There at night, in the illumination of contrasting partnership norms, be it the seemingly liberated, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policies of sadly beautiful Palm Springs marriage, or sexless lesbian bed victims who either choose to deny their ghostly existence or claw their way back toward sensation…
There in the power bottom afterglow of newly confirmed relational status and haunted by parallel love lives which will echo and color the weeks that follow… leaving overstimulated, near madness, hyper inspired unanswered inquiries and nearly celibate nightmares…
There under the weight of all that came before is where we must truly define ourselves as WE – as I reverate all possibilities and all combinations.
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.
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.
Waking in slumber I drift outside to carnival located in field between my grandfather’s destroyed garage and my great-uncle’s abandoned home.
Excited, I turn and run (naked) to inform my sister.
The fairground sideshow thrill rides represent the lake park visited by John Calvin Culver in his New York State childhood.
The hot sand beneath my feet is like Fire Island beach that would make Casey Donovan famous before I was born… and deny him the legitimate work he craved before dying of AIDS two days before my thirteenth birthday.
44 years old and I’m older now than he ever was, having died in Florida at the age of 43, days after flying from New York City home – a home that, ironically, I now haunt.
42nd Street is a different shade of sleaze these days; the tourist trap theme park crowd mills daily through that tired old bitch under a new coat of sparkle.
The bramble still exists…. although I’ve never stumbled through it.
I seek out new places to get lost only to learn that there are no new places… everywhere I go there are ghosts of films, of novels, of family living here long before me and having left long before I arrived.
Almost 20 years ago I moved to Longshore Drive and Wright Street, thinking it new and odd, only to learn that my father, David Wright had lived in the same location, and that the cemetery up the road cradled the remains of his father before him.
It’s like that now, here in the city and here in my dreams which are filled with the dead in a world long buried.
The whore used to make friends by sleeping with them, and though his behavior has changed overtime, the impulse has stayed with him.
The young blond angel asks this attention seeking whore if he had to work for his blistering wit or if it’s simply the product of his inbred white-trash genetics?
“I got it from my sister.” I reply, which doesn’t necessarily answer the angel’s question.
I enjoy the way he sounds as he asks me and I struggle not to sexualize him (with some limited success), though I inevitably sexualize everything, don’t I?
He seems both exceptionally strong and remarkably fragile, but I find this contrast charming and disarming, and find myself feeling protective, encouraging, and blessed every time the angel’s eyes meet mine.
I know I’ll struggle with sharing this with him.
Will my honesty damn a budding friendship?
It wouldn’t be the first time.
And if that’s a possibility should I now bite my tongue for fear of hurting us and by extension, my lover and partner in all things?
I’m probably overthinking this.
This is stupid.
I know that Aaron will not be bothered, and I’m keenly aware that my lust is just an ever present companion, an innocent natural type of curious exploration and my invisible personal passageway to kinship.
Everyone knows such consummation is unlikely at best; a friendship perverted by unholy unions might make for provocative fantasy but let’s get real:
One seldom encounters angels in the gutters of my mind.