Posts - September 2003

I stayed at my parents’ house last night. My parents were away for the weekend.

I went for long walks along the residential streets of my hometown. I walked past the beautiful old houses that filmmakers love so much. I thought a lot. I wandered into the past, the future, the present. Yes, I wandered into the present.

Everyone’s alone — even the person with the most friends is born alone, dies alone, showers alone, commutes to work alone, dreams alone. We’re all alone.

My goal in moving is to live in a neighborhood where I have friends. Or at least a neighborhood where I can find friends. So I’m beginning to think about Brooklyn again, as opposed to Manhattan. I don’t know.

Brooklyn: longer commute to work, the F train, a pain to get to Manhattan, not as much life as Manhattan. But it has its own gay bars, and cool gay people, and Prospect Park, and Seventh Avenue, and Smith Street, and better apartments.

Manhattan: a shorter commute than from Brooklyn (depending on the neighborhood, anyway); closer to things. But, smaller apartments, perhaps noisier, perhaps too big and anonymous.

I can’t decide. So I’m going to look for apartments in Manhattan and Brooklyn until I find one I like.

I want to be around people, but also have my own private quiet space when I want that. I want to live in an apartment building where all my friends live in different apartments. Or I want to live in a big old house with them. We’d cook together. We wouldn’t watch much TV, but we could if we wanted to. We’d play cards and read and listen to music and talk.

Sometimes I just want to be a kid again — I want to have a life where I knew what the future was going to bring, where someone else cooked my dinner, where I didn’t have to worry about making enough money or paying debts, where I could play with my toys or just read, where I could sit in the back seat on car trips.

Sometimes I just want to get away from people. And sometimes I really miss having people around.

I wander into the past, the future, the present.

OK — I take back what I said here about not being thrilled with Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies.

I bought “The Two Towers” on DVD last Tuesday, and I’ve been back on a LOTR kick ever since. I’ve watched it, I’ve watched some of the special features, and so forth. Finally, last night — really needing an escape — I decided to sit down and watch the entire 3 1/2-hour extended DVD version of “The Fellowship of the Ring” in one viewing. I’d seen the original twice in the theater; and I’d watched the extended DVD version before, but never in one sitting. So at 8:30 last night I sat down, turned off the lights, and began at the beginning. I took a 30-second pee break, and then another quick break to switch to the second DVD as fast as possible. Other than that, I didn’t pause the movie, I didn’t go back and listen to certain bits of dialogue over again or watch certain shots again. I just let the whole thing roll, so I could get as close to the moviegoing experience as possible. I really watched it, really listened, really paid attention. I finished just after midnight.

My God, what a beautiful, beautiful movie. It’s really baroque, or even rococo, in its scope; actually, a better word would be decadent. It’s longer, more elaborate, more detailed and more dramatic than any movie has a right to be. And that’s OK, because “The Lord of the Rings” deserves that.

The movie is so long. How long is it? It’s so long that when Boromir, Legolas and Gimli first arrive at Rivendell and jump off their steeds, it feels jarring, because for at least an hour and a half you’ve become absorbed in the story of the four hobbits, and you feel like you’ve already watched an entire movie, and then these new characters appear, and (if you’re familiar with the books) you realize you haven’t even gotten into the meat of the story yet! You’ve still got almost two hours to go. And yet the movie is so long that by the end, these “new arrivals” have become your dear friends.

Howard Shore’s music — gorgeous. There are some moments that always get to me. For some reason, the music that moves me the most is the slow, sad, majestic melody that is heard when the Fellowship walks through the enormous halls of the Dwarrowdelf in Moria, built for a civilization that no longer exists. The music has history and age and mournfulness. Gets me every time.

I’ve always loved the last 20 minutes or so of the film, with the death of Boromir and the breaking of the Fellowship. But you only get the full emotional payoff if you’ve been sitting there for three hours already, absorbed in the adventure and drama and combat. Finally it ends, quietly and poignantly, with Frodo and Sam slowly hiking down the Emyn Muil, and our 3-1/2-hour adventure is over. We fade to black and the credits roll.

Fellowship has always been my favorite of the three books; similarly, I like the first movie more than the second. And I’ve realized that watching this movie in one viewing is one of the most effective escapes there is. It really is a world.

I can’t wait until I have all three extended films on DVD and I can sit there and lose myself in Middle-Earth for more than 11 hours. Guess I’ll have to wait until November 2004 for that, though.
—–

So now I’m thinking I might not move. I might just renew my lease for another year.

I have this idea that life would be better if I lived in Manhattan or Brooklyn or something. Meanwhile, right now I have a great apartment, not much noise, lots of space, my own washer and dryer, rent’s not too bad for the great place I have, I’m closer to most parts of Manhattan I like to visit than I’d be if I lived on the Upper East Side, which seems to be the only neighborhood I can afford without a roommate, according to Craigslist. (I live here, give or take a few blocks.) My commute to work’s not too bad.

But it would be one more year of the goddamn PATH train, and I know once the weather turned warm again I’d regret having renewed my lease.

