Meh

I think I saw the end coming.  R. broke the news to me that I was a nice guy, but that nine years was simply too big an age gap for him.  I wanted to scream “BUT I CAN LOVE YOU!”  But that would have been childish.  And in these things, I have never been capable of assertiveness.  I don’t see any point in trying to make someone have feelings for you.  If you push the situation too far, you end up in a meaningless relationship founded on falsehood.  So I just said “I totally understand” even though I didn’t (and still don’t) and told him that I wouldn’t be mad.  That I wouldn’t disappear like M.  I just want to love.  Is that too much to ask?

Frustration

I’m angry.  And I’m learning that I may be a little bit bitter.  Bitter because I have had to love in secret.  Bitter because heartbreak was always for me alone.  Bitter because with all this love to give, I am alone.  I am bitter that society has made me, in certain ways, ashamed of being myself.  Right now, I’m missing R. on a fairly simple level.  There is none of the fiery yearning that accompanied my separation from L.  However, I am simultaneously scared to allow the flames to grow to that level.  I am scared to throw myself in like I did with L. because at the moment things seem tentative in many ways.  R. is away in Maryland right now, and when he returns, he’ll only be a week before he leaves again.  He is 9 years older than me, and more experienced in the world – I fear that I will not suffice for him.  Not to mention that R. is hard to read, and while this gives him an air of mystery, it just proves frustrating for me.  Frustrating!  

So what to do?  Take it for what it is?  Love blindly?  That’s what they always say you should do.  Love like it’s the first time.  I don’t think I’m scared of the pain of the end.  I just don’t know if I’m giving myself permission to feel for someone else so strongly.  Shit.

Things Keep Being Good

So…there are two new boys in my life.  One I didn’t talk about before even though he existed, and the other is new.  So we have: A. and I met him at JQY although I got to know him at a friend’s birthday party.  He is away from the city for the summer, so that’s kind of why I didn’t include him.  And now there is R.  Israeli, attractive, funny, (FOREIGN) available and interested.  Problem here is that he’s leaving for Detroit on Sunday, I think, and I won’t see him again until August something.  And naturally I’m still pining over JT who has yet to return from Europe and who I’m certain is the key to my heart.  J has gone back to Canada, and been transferred to another US job in Denver.  I feel like I’m doing this because I never got to in highschool.  Most people get to have their meaningless yet crucial relationships before their 21st birthday and so learn the appropriate ways in which to interact with a love  another person.  I however, new to my gayness, have to now do it all really quickly without ignoring the fact that I want LOVE and not short, lifeless interactions with strangers.  When I was with J. it was strong like.  Now that I’m talking to R. it’s medium like.  But I want LOVE like what it was with L.  And I fear I won’t see it again soon.

Love

Does anything feel like first love?  Do you ever regain that sense of excitement that happened when you looked at that person.  That racing of your heart when you thought of them?  I seem to be disappointed lately when that sense of exhilaration does not accompany every kiss or encounter.  Hmmm.

One more thing…

Perhaps no sleep yet.  But I was just thinking that the worst part about me perhaps coming to terms with the depth of my gayness is that I have to, in a sense, change my mind.  I have to “change my vote” as it were; erase the √ that is currently placed over ‘other’ and plant it firmly on men.  I suppose it was all part of the journey and that I could not have discovered or become comfortable with this part of myself, if I did not ease myself into it.  But I wonder: is that really how I do things?  I feel like my world is fairly black and white in many respects, DESPITE me championing the right to multifaceted identity.  I wonder what it is exactly that feels most threatened by homosexuality–being pegged, changing my mind, or accepting all of the horrible things that anyone ever said to me on the playground as truth.

Wow

I’ve just finished reading André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, and I must say that I’m pretty much speechless.  I started reading it a few days ago, and although I was initially drawn in, I admit to having previewed more than a few pages of it on Amazon.com a few months ago.  I was very moved by the book but able to pace myself in order to avoid reading it all in one go.

And then I got towards the end.

This book touched me in so many ways that I am having a hard time processing all of them.  It’s like Aciman took a page from my life.  It’s like he snapped a picture from my falling for L. and turned it into a novel for everyone to read.  I mean, granted L. and I were never as blissfully involved as Elio and Oliver, but I was just as in love.  And since that time in my life, I have yet to meet a man that I don’t compare to him, nor have I been able to extinguish the hope that someday he’ll return to me.  Everything about Aciman’s book was so brutally honest that I was honestly blown away.  I want to feel again what I once felt, but know simultaneously, as Elio points out, that it is in situations like these–where one can no more go back that move forward–that I must simply allow myself to exist, and let myself be changed.  Let myself be touched and changed.  I hope that J. or JT or anyone else can help me do that.

