You tell him that sex with me will be completely emotionless for you, or at least that’s what I hear without really listening, but what you truly said is that our sexual activity will be completely emotionless for US, but that’s not wholly accurate… because I will feel something; if I didn’t already feel something I wouldn’t even bother.
You say that people don’t usually FUCK their ex-boyfriends, which I find funny because so far, they’re the only people I fuck, and why not?
I’ve loved you for almost as long as I’ve known you and can’t / won’t force myself to feel nothing.
But there’s NOTHING threatening to others by this potential reconnecting of interlocking bodies, because while sex will ALWAYS be emotional for me, I also hold no illusions that my having sex with you will bind you to me, making you a prisoner to only satisfy my needs, to only service my pleasure…
Our FUCKING will not reintegrate us into some magical reiteration of our former couplehood.
The idea is preposterous.
As preposterous as truth and as honest as fiction.
I listen to Cigarettes After Sex and Men That I Trust as I wander the streets of New York.
I smile – sad smile for closeted younger version of myself, lonely and wandering a well remembered if faded watercolor fairground and the man that I saw there…
I never spoke to him, though we recognized each other – or, should I say that we recognized the truth in ourselves?
And that recognition was dangerous, reckless, unplanned and perfect.
I’ve written of him before and I’ve thought of him even more times than that…
We crossed paths on the cusp of momentous change.
And on an overcast Friday afternoon, I stumble for words to capture his vivid, pained echo, which has forever remained a part of me, despite the seemingly inconsequential nature of our subtle, surreptitious, serendipitous encounter.
This is a graphic story – so if you’re easily offended, my advice is just to fuck off right now while there’s still time.
Seriously. This could offend you or just completely reduce your opinion of me.
Or it might just make you laugh.
Or possibly it could do all of those things at the same time.
Still here?
Funny story. I mean, I think it’s funny. Others may disagree.
I once jerked off in the back of a station wagon, imagining one of my school bullies fucking me in dreamy soft focused lighting straight out of a Radley Metzger porno, though, of course that was years before I even knew who Radley Metzger was.
But this guy’s name was CENSORED, because, well, you’re about to find out.
And as my parents drove me to our local Meijer, I shot a load imagining CENSORED as some kind of sympathetic soul instead of the domineering asshat that he portrayed in my waking world at any given opportunity.
I don’t get off on being in cars or with my parents or in public… I was just very young, extremely horny, and had a relative amount of privacy.
I would probably have no memory of this, despite how outlandish it seems now, except that when arriving at our destination(s) I rounded a corner and walked directly into CENSORED’s chest – because he was taller than me at the time, so that’s where we connected.
Seriously.
I know why I blushed… I mean, my hand likely still smelled of the cum he’d wrangled out my teeny-bopper depths, but he blushed just as badly before we immediately headed in opposite directions and never once mentioned it to each other ever again.
So that was a long time ago.
But recently, Facebook decided we should be best buds – and I’m friends with a lot of people that were dicks to me in school.
I’m sure I was a dick to people too. School is like that.
And given the suggestion, and looking over his Facebook posts I saw that we seemed to have developed the same views on a lot of issues, (which I totally did not expect)…and so the friend request was sent even though I did not expect anything to come from it.
But as history apparently likes to repeat itself….
A few months ago I was jerking off again. Not to thoughts of CENSORED and not to Radley Metzger, because even though his films are hot, I respect them too much to beat off to them.
Don’t judge me. I know it’s wacky, but that’s not the point.
The point is…
that just as I was reaching the point of no return, a message flashed across my screen which read something like:
Friend Request to CENSORED Approved
And then I was most definitely thinking about CENSORED as I doused myself, again, years later.
And I’m still laughing about it now, and so I thought I’d share, because clearly I have no boundaries.
At least I wasn’t in a station wagon this time, which makes it slightly more classy, right?
He wandered into my life on the arm of my lover, set up shop for the night, & “borrowed” my property.
