Jeffrey profile picture

Jeffrey

I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel

About Me


I have just completed a Master of Arts Degree in English specializing in Restoration and eighteenth-century literature at the University of Toronto. Before returning to university, I worked a decade as a computer consultant specializing in electronic commerce (I've worked in Montreal, Dallas, Atlanta, Miami, London, Birmingham and other great cities along the way) and now, having turned down a PhD offer from McGill University in Montreal, I have accepted an offer to study at The Humber School for Writers beginning in January 2007. During this 30-week creative writing program at Humber, I hope to complete a book of connected short stories that follow the life of a gay male coming of age on the wrong side of the tracks in Hamilton, Ontario (the rough bluecollar Canadian town the locals call "Steeltown").

In addition to my various lives in computers consulting, academe and writing, over the years I have also had the opportunity to travel extensively. I have backpacked through Europe a few times as well as parts of the Middle East (I have since retired my backpack and now opt for hotels rather than hostels when I travel) and I especially love France, Italy, Spain, Greece - and warm sunny places with nice beaches (and good dance clubs).

Today I am happily partnered and live in downtown Toronto (a great city to be a gay man in, by the way) and when I am not reading or writing, I am pretty active - I work out, play squash, run, walk, bike (I got rid of my car years ago), swim, canoe, hike, and I even tried skydiving - once. I am a bit of a health nut (I do not smoke or drink) and I'm always on the lookout for squash partners.

LATEST NEWS:

A new short story of mine was recently published in the newest edition (Issue 3) of Zeugma Literary Journal (www.zeugmamag.com).
I edited my profile with Thomas' Myspace Editor V4.4

My Interests

writing, literature, computers, music, travel, photography, theatre, movies, opera, working out, squash, running, biking, swimming, walking, hiking, dancing, Paris, Rome, New York, Miami, dogs, the beach, Gilbert and Sullivan, Mozart, patios, cafes, bookstores, libraries, coffee, sushi, green tea, chocolate milk and Kraft caramels

I'd like to meet:


Creative, inquisitive, positive, pleasantly twisted individuals with a good sense of humour and a good heart, mind, soul and a bit of an edge.

Music:

Nirvana, Green Day, Sugar Ray, Hole, Sheryl Crow, Weezer, NickelBack, Black Eyed Peas, Creed, Enigma, Oasis, REM, Bjork, Foo Fighters, Pansy Division, Pink, Robbie Williams, Queen, Blondie, ABBA, Meatloaf, U2, Pink Floyd, Weezer, Elvis Costello, B52s, Pet Shop Boys, No Doubt, The Goo Goo Dolls, Pearl Jam, Aerosmith, Alanis Morissette, Matchbox 20, Maroon5, Smashing Pumpkins

Movies:

Harold and Maude, American Beauty, L.A. Confidential, Shakespeare In Love, Casablanca, Amadeus, Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, Gosford Park, My Own Private Idaho, Les Triplettes de Belleville, The Truman Show, Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill Vol. 1 and 2, Fight Club, Nashville, Chimes at Midnight, Brokeback Mountain, Topsy-Turvy, Cabaret, Chicago, Beautiful Thing, Educating Rita, Billy Elliot, Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Gypsy, Auntie Mame, Mildred Pierce, Rebel Without a Cause, Manhattan, Annie Hall

Television:

No reality television!
Ugly Betty, House, My Name Is Earl, The Office, Family Guy, CSI:Miami, The Daily Show... I also dig watching old episodes of Hawaii Five-0 on TV Land. Purely as a post-colonial study, of course.

Books:

Ulysses, Clarissa, In Search of Lost Time, The Tin Drum, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Midnight's Children, Les Liaisons dangereuses, Tristram Shandy, Madame Bovary, Germinal, Brothers Karamazov, The Master and Margarita, Middlemarch, A Tale of Two Cities, Barchester Towers, Death in Venice, The Metamorphosis, The Great Gatsby, The Grapes of Wrath, Blind Assassin, Alias Grace, Funny Boy, Bear, Beautiful Losers, Nights at the Circus, The Corrections, The White Hotel, The Athiest Manifesto, Allen Ginsberg's Collected Poems, The Autobiography of Red, Leaves of Grass

My Blog

Confessions of a Law Queen

A few years back when I was a (very single) computer consultant traveling all across the US and Canada, I began (for my own curiosity) a trick list on the back of an old telephone bill envelope. ...
Posted by Jeffrey on Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:24:00 PST

I'm (not) getting married today... or am I?

Time to stretch my blog muscles again.   The partner and I were down at South Beach in Miami for a week this month.  We stayed at Loews Hotel, which was the sort of place where people come a...
Posted by Jeffrey on Mon, 19 Mar 2007 09:13:00 PST

Hockey night in Canada

With visions of NHL hockey contracts dancing in my father's head, each winter he would stand out back of our house in the freezing cold and flood our lawn with a garden hose to make my older brother...
Posted by Jeffrey on Sun, 18 Feb 2007 10:15:00 PST

Are you there Judy Blume? It's me Jeffrey

Whenever someone asks me where my love of books came from, I tell them (all three of them) that this lifelong passion began when your humble narrator was just a little bitty reader on his mother's kn...
Posted by Jeffrey on Wed, 24 Jan 2007 09:51:00 PST

Have you ceased to believe in New Years?

  In the second volume of Marcel Proust's novel, In Search of Lost Time, the young narrator describes his disillusionment with New Years Day and the moment that he was struck with the feeli...
Posted by Jeffrey on Wed, 03 Jan 2007 10:32:00 PST

I'd like to buy the world a Coke...

This week, as I was strolling down Christmas Alley (which of course is that dead end street off Memory Lane) I remembered an old television commercial that used to run every Christmas throughout the ...
Posted by Jeffrey on Thu, 21 Dec 2006 08:42:00 PST

Who's Gay? I am!

After the spending the weekend at the Liberal Leadership Convention in Montreal (where I was an alternate delegate for openly gay leadership contender, Scott Brison) I am currently basking in the...
Posted by Jeffrey on Mon, 04 Dec 2006 11:44:00 PST

Queering up the holidays - stuffing the gay stocking

When I was a kid, between the Rankin and Bass claymation specials and watching It's a Wonderful Life running on every single television channel Christmas Eve, one of my favourite Christmas traditions ...
Posted by Jeffrey on Tue, 28 Nov 2006 09:12:00 PST

From Ryan O'Neal to the M.A. - taking the long road

Many years ago, I watched the sappy movie Love Story on late night television.  The movie was a weepy tearjerker about wealthy Oliver Barrett, IV, (played by a very young and handsome Ryan O'Neal...
Posted by Jeffrey on Wed, 22 Nov 2006 01:57:00 PST

My first book of gay erotica - the Sears catalog

Long before the Internet put countless images of beautiful men in various stages of undress at our fingertips with the simple click of a mouse, we young gay boys had to be much more creative in our s...
Posted by Jeffrey on Tue, 14 Nov 2006 07:22:00 PST