and the Church, and the heterosexists say, I am married. To another man. Our marriage does not require the approval of people we don't respect; our marriage does not need the blessing of bigots; our marriage does not depend for its stability upon a piece of paper issued by the government which means little-to-nothing given the divorce rate these days. I have been married, very very happily, for eighteen years. My partner and I have friends who have been "married" three times during that span of time. Now just who has trouble forming stable relationships, a charge that's always been leveled at gay couples?
I like being married. There's a line from the Bette Davis film "All About Eve" where Bette makes a little speech, the gist of which is: "If you can't look up over the breakfast table, or turn around in bed, and there HE is, then you don't really have much of a life at all." And it's true. All the success and achievement and triumph in the world isn't worth a damn, if you don't have someone you love to share it with.
The thing is, though, that a lot of people don't like being married because they don't know how to share; they don't know how to compromise; and -- to be highly controversial -- they don't know how to love. Too many folks born after 1960 grew up overindulged, spoiled, and raised with an absurd sense of entitlement. Life is and MUST be all about them. Being married is about membership in a partnership of equals. Neither partner is more important than the other -- but too many married couples spend most of their time competing over who gets to be "more important" than the other. I grew up as one of six brothers, and believe me, you learned the arts of sharing and compromise REAL quickly!
But it's the matter of how to love that's the biggest problem for many of the other couples we know. They don't know how to love. They got their ideas about loving from bad films and worse books. For gay men, especially, this seems to be a problem. Either the whole relationship must constantly be full of high drama -- which means endless quarreling and dudgeon worthy of a 1950's "B" movie -- or else it must be an imitation of a relationship where real feelings are never discussed, and both partners present to the world a totally fake facade of amiability, which falls apart pretty rapidly once you get to know that couple. Of course a couple quarrels, in the beginning, at least. But after eighteen years, there isn't anything important left to quarrel about! And loving has become a marvelous habit. Not a habit you take for granted, but a habit that is comfortable and affirming and trusted and so mutual that it need not be questioned. That's what too many couples, both gay and straight, are missing -- the habit of loving.
We have our long-established roles and places we each fill within our marriage, of course, like any successful couple. I am the decision-maker, not because I make better decisions, but because I don't mind making them and I am willing to take responsibility for bad decisions as well as good decisions. Luckily I don't make too many bad decisions! A important part of that role, however, is not taking undue credit. When I make a good decision and my partner is pleased with the result, it isn't my place to constantly remind everyone that *I* was the one who made the decision. If he wants to talk about the result approvingly and let people know he's happy with the outcome, I don't need to put myself front-and-center as the person who made it possible. Why should I? If the outcome is good, if my partner is pleased, if life is better in some way, that's all that counts. I don't need to take constant credit for it!
My partner is the "voice of reason," on the other hand. It is he who plays devil's advocate; who lays out potential downsides and disasters; who thinks in the truly long-term; who takes the steps that seem trivial now but turn out to be important far down the road. And when they do turn out to be so important, he doesn't trumpet "I TOLD you so!" either. It's enough that he did what needed to be done. He is pleased and satisfied; I am pleased and satisfied. What more could one ask?
Perhaps the most important part of our relationship, in terms of the way we live, is that we both had and have patience about material things and outward comforts and luxuries. We know WAY too many couples who live far beyond their means, owe thousands and thousands on credit cards; owe a mortgage that will never be paid-off; and possess expensive stuff they really can't afford. My partner and I lived within our means in the beginning, when money wasn't as available, and when we bought something we got value for money and bought the best there was -- or did without. When we bought our home, we stopped taking vacations and curtailed dining out, so that we could make double or triple payments on the mortgage every month. Our reward was paying off our mortgage in eight years, on a fairly expensive house. And the long-term rewards are even more wonderful -- now, if we want to dine out or take a vacation, we don't need to think about a mortgage payment when budgeting our expense! The same is true of credit-card purchases, for us. Our card balances are paid off, in full, every month. The cards, for us, are strictly a convenience -- not a ticket to live 'way beyond our means. When we buy anything costly, it's intended to last -- not to need replacing a few years down the road, which is a very false idea of being economical! Seventeen years ago, we bought a set of dining room furniture, from the Ethan Allen company. Solid cherry, very conservative, huge, heavy, and it cost more than seven thousand dollars, an enormous sum at that time given our budget. But it's FOREVER. Unlike our friends who've bought "junk" for a few hundred dollars, which wears out and falls apart in a few years and must be replaced, we thought ahead. And that's part of the secret of a successful marriage -- thinking ahead. Not just about furniture, but about everything!
Unlike a lot of folks these days, I believe in charity, and I actually give to charity. Every late April\early May I attend the Viennese Waltz at the Philadelphia Ritz-Carlton hotel. The Viennese Waltz is a huge charity ball that benefits the Multiple Sclerosis Society. It is very kewl because not only does the stiff ticket price go to help people with MS, but they don't have any problem at all with two men waltzing around and around the ballroom to the Philadelphia String Ensemble's renditions of Strauss waltzes. (I like "Roses From The South" a whole lot.) They have a bitchin' dessert buffet as well! I usually have cocktails and dinner there first, then go to the ball and sit with the people I talk to every year. They encourage you to wear "period dress" but I have no idea on where to rent an 1840's Austrian officer's uniform. So I just wear black tie.
I also go to "Santa Saturday" every year at Club Cartwheel in New Hope, about 15 minutes from my house. It's a charity event which benefits people with HIV/AIDS, mostly attended by bears and bikers and leathermen. We all have a wonderful time, and almost all of the money goes to help the charity people. At SantaSaturday 1996 I got spanked (on the seat of my jockey shorts! (blush)) by "SantaBear" in front of an awful lot of attendees who found the whole thing real amusin'! If you're going to be in the area around late November, drop me a line by email (Cub4U2@msn.com) and I'll let you know the exact date and location, it's a GRRRREAT event for bears and cubs!
I have a couple of li'l idiosyncracies (well, some folks would call them affectations!): I almost always wear white clothes. Suits, jackets/coats, shoes and my black leather jeans are the exceptions. I almost always drink stingers. Here's my recipe for a stinger the way I like them:
4 oz. brandy (DON'T use anything really fine like Courvoisier or Martell)
1/2 oz. white creme de menthe
Shake the brandy and creme de menthe together well; pour into an 8-oz. glass filled with ice.
Drink as rapidly as possible and make another.
I am a journalist/columnist. I write for several different media outlets, handle some publicity, and produce public relations materials. My work has appeared in Philadelphia's "Au Courant," the Bucks County "Courier Times," the Montgomery County "Record," the Doylestown "Intelligencer," "Better Homes And Gardens" magazine, and I've recently been invited to write for the Philadelphia "Inquirer."
In this day and age of political correctness and health consciousness, I am a member of that dying breed (pun intended), the smoker. I smoke about a pack-and-a-half a day, and I don't particularly care what brand as long as it has a filter. I really liked Sobranie "Black Russian" cigarets but the damned importer stopped carrying them in May 1996, not that I could afford them much anyway! I also like a cigar once in a while (Macanudo) but as you can see, I don't really have the right "look" for cigars, so I smoke 'em in private.
Something I could really use more of in my life is Bear Hugs! I grew up in a very "touchy-feely" family, and I like physical contact a lot. Unfortunately, it seems to have gone out of style while I wasn't lookin'. I like to hug and touch, and I like to be hugged and touched in return.
If there's anything else about me that you just can't live without knowing, click below to return to my homepage and send me email asking your question. If it's not OUTRAGEOUSLY personal (and maybe even if it is!) I'll email you back with the answer!
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