The first time I saw you was at a wedding and you were stunning.
Not just beautful. Not just good looking and not only pretty. Stunning.
Like meeting a movie star. A movie star married to one of your favorite cousins. A movie star married into your favorite branch of your family tree. A movie star who wasn’t just amazing to look at, but who smiled and spoke to me in ways no previous “cousin-in-law” had done up to that point.
You were interesting, down to earth, surprising, and only speaking to you for a few minutes I sensed a great depth.
Over the years we really haven’t spent much time together but almost every time we speak there’s some new glimmer of what sparkles within you, just underneath the surface.
A darkness and a mystery, a gleaming otherness; seemingly fragile, but that’s likely an inaccurate perception.
Perhaps it’s despair or courage? Perhaps it’s pain or a haunting melody that only you can hear? Perhaps it’s all of these things or none of them, but it is there, whatever it is, behind your eyes, and whatever questions are answered and asked behind the masks that you appear to wear…
Those mysteries make you approachable, magical and breathtaking.
Some days his voice is so loud that I can’t hear or feel anything else without turning myself inside out.
It never lasts for more than an hour or two (often times less than that) but in that time he makes sure that I have his undivided attention.
This can be problematic and disorienting when I’m in public.
Our communication can never last for long because I don’t have the reserves. It’s too all consuming to sustain itself.
He doesn’t like to be ignored and I don’t do it on purpose but it takes a lot of energy and skills that I’ve not yet completely developed.
And paying attention to him can be dangerous, but so can ignoring him. Clearly.
Sometimes he wants me to throw all of my food away. He’s jealous, I think.
Some weekends, everything I plan on falls apart because of him.
The way that I’m falling apart, but seldom admit.
Every day that I don’t cut is a victory. I know this. But it doesn’t feel like the truth. It feels like cowardice.
If I could just cut him out of me… I’d be dead.
That’s the problem.
I think I’m beginning to hate him. Hate myself. Because he’s keeping me prisoner. I missed the party on Friday, the opera on Saturday, the walk in the park today because of his need… and my aversion.
These feel like failures or defeats, but is it a failure if it keeps you alive?
I try to talk myself through it but my feelings are complicated and often contradictory.
I don’t think anyone around me understands and why should they? It hurts being so alone though.
It’s just him and me. Like when she abandoned me. Us.
There are people that love me, which is incredible really, because there’s a big piece of myself that’s missing.
He’s completely disconnected from me and when that connection is made the spark of that moment is blinding… but nobody gets to see it but me.
Or maybe I’m wrong and people do see him, or the absence of him?
Maybe people love me because of him.
I don’t really know.
All I know is that he’s closer to me today than he usually is and I’m alone and I don’t think that’s a good idea.
Earlier, Aaron and I were walking, hand in hand. He was on his way to work and I wanted to part ways at the grocery store but he wanted to keep holding my hand so we walked on until we did eventually part.
It’s so nice to not be in pain. Things aren’t perfect but the not being in pain is very appreciated.
Later…my stomach was worse than it has been in weeks. I’m completely wiped out but my brain still plays connect the dots with circular thoughts. I like that line. It just sprang out of me but could be used in a poem.
The other day Aaron said he didn’t know who Annie Lennox was. We have almost completely different musical backgrounds so I shouldn’t be surprised. I was aware of her in my youth but the first time I think I really fell in love with her was when I saw the film “Eward II”; she wanders into the gay film and sings Cole Porter’s “Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye”; I didn’t know it was Cole Porter at the time or that he was gay until much later when I saw the film De-Lovely, which features John Barrowman in a cameo role playing a character named Jack: this always seems like an untold side story of Jack Harkness to me. Anyways…the Annie Lennox version of Cole Porter’s tune stayed with me long after the film (which I now own on DVD). Once, on a date with this guy Rudy, who has been lost to time, I heard Annie’s rendition again but this time it was in “Prelude to a Kiss” (another gay friendly movie from a gay writer); I bought the soundtrack the next day.
There’s a fictional movie, based on the writer of “Prelude to a Kiss” called The Dying Gaul; I remember that I liked the deleted scenes a lot and wish they’d been in the film…and that the film was far darker than I expected it to be. I should rewatch it someday. The writer / director, Craig Lucas also wrote Longtime Companion and I remember I liked a lot of what the film had to say.
I don’t like being so drained of food and energy and my throat hurts from all the…I don’t even want to go there. I just took a shower. Our shower doesn’t always work but they’re trying to fix it. Tonight I got lucky and it worked beautifully. I shaved though that wasn’t my intent. I sang Cole Porter’s tune in the shower and thought about the lyrics:
“There’s no love song finer But how strange the change from major to minor Ev’ry time we say goodby.”