I just wish I were making enough money to live in Manhattan in a decent enough place.

Maybe in joining this chorus, my social life will improve. Maybe it wouldn’t automatically improve if I moved to Manhattan. Maybe I can somehow (how? I have no idea) meet people in Jersey City.

Maybe after living there three years I can stick it out one more year, and then next fall when my commitment to my job is up, I can get something that pays more, and I can move.

Ugh. I have no idea what I’m going to do. My landlord left a phone message a few days ago and asked if I’m planning to renew.

What do you do when both choices are kinda sucky?

Salon.com’s main article today is about Wesley Clark and his chances of getting the Democratic nomination. It has some interesting stuff about Clark vs. Dean. (To read the whole article, and the rest of the site, click on the Salon Daypass and you’ll have free access to everything for the day.)

I’ve been thinking more about Dean lately, and I admit, the excitement about him is contagious. I don’t watch much TV, but I watched most of the Democratic presidential debate last night (the only no-show was Al Sharpton, who apparently was stuck in New York due to thunderstorms). Dean was fun to watch. Forceful (maybe a bit too strident, but I’m going to watch some video of him here for a comparison). Dennis “Hello?” Kucinich is too goofy to be president. Gephardt’s boring. I can’t stand Lieberman and his pandering. Kerry was fortunately more forceful than I’d recalled him being. Moseley-Braun’s elegant, but no chance. Graham, whatever. Edwards, I liked him a few months ago, but he seems like a lightweight now. Aren’t you glad I’m making these decisions on substantive criteria?

This is gonna be fun.
—–

Hi, my name’s Tin Man, and I can’t make up my mind? Um, so I’m going to use my blog to vent about it?

There seem to be a number of roommate situations in Park Slope, Carroll Gardens, et cetera, that I can afford, according to Craigslist. It’s when the weekend arrives that I don’t like living in Jersey City. Brooklyn isn’t Manhattan, but it has its own gay bars… good for weeknight carousing as well as Friday or Saturday night jaunts, I presume. Plus Prospect Park… the downside would be the long commute, and having a roommate. Unless the roommate turned out to be decent. And if it didn’t work out, I could always move on to a different situation. Hmmm…

God, I hate making decisions.

So, right on cue, like a sign from God, I find this: The Futile Pursuit of Happiness.

”Things that happen to you or that you buy or own — as much as you think they make a difference to your happiness, you’re wrong by a certain amount. You’re overestimating how much of a difference they make. None of them make the difference you think. And that’s true of positive and negative events.”

Hmm.
—–

I’ve been meaning to link to this for a while — it’s an unfinished blog entry that Abstract Nixon wrote about me last month, and I hope it’s OK for me to link it even if it’s not an “official” polished blog entry.

I just think there’s something sweet about it.

Jeffrey Rosen writes in today’s New York Times Magazine that Lawrence v. Texas has emboldened social conservatives, and that this is not surprising. Indeed, when advocates for social change rely on the courts to effect change, they run the risk of a backlash. I sure wouldn’t want to be a member of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts right now, having to decide that state’s gay marriage case. Whatever the outcome of that case, lots of people are sure to get angry, and a pro-gay-marriage decision might hurt the cause in the rest of the nation by emboldening those who support an anti-gay-marriage amendment to the Constitution. I think this is why, a month and a half past the court’s self-imposed deadline, it still has not issued a decision.

One of my old law professors agrees with the theory that courts are not the best vehicle for social change. He says that Brown v. Board of Education, for example, emboldened social conservatives; 10 years after the decision, a vast majority of Southern schools remained segregated. It wasn’t until Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that society became more racially integrated, and that was only because of revulsion against the tactics of Southern racists, epitomized by Bull Connor; and the ratcheting up of violent racist actions in the South, my professor contends, was a backlash against events such as Brown. So in a way, the Civil Rights Act was a backlash against a backlash.

Maybe social change is just backlash versus backlash — in which case, no social revolution is ever complete. Human beings are notoriously fickle and easily frightened. The clock can always turn back again.

I don’t watch much TV, but last night was one of those nights when I just felt like curling up on the couch with a blanket and letting things wash over me. So for two or three hours I kept flipping back and forth between one of Woody Allen’s best films, “Annie Hall,” on Turner Classic Movies, and a “Boy Meets Boy” marathon on Bravo. Bravo was running the final three episodes consecutively. It was a wonderful evening.

I’m generally opposed on principle to watching so-called reality TV. But despite all the filler, despite the artifice of people pretending they’re having private conversations when there’s obviously a camera crew in the room, and despite the too-long commercial breaks, I totally got sucked into “Boy Meets Boy.” I have some random thoughts on it.

First, of the three finalists, I’m so glad James picked Wes. What a total cutie, and he was so obviously not the straight guy. (One of the three finalists was straight, but we and James didn’t know which one until the end.) My gaydar told me that Franklin was straight. Brian would have been too easy. As for Wes, he just seemed genuinely gay.

