II

I don’t like stereotypes, but I know they exist for a reason. I don’t think I’ve ever really fallen into the stereotype of what most mainstream, straight people slap on a gay guy.

Stereotypes. That’s where I was. And that’s where I’m going to leave it.

My mind is bouncing all over the place because I’m not completely sure where to pick this back up again. I know my goal with this is to give my thought some form and presence. Something I can look back on, if I need to, just to remind me.

People say we have a past so we can look back on it from time to time and learn from it. Learn and move on. For whatever reason, I find that one of my feet seems to have gotten caught in an exposed tree root and I just can’t seem to move past it. Tug, tug, tug.

2006.

And now we get to it. The magical year. The year that held the story I thought I needed to tell. The one I wanted to write out in some grand, epic novel of self-discovery. A novel of a boy walking down that winding road of Life. A novel of love and loss, happiness and sorrow, excitement and terror. Only it’s been just recently that I’ve come to realize that this particular story doesn’t need to be hashed out in some emotional, Oprah’s Book Club novel. This story isn’t all that unique or worthy of that kind of accolade.

After my first full on sexual encounter with another guy, I realized that the next time it happened, I wanted it to be with someone I actually liked. Not just someone who happened to be available.

I had tried, prior to Isaiah, my hand at possibly “dating” someone. We met online, naturally, and set up a dinner date. In a random twist of events, we ended up at the Grand Canyon, parked someplace dark and removed. We made out. It was late, so we got a hotel room but, in a totally awkward moment, just went to sleep. Nothing happened and I was returned the next day to a worried roommate who thought my date had kidnapped me.

Coming into the New Year, I realized that I wanted to try an actual, honest, in the light relationship with another guy. A friend of a friend (I can’t even recall her name now) introduced me to one of her co-workers and suggested that we go out. He (I can’t even remember his name now) had just moved to Arizona from Mississippi. He was cute and seemed like a nice guy. Why not?

So we went out on a couple dates. Typical affair really. Dinner, a movie or two. The last time I recall ever seeing the guy was the morning after a movie-night he and his roommate held at their house. We had woken up and proceeded to fool around a bit. I had forgotten about a prior commitment I had that morning, so I didn’t realize the time. By the time I did realize what time it was, I had two choices: finish him off and leave and be late or….leave immediately and make it on time.

Looking back on it now, I’m pretty sure the fizzle and dying out of our communication was due to the choice I made that morning. (Or it could be, as I found out later on, that it was because he was a total crystal meth addict)

After Meth Head, I tried the online thing again. Friends of friends, I thought, could be so unreliable. I came across this nice-sounding guy and we talked a lot over the course of a couple weeks. We did the traditional crap. Movies. Dinner. Talked.

I recall one night we were walking in a park, just talking. We were walking kind of side-by-side, but not holding hands or really doing anything that would have signaled to anyone to think “hey, look! Two gays!”. At any rate, we’re walking along and this truck pulls up beside us. The next thing I know, he and I are being pelted by key limes and being called not-so-nice things. It got me pissed, but he was more passive and chalked it up to “high school shenanigans”.

That was also the same night I discovered he couldn’t kiss worth a damn. He was the type to like…devour your face when kissing. His mouth was all teeth and spit and it was just…no. It didn’t really matter because things died before anything could really begin. He had come out to his parents (something I still hadn’t done yet) and they flipped. They pushed him into some sort of ridiculous “de-gayification” Christian counseling crap. He voluntarily joined. He told me that he felt he really needed to get over that kind of thing. (Two years later I found he totally ditched the whole “ex-gay” thing and came to terms with who he was born to be)

By this point I was a little flustered. Zero for four. Think about it for a second though. Most straight guys are already accustomed to dating and working relationships and meeting people by the time they graduate high school. Why shouldn’t they be? No one looks down on a “normal”, “socially accepted” male-female relationship. All of this was new to me at 19 and it was an awkward touch and go kind of game.

I didn’t give up though. I was determined to find a guy I could connect with at any cost. I never really stopped to think why I felt I needed to be with a guy. At that point, having just come into my sexuality and, being a young guy, I felt that it was probably the most important thing I should be focusing on. School? Been there, done that. Work? I was working for my mom again. Nothing exciting about that.

What about writing? I was putting words together here and there, but nothing really stuck. I think my desire to be in a relationship, at that point, outweighed my dream of getting work published. That and I hadn’t yet been hit with something I felt could make that great of a story.

I was just checking my deviantART account to see what I had been writing around that time. Nothing. There is a lull from Dec 2004 and it finally picks back up again on June 2006. So I guess I hadn’t written anything that I published to an online source. Even the old hard-drive that I had Ryan recently comb through didn’t have exactly what I had hoped for. That has nothing to do with this though. So…

With writing taking a back seat and my best friend still living in New Mexico, I flung myself into finding the perfect guy. After my tryst with Meth Head but prior to my tryst with Denial Boy I started to fancy an acquaintance from high school. We didn’t really talk all that much during our school years, but we had shared my senior newspaper class together. I had met him again during the tail end of 2005 and he had confessed that he sort of had a crush on me way back when.

In this lull between the two aforementioned guys, I thought I really wanted to pursue him. Naturally he was taken, so he became shelf-candy to be ogled at and dreamt about. Nothing serious could ever come of that, right? Well, yeah but that didn’t stop me from wishing. Still, it was nice to just have a gay friend because those were on short supply in my life. Looking back on it now, it was through Marshall that I actually met a lot of really cool, decent people. (Not that I talk to any of them today)

Marshall was also the one to come to my rescue after the mess with Denial Boy. Summer was coming. Days of pool lounging and nights of parties. Clubs would be bouncing. Drinks would be flowing. Music would be pumping. And sex, sex, sex, sex, sex! It was everywhere! It was summer!

It was toward the end of May and I was house sitting for a co-worker of mine while she and her husband spent the weekend in Vegas. She had given me full access to whatever I wanted while I was there, most especially her booze cabinet. I had expressed my dismay with Marshall about my “single” situation.

He remedied it, but I need to stop for now. I really, REALLY need to get something done. I’ll probably post later after the hockey game tonight.