Most of that night was a game and honestly, a blur… but the kiss in the kitchen was real and brought everything into focus, if not into the light.
This night’s passion wasn’t meant for me, so the unexpected connection was many conflicting things: Excitement. Exhilaration. Shame. Damnation. None of which I was prepared for.
He ate my ass like a pro.
His cock was delicious, in my mouth and then deeper inside me.
He ravaged me while my lover looked on and I loved it but I felt somewhat guilty, which I may have loved even more… or perhaps my guilt prevented me from enjoying it completely?
It must seem strange that I cannot honestly tell the difference.
But certain key details of lust are maddeningly lost on me.
There are certainly hints and subtle gestures; implications and libidinous clues, suggestions of an elusive contradictory nature… pieces of a puzzle I wish only to solve so that I might grasp the meaning held within a finished and rapturious whole… and yet I’m somehow trapped within this self same labyrinth of intimations which feeds the fire while slaking my thirst, yet leaves me hungry just the same.
There was a danger there; a gamble… I was risking something sacred for the sake of something perverse, if only symbolically.
He hit all the right spots, but in a configuration hitherto unknown to me.
My deepest desires were completely inverted during this encounter and all the conversations that followed.
This isn’t my lover’s fantasy. It’s not even mine. It’s some mirror perverted version and yet at the root of it all… it is completely the same for me, which confuses even as it thrills.
In my mind I am smaller than I appear, and he ravages my lover in depths that I cannot reach, and I am finished far too soon, before I’m undressed, which has never happened (and never will happen) because that is not who I am.
“Yeah? You need my load again?” “My cock hits places his doesn’t?” “You craving it, boy?” “You craving it?”
My fantasies are mine and not my lover’s, and though this man says the words that I long to hear he is saying them into the wrong ears, because he cannot know that what he has seen and what he has interpreted as desire, is actually reality’s cruel deception.
A trick of fate that pollutes my existence, a caustic jocularity with an outlandish punchline that I have endured and sought to diminish through fantasy and honest communication; and yet it remains a vicious mockery of all that I wish I could be – a killing joke which has unknowingly to some, made fools and victims of us all.
On Brian’s July twenty-fourth forty-second birthday I’m wearing the “Allergic to Sunlight” shirt that I bought in late summer two-thousand to wear for my beloved Shawn (F)… I include his last initial because there were two Shawns of note that year.
I switch the E & A Trains on forty-second street…
“Strike that! Reverse it!”
I almost miss that transfer as I write about my Shawn R. experiences; I was wearing the same shirt the night that I met him in October two-thousand… before we were lovers, before we were friends, and before he recently fucked me again; bringing closure and revelations, inspiration and fascination with all that this act entailed and all that lay revealed in the aftermath.
Holding him up, bare chested, helping him piss with as much dignity as we could manage in his drunken confessional state…
“Is that guy really your type?”
His dream was an unsuspected plot twist which he felt had ruined his character; an angry embarrassing accusation which left me flattered, confused and deeply protective.
His dream inspired a jealousy that I couldn’t have fathomed.
He never told me the details and I never asked.
This early stumble, an unexpected crucible which allowed for nothing less than hot hard facts inspired by revelatory dreams which haunted us both.
My ego suggests his version of the truth might have been why he drank to such excess that night… but who am I kidding?
That’s what alcoholics do.
And yet his light of day honesty united us more than any nighttime weaknesses could have shattered us… transforming anger into respect, confusion into admiration… and an unexplored threatening lust into the building blocks of a friendship long shadowed by an insistent innocent eroticism.
People tell me that I am strong, for how else could I continue after years of illness & betrayal?
I survive in pieces.
My emotional reactions are out of proportion to any given stimuli; often paralyzing.
I weigh each circumstance with fear and suspicion, even when experience should teach me otherwise; yet it’s false negative is itself reinforced through my inability to achieve normality.
My scars have faded yet they are still visible for any who have an eye for them.
I am not easily gifted.