Second, what the hell was up with James’s best friend Andra? What a nutball. Girl needs to relax. It’s only a TV show. It’s not like these are the only 15 men in the world for James to choose from. It’s not like James must marry one of these men (even if he legally could). Anyway, if I were one of the contestants, and James and Andra were a package deal, I’d find myself a different boyfriend. The last thing a guy needs is a boyfriend with an overprotective fag hag. Her drama was even spreading to James himself. “If I picked the straight one, I think my world would come crashing down.” No, you’d lose the game and then you’d go back to L.A. and have thousands of gorgeous intelligent men climbing all over each other to date you. Relax.

Third, this Southern California body fascism is so annoying. I mean yeah, many of them are gorgeous. But kind of plastic. And of course hairless. And what the hell, do they work on farms all day long? They just naturally have these amazingly sculpted bodies? That’s my biggest problem with reality TV shows — all the unrealistically, boringly plastic California porn-esque men.

I’d take Wes, though.

As for “Annie Hall” — so many memorable quotes.

Love is too weak a word for what I feel — I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s, yes I have to invent, of course I — I do, don’t you think I do?

Woody Allen wit and California plastic. That pretty much covers the gamut of men, doesn’t it?

I went to the emergency room last night. Well, actually it was at 3:30 this morning. I couldn’t pee. I’ve been having urinary weirdness since last week. I went to the doctor last Wednesday because around lunchtime I was using the restroom and there was this weird whitish droplet just when I was beginning to urinate. My first and only thought was that I’d contracted an STD (because that’s what I worry about more than anything else). So I went to the doctor that afternoon, and he took cultures and a urine sample, and he prescribed me doxycycline in case it was chlamydia or something like that. There were two more droplets that day, and I began taking the doxycycline that night. And then Friday, I started to have trouble peeing. I kept feeling pressure, but not much would come out. It’s been better at some times than at others, but it’s been an uncomfortable few days. I had brunch with my parents on Sunday, and I didn’t tell them about any of this, because I was ashamed and embarrassed and worried that it was an STD.

Yesterday I got the test results back — no STDs. But there were a few white blood cells in the urine, which was probably an infection of some sort — probably a urinary tract infection. The lab person on the phone told me it would probably resolve on its own, but just in case, I got a referral to a urologist.

Last night I was trying to sleep and the pressure was getting worse. I kept feeling like I needed to pee, but I couldn’t. It got to the point where it was almost painful. Finally I called my doctor’s emergency number and I asked if I should go to the emergency room. He said I should. So at 3:30 in the morning I called my parents and told them where I was going — and why. They said to call them with updates.

After being registered, giving them lots of information, and so forth, I finally got sent to a room. I was asked to give a urine sample. How I was supposed to do that when that was the reason I was there? But somehow I did it. And it made me feel better for a while, although the feeling came back.

I got put on a bed. A nice doctor appeared, and she had me tell her the story. She said it might be a urinary tract infection, so she gave me something called pyridium, which is supposed to ease the symptoms. It also turns your pee bright orange.

It didn’t ease my symptoms. I lay there on the bed, playing games on my cell phone. It was after 5 in the morning. I heard someone say something about kidney stones. I worried that they were talking about me. But it turned out they weren’t.

Eventually, the doctor came back. My urine sample was fine. Huh? How can that be? So she was going to discharge me and recommend I make an appointment with the urologist. Then she had second thoughts and wondered if it might be prostatitis (a prostate infection), which apparently doesn’t always show up in a urine sample. So while she still recommended I see the urologist, she also prescribed me some Cipro, which is supposed to be effective against prostatitis. And, bonus, I guess I’ll be safe from anthrax for a while.

So I left the hospital and called my parents and told them the news. And I apologized for not telling them about it over the weekend. And then I told them that I wanted them to know that I always have safe sex. Not that prostatitis (if that’s what this is) is necessarily caused by sex, but I wanted them to know this anyway. I felt uncomfortable even discussing the subject with them, but it was something I wanted to do. Also, it was after 7 in the morning and I hadn’t slept all night.

I came home, I peed, and I gasped at what looked like orange Gatorade coming out of me before I remembered about the pyridium.

I napped for a couple of hours. Later in the morning, my mom called me to say that if I wanted her to come by, she’d be happy to, and she’d bring food. Later my dad called and said I should take her up on her offer if I wanted. I decided I wanted. So she came over. With shopping bags from the supermarket.

She brought:

- bananas

- apples

- dried apricots

- 1 container of mixed nuts

- 1 barbecued chicken

- 1 container of spaghetti sauce

- 1 box of Triscuits

- 1 box of Vienna Fingers

- 4 black-and-white cookies

- 2 cans Manischewitz chicken soup with matzoh balls

- 1 chocolate chip muffin

- 1 loaf of french bread

- cranberry juice

- apple juice

- rolls

- 1 bag of penne

- 1 container of meat tortellini

- 1 box of vegetable crackers

- a pizza bagel

- hamburger patties

- boneless chicken breasts

- 1 container of fruit salad

- 1 container of honeydew melon

- 1 container of tuna salad

- 1 container of orzo primavera

- 1 container of hummus

- 1 container of rosemary roasted potatoes

- a dozen eggs

- 1 container of bruschetta

- 5 or 6 meatballs

- 1 chicken pot pie

- 1 big salad

- 6 Jell-O pudding snacks

- 1 container of minestrone

- 1 container of chicken noodle soup

- 1 hunk of Jarlsberg cheese

- and 6 12-oz. bottles of Diet Coke.

