I am so tired of having the same conversation over and over with my friends. Tonight after the show, I soldiered down to local eatery Vynl to swill a few cocktails with Hottie Zach and flirt pointlessly with sexy bartender Aaron. It had all the makings of a perfect evening, combining three of my favorite activities. But as it always does lately, talked turned to the infamous J.
Zach is not just cream cheese pretty on the outside, his soft gooey center is equally hot and delicious. I would just have much preferred discussing his impending trip to Morocco (a long held fantasy of mine) or the carelessly hunky demeanor of Aaron (a decidedly briefer though no less intense fantasy) than the dead ended runaway mine car ride that was my association with J. But like all of my well-meaning NY friends, he is anxious for me to move, not just on, but up. It is a desire I do not share.
Perhaps I am just totally and completely out of my mind. This is a distinct possibility. But after twenty years of dating, and meeting quite literally tens of thousands of gay men on numerous continents, finally last November, I found someone that I felt such an intense connection with that I was willing to cast aside all preconceived notions, emotional insecurities and boundaries. For almost a year, I have unpeeled like an onion, growing more nakedly raw and smaller by the day, until now there is nothing left but the involuntary tears such a task is bound to draw. And to what end? The umpteenth conversation about how important it is to move on?
I am not a very good driver, dresser or investor, but my instincts about people are uncanny. And in my life, I have done very well letting the natural flow of things guide me to my next destination. With only minor hiccups here and there, I have alighted from an obscure trailer in rural Virginia to a national radio show in New York City with as thin a resume as Sarah Palin and a mere fraction of her ambition. Never have I been so wrong about a person as I have been with J. Never. And in my heart, I still refuse to believe I was wrong. And yet there is no denying the sorry state of affairs now.
Flirting with Aaron felt good. I can see now why people with no self esteem sleep around a lot, and always desperate to bed the hottest person they can. I have never been that guy and I haven't turned into him now. True I was always quite anxious in my twenties to have a boyfriend and live the settled down dream but more recently I realized what a hollow ambition that was. Then I met J and the echo flushed out, and I filled instead with the rush of promise. It feels like love, truly for the first time, but maybe it's just a midlife crisis. I never really felt a powerful love before but then again I've never had a midlife crisis before either. Maybe I just don't know the difference.
As I walked up the hill tonight to my house, the sky was a sea of stars. It was so magnificent and each time when I look up past my roof and the trees to the twinkling night, I am filled with awe that I own a small piece of this magic. I scanned the sky anxious to find my Friendly Star, but such things don't exist. I see the magic all around me but I feel now like a fool. Someone who believed in the reality of a paper moon sailing over a cardboard sea, only to have the harsh fluorescents of life clicked on suddenly revealing the sad flimsy truth. What is there to move on and up to, now that I have seen the magician's secrets revealed? What does it matter now that the lights are all on and everyone has gone home?
This weekend Jeff and Bond are coming up from Boston. More harmless flirting. And Sunday, Howard is taking me and his cadre of hot porn boys to the Hustlaball. Certainly one of them will be sexually satisfying, though more likely I will flirt around a while like I did with Aaron tonight and then lose interest in the pointlessness of it all. It is all so empty, like the vast hunger you feel hours after you finish a huge meal. So much greater and more painful a hunger than if you had never gorged at all.
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