I should be grateful for any gesture yet I’ve never learned the trick of it.
In the moment, when reaction is key, I falter.
I stumble to correct myself but fail.
Sometimes the struggle is internal and weighs on me for hours.
Other times my failure comes to me long after the fact.
Invariably I weep, though I don’t believe that anyone has ever witnessed this, or if they have, I doubt that they have interpreted my tears correctly.
My tears are not subjective.
Shame and remorse, blossoming from my eyes as I contemplate how I can possibly thank those who’ve been slighted by my wounded psyche.
From January 1994 until September 2012 I used to go dancing once or twice a week.
Well, there was about a year in there that I didn’t go as often.
I was in a relationship and I felt like going dancing was like stepping out… because the way I danced usually led to men dancing with me.
Later, I realized that dancing gave me joy, and I resumed my weekly routine.
But in the last 6.5 years I’ve only danced a handful of times.
The change happened when I moved to New York.
My mode of transportation changed from private to public… and getting around all dolled up became a slightly more frightening experience.
In 4 months I’ll be 45 years old and maybe 45 year olds don’t go dancing anymore.
People always tell me I look younger, and usually I feel younger too… but lately I’ve been feeling old.
Death has taken far too many friends and idols in the last several years for me to pretend that the time I have left won’t just continue to dwindle.
I tell myself I can decide to change. To change back.
But I remind myself that I need to be out tomorrow and Monday and I should take things slowly.
And I know that I’ve somehow gotten old, or at least that my thinking has changed over time, that I think in responsible bursts before everything blurs and diminishes… fading away into dust.
You can never set foot in the same river twice with dreams underfoot and genes that are spliced; perhaps you may try but it will not suffice…
You can never set foot in the same river twice.
People cross bridges before they arrive; they make split decisions and think they will thrive; Perhaps it’s success that they get out alive…
People cross bridges before they arrive.
When people cross bridges they often are scared; they change their positions but are not prepared; too big for their britches; too young to be spared…
When people cross bridges they often are scared.
To those who cross bridges before they can come, they seem smart for wishes when really they’re dumb; they jump out of fear because tears make them numb…
To those who cross bridges before they can come.
Those who cross bridges before they can come to them,
Those who choose ig.nor.ance rather than con.se.quence,
half-assed and shivered with current despair…
They pass over rivers that weren’t even there.
Written by Jason Wright April 14, 2019
For River Phoenix, whose death at age 23 affected the end result.
For Anna Suisebrick, who provided part of the concept.
For Celine Tobias, who has shared her fear of crossing over bridges.
and for Carol Jackson, who once shared this sentiment, which I never forgot.
All my love!
Edit: Carol Jackson passed away in August of 2024, but she definitely saw this. She had no memory of passing on this wisdom to me, but I assured her that she definitely had and she kindly took the compliment. I didn’t see her often as an adult but I’d have liked to and when we did see one another, it was always a moment filled with love.
I remember you, the you before now, the you from back then.
You were older than me but you were young when I was, glistening nakedly as you ran in for water after yearly mile run.
I didn’t know you well, though we smiled for one another; we drank and frequented the same bars… you, weaving in and out of my existence… you wrote letters from prison to my dearest of friends, and I thought perhaps you had died.
I drove you home once; but I doubt you’d remember it; you were drunk and clinging to that night’s latest trick.
I was jealous of him as I made sure you both arrived at your home safely, as I ensured your survival and my own cuckoldry… even as you stumbled from my car at gas station to vomit on the sidewalk and on my left rear tire.
You told me you were sorry and you sounded miserable… and that night’s lover looked embarrassed if no less interested in sharing your bed, not that I blamed him… you were beautiful in your blindness and completely unsuspecting.
You were already broken then, but the glinting light from those shards of self shone like diamonds in a world filled with pebbles.
That same night, I drove home alone to my little village farm house, where I sprayed the vomit off my car with a garden hose in the far too bright, sunlit morning.