My refrigerator now looks like a whole family lives here. I’ll be eating in for weeks.

She also brought a vacuum cleaner and cleaning supplies because she wanted to clean my apartment. My apartment hasn’t been this dust-free in — well — I guess not since I moved in.

My mom is just amazing. I guess there are lots of moms who would do this. But I’m glad my mom is mine.

Meanwhile, my appointment with the urologist isn’t until Monday, and my mind has been filling the unknown space with a parade of worries. The Internet’s endless supply of information is the bane of the anxiously ill. I hope the Cipro makes this go away.

In the evening, after cooking and making me eat lots of food, my mom was all set to go. Then she said she’d stay for a while if I wanted, and I decided that that would be nice. So she sat on the couch and read her book, and I got into bed with my nether regions in pain. I was groaning to myself, and it was no fun, so I decided to get out of bed. I wanted conversation. I went to the living room and sat at the other end of the couch (it’s a big L-shaped couch) and my mom and I talked about fun random things. It’s amazing how big a difference some good humor can make in a situation — it took my mind off my discomfort, and it was great to talk with her. Never underestimate the importance of the good people in your life.

Then I got up and went to pee, and it was the best pee I’d had in days. Maybe the ER doctor was correct and the Cipro’s already working.

In addition to today, I’m taking tomorrow off from work as well, because I’m supposed to rest for a couple of days. So I will rest. And I will get better.

And I’ll feel thankful for the wonderful people and things that are in my life.

I slept a solid eight hours last night, after getting only two hours of sleep the night (morning) before.

Right before I woke up, I was dreaming. I can only remember the last part of the dream.

There was this attractive, tall, dark-haired guy — he was supposedly a TV star or TV producer or something. He was sitting on a couch in a big open space — it was a balcony that overlooked the lobby of an office building or hotel. I sat down on the couch next to him, and we kissed. Very deeply. He had a great tongue. It was really nice.

Then I had to go to the bathroom. So I got up, and I was in a bathroom stall — one of those large, handicapped-size stalls. I was about to pee, and then I realized that another guy had walked in behind me. Not for sex, but because he was waiting for me to finish so he could go as well. So he was standing there and I was trying to pee.

I began to pee. Then I looked down and I saw what looked like white Cheez Whiz or mayonnaise coming out of my penis. I was horrified. I quickly tried to contain it with a paper towel so the guy wouldn’t notice.

Then there was blood coming out of my penis. I kept trying to catch it in paper towels, but it wouldn’t stop. It just kept gushing. I was scared. I could feel it coming out of me — it was so real. And this guy was still standing there, so on top of being terrified I also felt embarrassed and ashamed.

Then I woke up, and I actually felt much better than I’d felt the night before. And I’ve generally been feeling much better today. Hooray for Cipro.

But that dream… ugh.

This infection wasn’t necessarily caused by sex, but still — I’ve got some psychological hangups to work on, don’t ya think?
—–

While looking something up on Yahoo!, I stumbled upon a feature I hadn’t known existed: Ask Yahoo!. On there, I found this:

Why is Judy Garland such a popular gay icon?

I don’t think she’s such a popular gay icon for my generation, but if you’ve ever asked the question, there’s your answer.
—–

If there’s an upside to being sick, it’s that I’ve spent the vast majority of my waking hours these last four days watching Turner Classic Movies. I’ve watched movies from the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s, and 60s. I’ve watched a Claudette Colbert marathon, several Cary Grant movies, and the three-and-a-half-hour Giant, starring Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean.

I love old movies — they’re such a great escape. And I think I’m in love with Turner Classic Movies.

I wonder if there’s a way to get a job that involves old movies…
—–

I finally had an appointment with the urologist this morning regarding my illness. I told him my whole story. One rubber-gloved finger later, he confirmed that I do in fact have prostatitis. I’m supposed to take Cipro for 30 days and avoid caffeine and alcohol for the next month.

I’m also supposed to ejaculate at least three or four times a week.

I’m not kidding, he really told me this. Apparently it helps.

Getting better is going to be so much fun.

Clark’s running. Awesome.
—–

I’ve been in this different place lately.

My routines have changed. It partly has to do with being sick last week; I didn’t leave my apartment from Wednesday morning to Sunday afternoon. And it was really nice. As I mentioned, I watched tons of old movies on TCM. I also put together some nice big meals out of the food my mom had brought me. I did lots of New York Times crossword puzzles. (I like being able to complete, or nearly complete, the Friday and Saturday puzzles.) There are times when I enjoy the isolation. As for this old movie kick, I’ve taken it further — yesterday I got myself a Newark Public Library card (I can get one since I work in Newark) and I took out a biography of film director D.W. Griffith. As usual, I’m following my brain wherever it takes me.

