Monday, March 20, 2006

 

ENTRY 210: COMING UP SHORT


The interesting thing is that, although I thought I'd given up my fuckbuddy (or "friend with benefits," for those with more delicate sensibilities), he hadn't gotten the memo, and, flesh and inertia being what they are, the symbiosis has continued--however sporadically.


We have a decent enough time. Usually we see a movie, get some dinner, go at it, talk about work. In almost that order. The sex is very predictable, despite my occasional efforts to insert some variety, but, you know, what the hey. It's sex. Kind of comforting and not requiring much effort and consistent and pretty decent, like macaroni and cheese from a box.


Sex is what a great many people of various persuasions mistake for intimacy. I don't, but I guess that's a significant part of the appeal--the vague simulation of the real thing. The familiar naked body that, after repeated visits, you can picture and remember the feel of. I thought of this the other day when I ate some delicious beef tongue but, a day later, still recalled with a slight shiver the rough feel of that tongue against my own.


My most recent encounter with my FwB started off as the dozen previous ones all had, but, just as things were really getting hot and heavy, he seemed to put on the brakes, and we...cuddled, I think they called it when I was a youngster.


This was kind of nice, really, the peaceful interlude in the midst of turgidity, but as a quarter of an hour stretched into half of one, and my FwB sighed, "Oh, Frank, Frank, Frank," I became vaguely anxious. Could he, after months of hey-buddy orgasms, have developed feelings for me?


It was an unseasonably warm afternoon, and the prolonged cuddling had made me feel sweaty and overheated. The resumption of previous activities only exacerbated my condition, which proved distracting. So when I found myself still unable to fire the torpedo a good 10 minutes after he'd hit one for the team, I rolled over in defeat and wondered to myself whether my safety was on because of the uncomfortable temperature or because the thought of this guy having feelings for me nipped me in the bud. The latter notion was rather distressing, for obvious reasons.


Then again, as I thought to myself during my postcoital shower, would such a reaction really have been emotionally unreasonable? After all, this was someone with whom I'd had casual, if amicable, goings-on for a number of months. We both knew what the ground rules were. He and I could hang out every once in a while and enjoy each other's company, but we didn't have remotely enough in common for anything deeper. I never like to hurt the people I choose to include in my life, and that fact, more than anything, might explain the norgasm.


When I returned to the bedroom, I heard something new: music. In all the times I'd been over to his place, he had never once turned on his stereo. Yet now I was greeted with a sound that pinned my ears back against my head in alarm: "Just the Way You Are." And not the Billy Joel version. The Diana Krall cover. Shudder.


Eventually, as I reclined in the dark next to him, my mind eased again. I had done nothing wrong. Neither had he. We had a congenial sexual relationship, and sex can be confusing. And I knew that I wanted to be in love. But I didn't want him to be. Not with me. It was too much groping in too much dark.


###


It had been a little while since Phil and I had made a night of it. We went out a bit early, so hardly anyone was there when we took our first drinks of the evening to a booth and sat down.


I tried to explain where my head had been lately, and Phil said, "You seem to have trouble being happy."


"Yep," I said. "But I have to say that last year wore me out. I'm getting over it, but things went so wrong for such an extended period of time that I don't think I'll be able to come out of it completely without help." I'd explained about my decision to look for a new therapist soon.


"I mean, I know all this," I said, "which is the frustrating part. I know happiness is a choice, but it isn't always an easy one. And that's enough about me for now."


Phil spoke of his thesis and his latest date (most likely a one-off, but what an off it was). We had another drink, and the place filled up when we weren't looking, and we were shortly surrounded by much illegal smoking and dancing (at least, I don't think the place had a cabaret license).


The frustrating thing about Phil is that he never steels himself to talk to the guys he thinks are cute, even though he looks like an action figure, so when he went to the bathroom I tapped the shoulder of one of the boys he'd spoken of favorably.


"My friend would kill me for telling you this, but he thinks you're really cute," I said.


"And I thought he was really cute," said the boy. He smiled. I smiled.


In less than five minutes, I had the two of them chatting away. Then the three of us ended up in the midst of the dancing throng, Phil and the new stranger dancing progressively closer to each other.


Feeling smugly like the Yente of the gay set, grinning until it hurt, I moved hard and fast in my own orbit, both toward and away from tomorrow. Here we all went again.

11:42 PM

|