Speaking of J.:  I think that I fall in love too easily.  I don’t know yet if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but there is something to be said about it.  Perhaps it is a virtue:  I’m able to give myself wholeheartedly to people or things which makes me valuable.  I am able to sincerely feel for another human being in a short time, meaning that I am open and trusting.  Or perhaps I am simply naive.  Perhaps my slick shoes are a sign that I am actually insincere, that my feelings are fleeting and relative, and that I will “love” any guy who shows the vaguest signs of reciprocation.  Not that I’m promiscuous, (this is officially number 3) but emotionally I’ve been seriously in love with more men and women than I can count.

Enough.  Now sleep.

I May Be in Like

I spent more time with J this evening.  He took me out for Rice to Riches which, as New Yorkers know, is essentially the shit.  I still don’t know how much I like him, but today there was something.  I felt it.  I don’t know. He travels as part of his job, and I’m not really looking for a long-distance relationship.  But maybe he’s not either.  In which case, this can work for now, I think.  I’ll know that it’s real when I start missing him as soon as he’s left my apartment.

I Think I Might Be Gay

Fuck.  I have resisted this my whole life.  I really wish that I was one of those guys that surprised everyone.  I wish that I could come out to people and have them tell me. “Oh, I never would have guessed!”  Because believe you me: everyone guessed.  A long time ago.  And because I despise being pegged, I have fervently denied it.  I guess for those people it sucks because they are so accepted in mainstream heteronormative society that they have to uproot their existence to come out.  For me, I have successfully inhabited the periphery for the majority of my life. But somehow that’s not comforting.

Perhaps it’s my stubbornness.  Perhaps it’s my overwhelming sense of infallibility.  But at some point I just dug my feet against my feelings.  For someone that is so taken by the idea of listening to inner voices, this is one that I’ve had gagged for a while.  I still got the whisperings though.  For a while I had myself convinced that I was bisexual, and this sufficed.  At that point I was sure that I was attracted to men in some way, but I was so attached to the American dream, so taken in my the promise of my 2.5 kids and suburban bliss that I didn’t want to give it up.  I mean, I still think that I am attracted to women, if only marginally.  And the idea of having sex with a woman doesn’t gross me out or anything (I think).  Somehow, though, I like men more–and that means I have to accept that I will not achieve all of those things in the same manner.  And that hurts.

And so I went along telling myself, and the few people that I was out to that I was bisexual.  And then I met L.  And I loved him with my entire self.  I was lost in him.  And he loved me (even though he had a girlfriend) and the more I told myself that it should end, I could not extract myself.  I have never felt that for a woman.  A few times I’ve had very strong crushes.  If, perhaps, a woman had ever taken it upon themselves to fall for me, perhaps I could know for sure, but I don’t, and I doubt I ever will.  Right now I’m dating (very loose term here) a guy, J, that I met at a club.  It is VERY casual, he’s significantly older than me, and I think that J likes me more than I like him.  But we are dating, and this is something that could be a relationship, and that’s more than I have ever had.  I would actually like to be in a relationship with another J.  We’ll call him JT.  But that’s another topic for another day.  I hope this summer in the city goes well as far as love in concerned.

الملاد المثليي في العالم العربي

امس قرأت عن العالم المثليي المغربي

Las cosas van como van

En este momento, las cosas no van tan mal.  Volví al escenario, y voy a estar actuando el rol de Antigonus en la obra “El cuento de invierno” por William Shakespeare.  La convivencia se mejoró bastante desde que Gabe empezó a vivir con nosotros.  O sea, me parece que mi querido Jon volvió de sus vacaciones con otra perspectiva.  No sé que le pasó, ni me importa tanto.  I’m just glad that it’s no longer constant insanity, sino una locura fluctuante.  (It took me a minute to find that word there.  It doesn’t even exist in English.  But I like it)  Me enamoré de un judío lindo que se llama Josh.  Es exactamente lo que busco en mi vida: tan cariñoso como masculino; inteligente y practicante; racionalista y optimista.  Me parece que la vida judía ultra-ortodoxa (en que se crió) le preparó para portarse así, pero me gusta igual.  No sé si le gusto o no, pero vamos a ver.  No quiero dejar que se escape de mí, así que ¡vamos Dante!