It feels like ages since I’ve been to a bar. I think it’s only been two and a half weeks, but it feels longer. And no alcohol for me for a few more weeks, because of the antibiotics. Oh, well.

As for sex, I haven’t felt like having it lately. I went a little overboard a few weekends ago, trying in some way to make up for having been hurt the weekend before. Now I’m taking a break from sex; I feel like I need some distance from it, some space, some cleansing.

In addition, I’ve begun singing with the chorus, which I’m enjoying. It feels so natural to be singing again — just as if I’d never stopped — and there are lots of nice guys in the group. I’ve also dropped an unfulfilling volunteer activity.

I’ve decided to renew my lease, because I have a newfound appreciation for my apartment. There are some things I wish were different about my living situation, but I’ve realized that although it’s not perfect, it’s still damn good.

Old stuff has dropped away, and I feel like I’m resting, waiting — taking a breather before new stuff comes along.

I did something like this for a couple of years, although it was nothing more than a sheet of paper with a list of names. Then, towards the end of 2001, I compiled everyone from the past year onto a spreadsheet, and I included more details, such as what was done, etc.

I told this to a friend of mine, and he and I then tried to come up with a name for a computer program that could keep track of one’s sexual encounters.

There’s iTrick, as Brad points out in Mike’s comments. And my friend came up with Trickminder.

As for me, I came up with a better name:

Tricken.

I saw “Lost in Translation” this weekend. I’m not sure how many of you know this, because I don’t write about it much, but my family and I lived in Tokyo for three years, from 1988 to 1991. We moved there because of my dad’s job. I was 14 when we moved there and 17 when we left; I went to an American high school there.

So I appreciated “Lost in Translation” on different levels.

It was a sweet, smart movie, and Bill Murray was perfect in his role (indeed, he was Sofia Coppola’s first and only choice for it). But on top of that, there were little wonderful moments in the movie that brought back memories. The subway announcements; Tokyo Tower; Japanese television commercials with American movie stars; problems in multilingual communication. The movie captured Tokyo so accurately. It was even more resonant for me and my parents (with whom I saw it) because it brought back those disorienting feelings we had when we first moved there. We spent our first few nights living at the Imperial Hotel because we hadn’t rented furniture for our apartment yet; we were in this strange, almost alien city; we were suffering from jetlag because of the 13-hour time difference. What the hell were we doing here? My brother and I discussed sneaking back to the airport, flying home to the U.S., and living with our aunt and uncle. But you know what? We really came to love it there.

On our first night in Tokyo, my dad, my brother and I went to a McDonald’s, and my dad spilled a Coke.

It’s weird, the things you remember.

The other movie I saw this weekend was Woody Allen’s newest, “Anything Else.” I don’t expect much from Woody’s movies anymore, but I still see them, for the same reason you might visit an elderly relative: you’re doing it out of obligation, and it’s not going to be totally pleasant, but there’s still something comforting in the familiar, musty atmosphere.

True to expectation, it was pretty mediocre. The plot was sketchy at best. The dialogue was unnatural, and Woody can’t act anymore. Jason Biggs is totally cute, but he couldn’t prevail over his stilted lines, and he seemed to have adopted Woody’s stammering, stuttering persona; too much of that in one movie is annoying. And the characters are totally unrealistic; Woody knows nothing about young people today. I was really looking forward to Stockard Channing, but she’s wasted in this movie. I think she’d be perfect playing opposite Woody as his vindictive ex-wife or something, but that wasn’t her role. (She did have one of the film’s best lines, though: “We just saw Elaine Stritch on Broadway. She was wonderful. Want some cocaine?”) There’s also way too much narration, which violates the first rule of movies: show, don’t tell. There are several moments when a character narrates something that’s happening right there on the screen. It’s totally unnecessary, and again, annoying.

These days, Woody just churns out movie after movie, one per year, without taking the time to make them as good as they could be. I don’t know if he has anything relevant left to say — he seems stuck in a time warp. At the same time, I kind of respect the guy, because at least he’s doing it. Better to write something than nothing. I’m inspired by his prolific output. I once talked with my therapist about my fears that what I write might be crap. I said that there were so many bad movies out there. She said something like, “So why are other people allowed to write bad movies and you’re not?” And she’s right. There are some deeply flawed attempts at art out there, but at least people are creating them.

It makes me want to start another screenplay. And also try harder to sell the one I’ve written.

I wish Bush would take off that stupid American flag pin when speaking at the United Nations. So much for international law. What a frickin’ dillweed. He clings to that pin (er, it clings to him, I guess) like Linus’s security blanket.

Which reminds me: when I was 11 years old, in fifth grade, I got to play Linus in our school play. We did the book report scene from “You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.” I got to recite a monologue that began:

In examining a work such as Peter Rabbit, it is important that the superficial characteristics of its deceptively simple plot should not be allowed to blind the reader to the more substantial fabric of its deeper motivations.

My parents have it on videotape. It’s adorable.

But nobody’s seeing it except my next boyfriend.

