2:50 p.m. - July 11, 2003
I'd slap myself twice if I could get the same momentum each time
The days slip by too quickly and there is little time to savor much at all. Today I gave the midterm - already - and the T.A.s are grading them now. I'm watching the two and thinking about the days when I was a T.A. in college, and everything seems too long ago. I am 27 years old and winsome for what was. There is a good deal wrong with the picture.
The Squirrely T.A. used my computer yesterday and could have viewed the address bar and discovered the chatroom I visit with mounting regularity. If so, then he may know and thinking about this makes my head churn. Would a T.A. make a direct inquiry into this sort of thing? How would someone say, Hey, I noticed you go to gay.com, I didn't know you were . . . without jeopardizing the (visiting)professor - serf relationship? Most bothersome is knowing somebody may be aware of - it. I don't want people to know. How do others handle this? Maybe they don't have anything to handle and it's simply a matter of Who Cares and nonchalance, or maybe it's a matter of the Gay Ghetto and when in Rome . . . I'm neither nonchalant nor one of them, them being the caricature, and I feel I have no place, no toehold. Most days it's comforting to think I'm a straight man who occasionally craves gay sex and it's a feasible, not-quite-as-shameful regard until I consider the injustice of such a paradigm.
Why me, you know? I'm quiet and shy, have major sexual intimacy issues, don't like to dance, am not into clothes and circuit parties, am neither hot nor semi-cute; I don't fit the mold [Editor's Note: Minor sarcasm]. It seems a vastly lonely life and I'm going to end up alone, that very thing I most fear. I don't want to be like the men on gay.com in their 40s and 50s now seeking someone with whom to age, having exhausted their vital years partying, drugging, sexing. I just don't see it. I chat often and regularly with one guy named Brandon in his late 30s who's told me all about his wild younger days and let me tell you, it's simply not me.
Maybe there's more to it. But maybe not. And it's that uncertainty that wards me off like a toss of your head, the roll of your eyes. You say, It's not like that or Not everybody's that way but you know what? I took your words and set aside my fears and I've chatted with guys, I've met them, I've fucked them or had them suck me off and tell me, what more is there to see? Sure, I can wave my dick around now that I know for certain it's a winner. I don't, I won't be, like that. I want to meet someone whose life doesn't revolve around the pursuit of sex and pleasure and drama and the latest feather boas on sale at the corner sex-shop-HIV clinic. I want something, somebody, of substance and all this said exposes the craggy bedrock that is me: I can go nowhere until I loosen up, feel more comfortable, accept myself. And as I write that I'm unsure whether I truly seek motion or if I'm only looking for other reasons to beat myself up.
It would be nice - I'm not going to finish.
I'm off to dinner and a movie with Marti in a bit. I hope you have a great weekend.