Like when Aaron & I say goodbye. Love that song. I remember Janice commenting on the key shift and liking it.
Edward the II tells a love story between Edward II & Piers Gaveston; it’s based on the play by Christopher Marlowe. The film is stunning and the gay pride opposite of it’s representation in the Mel Gibson epic “Braveheart”; I actually love both and view Edward II as a sort of more honest sequel. Tilda Swinton was in the film Edward II. The film is highly stylized and so is almost everything I’ve ever seen her in. I like her. She did some strange performance art piece not long ago where she was on display in a glass box in a museum? Did I just imagine that? lol. I used to have a lot of artful pictures taken of myself. I have tons of nudes; some of them are more graphic than others…and I dislike that I don’t have them on display anymore but I’m not sure where I could post them. Perhaps I’ll start a CENSORED photo album on facebook. Maybe the censored aspect could make some sort of statement. I find the censorship of nudity to be ridiculous and insulting.
Anyways. I’m exhausted and I’ve done very little. Maybe I should sleep.
Edit: This rambling was first written a long while back but because I was forced to save it in a collection on Facebook it says that it was last edited on March 15, 2021. But it was “liked” by Kelli Parker, who died November 25, 2020. It was also liked by Serena Shoshana, who I was friends with only briefly, when she went out with a friend of mine in 2015. So this was likely written in 2015. March of 2015.
Inside impossible 3D movie Aunt Thelma speaks of trips taken with her parents who were my grandmother’s parents though I didn’t think that in the dream.
I watch the footage around me as it skitters through different years until I see a faded image which may have been myself dancing (only it’s not) which I notice as I approach after shouting out “It’s Me!” only there I am, walking away because he will not go to camp.
I walk up beside him and take his hand (or is it mine?) which he can’t feel because he’s stuck in the past and I’m merely a projection of some kind, a rejection of some mind, but I tell him:
“I know you can’t feel me, but I’m here and you need to hang on… because your life will get better.”
I really say that, like I’m some fucked up Youtube Stranger Days scifi gay teen After School Special.
Thieving assholes attempt to steal retro-futuristic gizmo thingy, source of my cross time travel bullshit… but I won’t let them escape – I tackle – and they go down harder than I ever have.
A young older man who looks like a younger David W (not my dad) tells me that he’s amazed by the season finale of “The Good Fight” but he won’t watch any longer because he’s turning off the service….
He wears a black leather jacket. I tell him I’ll send him copies.
The two girls he’s with are pressing on me; making fun of me but I know they’re doing this because they like me so I tell them I’m gay, that I suck cock and to leave me alone.
I walk away but look back and tell them not to behave like it’s a disappointment because it’s fucking awesome!
They regret and search for me (the 3 of them) but I hide.
The bouncy castle must be a hell of a place to work.
Later, on the farm, Mrs. Brooks visits me, asking if I’ll record something for her too, a program that I can’t remember now.
When she arrived I was looking at roses that I’d planted in the left back garden corner where I’ve dreamt of soft core porn adventures and experienced them as well…. I had been planting seeds using a gun with special bullets that turned themselves down into the ground and then released the seeds… but hating the use of the gun I stopped firing and poured the open shells around the base of a tree – that’s when she arrived.
I read of such differing things in a newly Dusted book.
I asked if she’d like to take a walk and she said she couldn’t go far but we walked around and past the longer than usual front of my family’s home.
I woke, worried for Aunt Thelma.
In the dream, she was on a diet but had given in to temptation.
As I sussed out the contents of my head, I remembered the hot guys who have no dicks but are tops (with their Thunder Sticks) and are somehow more beautiful despite the seeming flaw of their condition.
On the one train in Manhattan a song, a lyric makes me think of San Francisco.
I’m shaving in Paul’s bathroom while man I met at Radical Fairy drag party is watching me.
I’m nervous. He’s so beautiful and several years older than me; he’s 30 & I’m 26.
It seemed like a lot then. Maybe because the last guy I loved was 9 years younger than him; they had the same name.
I cut myself as I often did back then. A tear of blood dripping down my face and before I can react blonde ken doll man moves in and purposefully licks me clean. Sacrament.
I remember wondering if he was crazy. Blood. San Francisco. I want to throw him against the wall so I can penetrate him and understand. Is there pain in his eyes or lust? Possibly both.
I don’t remember what happened next but the next song is beginning and I imagine kissing him, shaking him…
“Are you crazy?” “Do you want to die?”
A side thought where I’m less sympathetic and I give him the degradation I imagine him craving. Strip. Kneel. Baptism in piss and cum. Fucking him mercilessly.
The thought passes and I wonder at his state of mind.