While blogging, like all journaling, can be an ideal place for meditation, self-contemplation and intuition, it can only be so when the space is set for you to do with solely as you wish.

– Philo

Thus inspired, I write these words. Because I need to.

You know –

For a couple of weeks there, I was over it. It seemed like it was past. But for some reason I’ve been thinking about it a lot again these last few days.

Here’s the abbreviated version. I’ll spare you the 10,000-word version I’ve written, which is complete with excerpts from e-mails and instant message conversations. (I process my emotions through writing.)

I fell in love this past spring. I don’t know if I would have used those words at the time, but that’s what it was. We met in April. And the thing is, I never fall in love. But he had so much of what I look for. It can be strange to be on the receiving end of such love, I imagine. “Why does this person feel this way about me?” I don’t know why. I just did. He was handsome, dark-haired, Jewish, intelligent, funny, charming, and cute. He was practically my ideal.

He was also emotionally manipulative.

And so good at it.

And he was focused almost exclusively on his own needs.

The needs of others didn’t matter. He did things without thinking about how they’d affect other people. It was always about what he needed and wanted and nothing more. And he kept changing his mind about what exactly that was.

After I met him, we went back and forth for months. He didn’t want to date me, then he did, then he didn’t, then he did, then he didn’t then he did then he didn’t then he did and on and on and on and on and on…

It was a big circle. I’d express feelings for him. Then he’d run away from those feelings and say he just wanted to be friends. Which I couldn’t do. So I’d decide it wasn’t worth it. But he wasn’t comfortable with me not having feelings for him, so he’d draw me back in with cute conversation and promises that it would be different next time. And I’d come back. And then he’d push me away again and I’d leave and then he’d pull me back in again. Over and over and over.

I fell for it — every time. Because I was so damn in love with him.

He told me that I was adorable. He told me that I was wonderful. He told me that I was the only person in his life who’d ever made an effort to understand him, and that he truly valued me for that.

The thing is, we never got to do anything more than kiss and hold each other. He never invited me home with him. Never. (He didn’t even kiss me until we’d known each other a month.)

The last straw finally came in July and August. He went to Florida for a five-day vacation to visit a friend and the friend’s boyfriend. The day before he left, I asked if he wanted to go out for a drink that night. He said he was tired and was just going to go home and crash. Okay.

When he came back from Florida, he was a different person. He didn’t even call me for two days — and then I finally called him. When I called, he told me at first that he didn’t want to talk about it. Then he told me he wanted to be single. He’d had sex with his hosts. He’d apparently gotten lots of attention. He didn’t want to date me. Or anyone.

Fine. I was unhappy, but what could I do.

Two days later he called me again. He’d changed his mind. He wanted to give it a shot after all. I responded that I couldn’t deal with this anymore and that I needed space. He was starting to cry.

About a week later, we made up, and things were promising again. I was happy.

But over the next couple of weeks, the vacillations happened faster and faster, like a spinning top about to fall over. His feelings for me changed almost daily. Finally, I decided, screw it. I went out on a date with someone else and went home with the guy.

After reading that blog entry, the guy I was in love with (I’ll call him D) e-mailed me and told me he wasn’t comfortable that I’d gone out with someone else. I asked him why.

“Because I love you, Jeff,” he wrote.

I was stunned.

So I called him and we had a long talk. It was honest and beautiful. We decided we’d go out on a real date the following Saturday, and we’d take it slowly. But he asked if I planned to see the other guy again. I said I didn’t know. He said, in a really cute voice, that he didn’t like having competition. I was happy — this was a good sign.

A few days later was Thursday — the big blackout. D and I were supposed to hang out on Saturday. But on Friday, the day after the blackout, I was home from work, and I got an e-mail from a friend of mine, S.

My friend S told me that he and D had been seeing each other for the past three weeks.

He’d been pestering D to tell me, but since D wouldn’t tell me, he’d decided to tell me himself.

As I sat at my computer, staring at S’s words on the screen, I felt weak. My legs turned to jelly. My heart sank.

The thing is — I had sort of suspected this. See, D and S had met on gay.com a few weeks earlier and had chatted. I knew this because I’d been talking to D about my friend S one day, and after I described S, D had told me that he realized he’d actually chatted online with S the night before.

That wasn’t the only reason I’d suspected it. In various online chats over the last few weeks, S had asked me several times how things were going between me and D. He’d seemed almost unnaturally interested in D. Even before that — back in May — S had once e-mailed me and asked me about D, out of the blue. When I’d responded coyly, he’d persisted.

I’d figured I was just being paranoid, but apparently not.

Of course they couldn’t just chat online. No — of course my worst dreams had to come true. Of course they had to wind up dating.

After I got S’s email, S and I talked on the phone. I asked him questions.

It turned out that their first date was the night before D had left for Florida — the very night that I’d asked D out and D had said he was tired and needed to crash. And the night after their first date, in fact, I was hanging out with S at a party, and S had said nothing to me about D. I’d even asked S around that time if he’d chatted with D online, and he’d said no. Even though he knew that he had, because he’d seen D’s photo before.

