Countless Comments

Well, BlogVoices no longer lets you display the number of comments attached to a post, because they don’t have enough computer resources and they don’t have enough money to increases those resources. (By “they” I mean “Chris.”) This makes it harder to know if someone has commented on a post, because you actually have to click on the “comment” link to find out. On the other hand, blog loading time is now faster than it used to be.

Of course, I’ll still know when people post comments, because they’re automatically e-mailed to me. So if you post a comment, such as the one attached to this post, I’ll get it.

Leather Egg seems to have his own comment system, the lucky guy, but I’m not that computer-savvy.

Spring fever has hit. I leave my therapist’s office and it’s still light out, chilly but mild. Spring fever. Primordial rhythms take over. We are only animals, we are of the earth. I want to grow a goatee and cruise and fuck on a hot summer night in the city. I want to copulate like rabbits on a picnic blanket in a clearing by a brook. I want to exchange glances of lust with a stranger. Sweat, skin, teeth, eyes, muscles, breathing hard, rushing river, limpid trees, blowing breeze, a cacophony of birds. The weather is warm.

I think back nine summers to July 1992, the first time I ever went into a gay bookstore. A Different Light was still on Hudson Street. I was 18. Hot summer afternoon in Greenwich Village. I open the door, walk in, and enter another world. Gay men everywhere, t-shirts and shorts, browsing quietly, absorbed in their open books. I’m so nervous I don’t even look at anyone except in sidelong glances, my heart beating like crazy, excitement, danger, opportunity, fear, secrecy, disobedience. When I walk back out into the summer sun, I feel branded, and I know that in five minutes, several blocks away, people on the street will look at me and know where I’ve been. They’ll see it in my face. I’ve been in a gay bookstore. I’m gay.

Sex and Body

Now that it turns out I’m alive and healthy, I really should stop performing autopsies on myself. But I’m feeling torn again between two different inner impulses. I feel tension between this and this. I’ve been reading someone’s blog, reading all about his gym diary, and about his orgies in back rooms, and I think, I wish I could be more like that. And then I read someone else’s blog, the blog of someone who has much less sex and seems to feel good about that, and seems to earn the respect of his innocent peers, and I think, I wish I could be more like that. I’m torn between hedonism and puritanism, between wanting to be respected and wanting to be envied, and I’d like to find a nice middle ground.

Okay, who am I kidding? Deep down (like all of us) I prefer hedonism, and I agree with Jonno — let it always be safe. On the other hand, if I’m thinking that more sex increases one’s self-esteem — well, that does happen, actually. When I came out and realized that there were guys who found me attractive, who wanted me for my looks, who just wanted to have sex with me — that was pretty cool.

I’d like to join a gym, I think. But to be honest, I’m generally happy with my body. I have a slim, nicely proportioned build — not gym-fed bulky muscles, but more of a natural toned look. I have good starting material. I joined the gym when I started law school, but I lost the discipline after three weeks. And the trainer told me that because I’m one of those people who can’t put on weight if I tried, it would be good for me to take a protein supplement. But I thought that if I started taking a supplement but didn’t keep up with the gym, I’d put on flab. So I remained my slim non-bulky self.

I wish I were smoother, but maybe that’s because I tend to prefer smoother guys. Anyway, plenty of guys haven’t seemed to mind my body, and at any rate it’s nothing that a little waxing can’t change, if I so decide.

Lately I’ve also considered growing a goatee. I’ve had a goatee two or three times in the past, only for about two or three weeks each time, but that was pre-coming-out, back when I wasn’t paying attention to what people thought of me. (One thing I noticed after I came out was that I started paying closer attention to my physical appearance and subsequently began to feel better about that appearance.) I wonder what kind of guy I’d attract with the goatee-and-glasses look. I usually get pegged as two or three years younger than I am. Right now with the glasses and a smooth face I have the clean-cut slightly trendy intellectual look; perhaps a goatee with the glasses would add a slight air of mystery and maturity. I’ve never been good at cruising; I wonder what kind of guys such a look would bring me.

There’s nothing so cool as experimenting with your physical appearance.