He was newly out then and haunted by his past; “But I’m a Cheerleader” was the wrong movie to watch; it filled him with memories that made him sad. I think he was reading “The Vampire Armand”; I was reading “Merrick”. His parent was seemingly gravely ill. They called during our first sexual encounter to request his presence at the hospital. He talked them out of it. I tried to talk him into it, but instead he said “Damn” while I bit his nipple. I remember telling him that his asshole tasted amazing and then him asking if there were any that didn’t… and I wonder if he ever found out? A taste test with naked men all standing in a row.
He fucked me in that livingroom. It was days later. After he’d taken me to a leather bar and spoke of dangerous sex, but nothing about the boyfriend he’d confess to later. Devastating at the time. I wanted to be his. Just a crazy dream I guess. Lies and dreams and strange encounters that I still cherish.
We’re friends on Facebook. I don’t think of him often and I’ve not seen him in person in over 14 years.
I’m 40 now and I’ve been fucked at least 6 times in the last week. My partner is curious about why I’m so frenzied of late and I honestly don’t know; I’m sure it’s nothing to do with this… but past sexual encounters fill my thoughts of late. This is but the latest example.
Walking from the train I ran up to my place to write this down. I don’t know why. It seems less important now. I need to get groceries.
The rain on the leaves and the wet sidewalk were like one of my favorite paintings.
The fragmented message coming through was a surprise and a new opportunity – new experiences and new destinations – all that I wanted this day to be about, only brought to perfection by sharing it with you.
Your voice was distracted… maybe the slightest bit annoyed.
Maybe that’s not quite right, but there was something going on beneath the surface.
Maybe you dreaded hearing from me now. Maybe you didn’t want to have this conversation. Or maybe you were just distracted by your students. I don’t know.
The show I’d read about was at 7:30; you thought I couldn’t be there in time but I was only 6 blocks away.
You thought I wouldn’t want to go, so why the offer? I find so much of it confusing.
You said the ticket was mine until 6pm, but at 6:02 (when I finally got through) you were taking someone else instead.
Should I ask you to ask them to relinquish their ticket. The ticket that was mine…except that it never was.
You ask if I should ask them to relinquish the ticket.
Relinquish is a verb that means to voluntarily cease to keep or claim; to give up.
So the ticket was given but not to me; it was not mine to keep or claim despite the promise of 6pm.
And now I would have to beg someone to relinquish what should never have been theirs so that what never was mine could fulfill the promise of last night’s imaginings.
Standing there, in the rain, cold and wet in that beautiful painting I wept when you said you’d call me back.
I wasn’t sure where I should go. Maybe there was still a chance? Coffee shop on the corner. Hot food and cold peppermint. And the return call letting me know that you couldn’t reach her.
She was on her way with the ticket that I’d been promised on a rare day when I wasn’t vomiting too much and had travelled through tunnels to reach the famous Central Park.
Did I want to meet her? You asked me. No. I didn’t want to meet the woman who would sit with you 6 blocks from where I sat in the coffee shop. No. That would hurt too much. I didn’t want to cry in this crowded little beverage store.
I walked back to the park. I called friends but almost nobody answered. I spoke to my mother… trying to get back in the painting but I’d been locked out.
I left voicemails and texts but there was nobody there to console me.
I took the train home. I walked to work and got my money. I smiled and I tried to get back in the painting but it was so far away that it was all but faded now.
I came home. I found some amount of solace here. I found peace in Facebook posts that I wouldn’t tag you in. But when I went to text you that I loved you and that I hoped you’d had a good time I read the rest of the texts you’d sent me on the train home… and then I was angry and hurt again.
I don’t have a ticket to give you. I can’t even offer it to the bitch you went with because she had every right to go; far more right than me. Because she had a ticket, you see.
I’m angry. I’m hurting. I’m angry that I’m hurting and hurting because I’m angry.
The lie of 6pm hurts me. And the thought (before the truth) that my being there so close to the opera house meant something; that light hearted faith hurt me too.
I don’t have a ticket. But I have something more valuable. I have forgiveness.
Forgiveness for the lie of 6pm can be yours if you tell me you’ll never again put me in a position to beg for someone else to voluntarily cease to keep something you offered me first.
I need forgiveness too. Forgiveness from you for being so caught off guard again that I refused to answer.
I should have demanded that fucking ticket, as you’ll likely tell me.
Forgiveness for myself for allowing my belief to hurt me. I can do that. I’m in a strange painting of my life after all.
I’m self aware on a level I’ve never been before. And I can forgive myself for thinking there was something waiting for me at the opera house door.
The painting of my life is wild and vivid and it clashes with the world around me, and it illuminates my every flaw and finds them beautiful.
Tell me you love me I say to you and the reflection before me. Tell me you respect me. And tell me there will be no more broken 6pm promises.
Tell me that and I will relinquish whatever you like.