Now, on the phone with S, stunned, I asked S if he and D had done anything sexual. They had.

“More than kissing?” I asked.

“Yes.”

My heart sank again.

D had never had sex with me over the previous three and a half months that I’d known him, but he’d had sex with S within three weeks of meeting him.

I asked S what he knew about the most recent status of me and D. He said that D had told him that he and I were just going to be friends now. I filled S in on the news: D had told me he loved me and didn’t want me to date other people. S was surprised to hear this.

I asked if he was going to tell D that he’d informed me of what was going on. He said he was.

That night, I called D to discuss plans for meeting up the next day, but I didn’t let on that I knew. I wanted to wait to discuss it in person. We had a nice, casual conversation. But a few minutes later, he called me back and left a voicemail saying that I was giving him attitude and that it didn’t seem like I was ever going to be satisfied with just friendship, and that he didn’t want to see me the next day and he didn’t want to talk about it.

So I called him back and left him a message, saying that I knew about him and S, pointing out D’s hypocrisy, and telling him that I was going to be damned if I was going to let myself be blamed for not being able to predict how D was going to feel about me on any given day.

D finally called me a few days later. I let him have it. He wisely said very little. I said it was completely over. I told him to go date S.

As it turned out, it didn’t last between them. Within days, D and S went from good terms to bad.

A few days later, D instant-messaged me, asking if this was really how I wanted to leave things. I said yes. He tried to explain, but by that point I didn’t care anymore. I said it was finished. The last thing he said was that he admired me for my strength.

That was more than a month ago. We haven’t communicated since.

My feelings about all of this have been complicated.

I haven’t known whom to be angrier at.

That I was angry at D goes without saying. After months of conversations, he knew exactly how I felt about him. In fact, he’d even finally told me that he loved me and that he didn’t want me to date other people. Meanwhile, he was dating and sleeping with my friend behind my back.

How did he think I’d feel about this? Either he didn’t care how I’d feel, or he deliberately set out to hurt me. Either way, it sucks.

He took advantage of my goodwill and my patience, time after time. He figured he could do anything he wanted, because he could always sweet-talk me and convince me to come back. And why wouldn’t he think that? It was true. I kept falling for it. I kept being stupid and in love.

So of course I was angry at D. Duh.

But I was also angry at my friend S, who at one point this summer was a potential roommate. S deliberately lied to me. And he kept asking me how things were going between me and D, when he was already dating D himself.

The amazing thing is, S had already known all about what D had done to me over the last few months. At one point — something I haven’t mentioned yet — at one point in June, it turned out that D had been dating one of S’s friends in addition to me. In fact, S was with me when I found this out. He even listened to me describe the drama of me and D. And yet, knowing all of this about D, he fell for D just as I did, and he dated him behind my back.

S claimed that when he and D had chatted online, he’d known who D was but he didn’t say anything to D about it because he was curious to see how it would pan out. But then he found himself falling for D. This is baloney, because S had clearly already been interested in D for a long time. He must have been thrilled to chat with D.

In general, although it’s true that S was the one who finally told me what was going on, I found his behavior in this whole thing to be opportunistic and, more than that, tacky.

Here’s something else that floors me. Since all of this happened, S has removed me from his Friendster list and his blogroll and he hasn’t contacted me. As if it were somehow my fault that he got hurt. But if S got hurt in all of this, it’s his own fault. He should have known better.

Then again, by that point, I should have known better, too.

You know one of the most humiliating things about all this? I’d been blogging about how things had gone badly between me and D, and that whole time, S had been reading those entries — presumably with great happiness. And I didn’t even know.

From D’s online profile, I know that he’s now “seeing someone special.” I happen to know it’s not S, but for all I know, the “someone special” is reading this. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the “someone special” is someone I know. It would be par for the course.

Too bad D never considered me to be someone special.

Also, while I never got to sleep with D, there’s another way of putting it: D never got to sleep with me, either.

My feelings for D are so complicated. We haven’t talked in weeks, but stupidly, stupidly, I’m still in love with him. Rather, I’m in love with the qualities I admired in him from the start. But I hate that other side of him — the manipulation, the inconsistency, the streaks of meanness, the inability to deal with emotions in anything but a good child/bad child paradigm, the games that nobody should have to put up with. The thing is, D thought he was so desirable that anyone would gladly put up with this. But nobody deserves to put up with this, unless they do it with full knowledge of what they’re getting into.

I know D’s not evil. It’s just that he has major, major shit to work on. And you can’t solve your issues if you bury them.

In my fantasy world –

But no. This is the real world.

I’ll be over this eventually. I may have scars, but I’ll move on.

If I’ve hurt anyone in writing this, I apologize.

It was just something I needed to do.
—–

It’s Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, so I’m at my parents’ house for the weekend. I’m not particularly religious; I don’t think I really believe there’s an intelligent Creator out there. My philosophy is that life was probably an accident, that human beings are pretty small in the grand scheme of things, and that the only meaning in life is the meaning we create for ourselves. The best thing to do with your life is to be as happy as possible while harming other people as little as possible; and the best way to be happy is to recognize every happy moment in your life that you can, no matter how small — even if it’s eating a really tasty peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

For me, Judaism is important not as a system of religious beliefs, but as a connection to my family and to my heritage through a set of rituals. For that reason, sometimes synagogue services on the High Holidays are fulfilling for me, and sometimes they’re not. This year, I haven’t really felt connected to it.

