When I Need A Pick Me Up, by my friend Ryan King

Monday, July 26, 2010

I Am, In Fact, Now NOT Buried And Hidden In A Basement

I told Grim and survived. It took a few hours of playing on the Wii (amazing gadget that) before we went out for pizza and I went in with discussion about relationships and what he was doing with his. Friendly reciprocation kicked in, and when he started giving me advice on how to make all my Match.com dates successful from now on, I knew that was my moment.

With heart staggering, I told him that 'I don't think I'm attracted enough to girls.' I said 'I'm probably not even straight.' I said in fact, the opposite was true and that I thought 'guys are quite nifty.'

Good ol' hetereosexual that he is (to my dismay) he doubted my self-ideas for a little while and fished around for a saving grace to retain my membership for the Home Team. But I told him what I experienced in high school; how I escaped The Great Adolescent Sex-Race by immersing myself into religion yet I would systematically still have crushes on most of my friend-girl's guy-dates.

'Yes,' he declared. 'Then you are gay.'

'Yes,' I agreed. 'I am gay.'

We volleyed more words around for the next hour, but mainly from me. What I was facing at 45, how I did and did not want to live the rest of my life, and how I didn't know what to do with this self-info. "Do I just tell everybody?"

And he said "You know it won't matter to us, right?"

By us he was referring to him and the rest of them who I dumped in fear that it, of course, would matter and very much so.

And that's what I keep missing. I keep missing the fact that if people are my friends ... really my friends ... me being gay is not going to matter. I don't trade porn with my friends. They don't slip me pics or details of their bedroom lives. My sexuality is not something that affects my friendships.

And so far, I'm 100% successful in coming out of the closet and still being accepting by the friends who I do love. I may even have enough support to help me if I DO discover some of my acquaintences shall no longer truck with me upon discovering my orientation. To which by that time I will most likely roundly return a hearty "FUCK YOU, THEN" in response instead of being the recipient of a shattered world.

In other words, I'm seeing the dawn break through the gap of my slowly opening closet door.

It's kind of nice. I just don't know HOW nice yet.

We'll see.

Oh, and just another peek at why I like and want Grim to stay my friend; one of the responses he made to me, while I was vomiting my truth out in an adraline rush was, "You'd better change your Match.com profile then."

Doing This

Today I'm getting with Grim, with no one around but me and him. And I'm telling him.

Worst Case Scenario; he bludgeons me to death and hides my body in his basement. From his point of view, he'll have done it as an act of mercy because he is so diametrically opposed to homosexuality and feels it's a birth defect like mental retardation that can never be cured.

Best Case Scenario; He admits he's gay too, one quite like me in fact--closeted and attracted only to the roughest butchest of the lot. Then he snogs my brains out and tears my clothes off.

I suspect this will land somewhere in the middle. He'll hear it, respect it, but then the friendship will go cold and stale with him realizing he just doesn't have enough in common with me anymore, and he's not ready to be close to someone who has such a radically different lifestyle (potentially).

In other news, I went out for face-to-face meeting-type socialization with some comicbook-liking folks in my neighborhood! The ones who I introduced myself to as "liking guys, a lot" at the neighborhood messageboard. So if any of them cared or have good memories, they were meeting me already as a person who said he's most likely a gay dude. Vague enough?

So they either thought, as I was sitting there, "this guy's gay, right?" or they were thinking nothing of the sort because they didn't remember my little epilogue. Nice and ambiguous, the way I like it.

But that's not going to happen today with Grim. Because as afraid as I am of this mess, I'm stuck as stuck can be and I need to move. I don't wait for anything else in my life--I get impatient and depressed when I can't make stuff happen that I need, so what is more important than a prime human relationship? How much longer am I going to deny myself this basic human tenet? Who was meant to be alone on planet Earth? Who was born with no sex drive, no ability to be attracted to another person?

Well, not this kid. Grim might not be The One For Me, but he's a little too skinny anymore, anyway. There are some fine. ass. men. out there in this city, and I want one.

If I'm ever going to be an active participant in the search for Mine, then I'm going to have to be gay 24-7, because somewhere in those hours and days, somewhere outside of this closet--that's where he is.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Didn't Know How Mad I Was Until I Finished This Post

So about three weeks ago, maybe going on four, I saw Grim Jester driving in his car while I was out with a client. Details of that can be found here.

Well, I still haven't told him yet. He called last week to say we could get together some time when his girlfriend was not around, and that might be this weekend. Meanwhile, I visited our friend-in-common this weekend (the guy I met through Grim and would give rides to our venues because he's just on the other side of the Harlem River from me) because I wanted to use his unlimited metro card and save myself some trainfare. He's another that I could've told my gayness to, but again I just lapsed into the same hetero-patterns that I always do when I sense that I'm with a hetero friend. I chicken out. All the worse case scenarios come crashing down. (re: they'll ridicule me, they'll tease me, they'll scorn me, they'll call me a liar, they'll get angry with me, they'll suspect that I want them, they'll go silent, go uncomfortable, see me as different, as less, as worse, as deviant, as damaged. That everything will change. Everything.)

So I can honestly say that I ditched Grim Jester and the others as a pre-emptive strike. Because I want to tell them my truth, just so I can stop pretending that we have this girl-hunt activity in common anymore, and I can stop that particular type of personal isolation and despair. But if I've already ditched THEM, and the worst case scaenario happens, well--fine. Jokes on you. I left your asses a long time ago anyway.

Yet when I saw ol Grim driving that day, I didn't feel any of the frustration, anger, or fear. I felt lonely. I wanted our friendship back. I wanted someone who lets me call them. Someone who would be willing to take me out when I'm feeling low.

And it makes me want to get rid of the homo-ness again. It's just so ridiculous. Why does this have to be real? Why can't I just have a girl like everybody else? (haha)

Finding a girl would just be so much more ... better for me than going with my stupid homo urges. Sorry, I don't know what else to call them. It's just that they seem to be keeping me from what I want most in life--I want to be happy and accepted. And I DO want kid(s). And I NEED a second income, thanks to the way the country values psychology. I need to be in a family wherein one of us can cover all of us with benefits from their job. And I want to be able to have tete-a-tetes with neighbors without carrying around my homo-baggage. Without having to challenge pre-conceived notions, march in parades, educate children and became a fucking two-man mission-statement instead just being a fucking average guy who gets to have sex with the person who turns him on, like every fucking body else in the LITERALLY fucking world.

Clearly that's too much to ask of the universe. I have to be gay. LUCKY FUCKING ME. And THANKS A FUCKING LOT.

See title.

Monday, July 5, 2010

I Could Use Some Advice

So Dr. Something-Or-Other has still not responded, and perhaps I need to stop expecting he will. But the bloke with the hot body, who I wrote to the Doc about, I've found in the Doc's Facebook pages. Hot Body is as closed off there as he is at the "porn" site where I first found him (porn in quotes because while many others are showing off everything, Hot Body is only showing off his ... well ... hot body.)

Clearly what I've done is the act of cyberstalking. Is that bad?

I want to see this man walk and hear him talk. I want more than these tantalizing pics.

So here's the advice I need, should I FB message this guy? And if so, what could I possibly say?

I'm obsessed again. That much is clear. Would it be best if I get myself over this?