But one theme I heard at services this morning was the idea of forgiveness. It made me think about recent events again. I want to forgive D — I truly do. Yet it would be easier to forgive him if I knew why he did what he did.

What I like about my family’s synagogue is that it’s Reconstructionist. Reconstructionism is one of the newest and smallest denominations of Judaism. It’s also one of the most liberal, with emphasis placed on equality for women as well as for gays and lesbians (the significance of which my parents couldn’t have realized when we joined this congregation almost 25 years ago). One of the tenets of Reconstructionism is that “the past has a vote, not a veto.” We take from the past what is relevant to modern life, and we toss out what is not. Reconstructionism has more respect for the rituals of the past than Reform Judaism does, but socially it’s more liberal than Conservative Judaism.

(And all of this makes me think of D again, because when I was a kid, my congregation had a beloved female rabbi, and it turned out that she later went to D’s synagogue. I learned this the first time I hung out with him.)

Anyway — here’s to a sweet new year. As someone e-mailed me yesterday, “May your best day of last year be the worst of your next.”

I like that.

Friendster is fun, but it has a disappointing side effect.

Human beings like to explore. The reason I love American history so much is because of the idea of the frontier. People could cross the Atlantic, leave Old Europe behind for the New World and start their lives over. And then they could leave behind the original thirteen colonies and light out for the territory. If things failed, there was always a safety valve — you could hitch a wagon train, shove off, and be someone new. A whole world of unexplored adventure. You could see some wide expanse of mountains and fields and canyons and think that nobody had laid eyes on it in a thousand years.

But by the 1890s, most of the frontier was gone, as Frederick Jackson Turner famously said. It had been explored, occupied. And today it’s all strip malls, McDonald’s and multiplexes.

Not to be the Frederick Jackson Turner of the gay social scene, but there’s not quite the social frontier out there that there used to be. Friendster is great, because it can easily lead you to new people, but it also takes away the unknowns. Everyone comes with connections now. You can no longer use the excuse that you didn’t know that you and your friend were dating the same guy. Or, you might meet someone and find out that you know six of his friends, or you’re chatting with a friend and you realize you’ve both slept with four of the same guys, all of whom have also slept with each other, or you see someone with whom you want to sleep and you realize your friends have already slept with him, and you find out how good he is before you’ve actually had the chance to find out for yourself, and whatnot. (Some of these are embellishments of things that have happened to me. The rest of them actually happened.)

It’s true even in New York. People come here to escape, to start their lives over. New York is somewhat of a frontier today — you can hide in its anonymity. Or can you? In this city of 8 million people, it turns out that all the gay men are in the same big social circle.

I wonder if there’s life on Jupiter’s moons.

I wonder if they’re gay there.

Here’s an article about a gay fraternity at my alma mater, the University of Virginia. You know, nothing like this would have happened at UVa 12 years ago, back when I was a first-year student. UVa has come a long way from its southern good-ol’-boy roots, and I’m glad.

And here’s an article about how my old college a cappella group, the Academical Village People, built its own recording studio. Check out the photos. Those guy are hot, aren’t they? (Sorry — they’re virtually all straight.)
—–

In order to make up for recent troubles, I was almost aggressively social last night. I had planned to attend a gay men’s coffee night, but when I got home from work I was too tired to go. Then I decided that my happiness, and perhaps my sanity, hinged on my attending. So I changed my clothes, put in my contact lenses, and made myself go.

I’m so glad I went. There were maybe 30 gay men there, hanging out on couches and sitting on chairs in the back of a coffee bar, talking and joking around in small groups. Most of them I recognized from previous events. And I found myself turning on the charm, making conversation, searching for various ins. I was socializing as if my life depended on it. Social adrenaline, perhaps. I’m often shy, but my shyness disappeared out of necessity.

At one point I went to use the restroom. I looked in the mirror and I was happy with what I saw.

I wound up being one of the last people in the group to stick around. Everyone had left except six of us, and we just stood there in a small circle, talking about kosher slaughtering methods, Port Authority urinals, Italy, and so on. One of the guys was really cute. I think he thought I was, too. I wound up handing out my card to everyone. Eventually, we all left the coffeeshop and continued talking out on the sidewalk. Then we finally parted ways. As we did, the cute guy gave me a hug and told me it was really nice to meet me. That doesn’t necessarily mean anything special, but in any case it was gratifying to hear.

As I walked back to the PATH station in the chilly autumn night air, I felt a rush of energy. I felt great; it was one of the best social events I’d been to in ages.

This morning I looked in the mirror and I thought, wow. You. Have. Great. Eyes.

And cute lips.

And a nice nose.

And a full head of dark hair.

We’ve all got untapped potential. Last night, I rediscovered mine.