non-conformist confessionals...

Was reading about some rather messy coming out events. I always wondered about how other people did their big gay confessional, and the aftermath.

I was present for two, the first a bit remotely.

The ex was actually forced out of the closet by a visiting screaming hysterical dowager empress of a mother (always had been more than a bit of a bitch, but that's more a function of having lots of money and not really having had to work for it). The poor boy had been positively petrified about being outed for years (also having been blackmailed over it before). Not shocking considering he had been repeatedly threatened by both parents and otherwise loving sister with disownment. The surprising supportiveness of the other two players at the event aside, the blubbering dowager left my (then) poor rabbit quivering in the bathroom, where he panic-called me in a rather uncharacteristically morbid flat but wavering voice to inform me that he may have to start living with me shortly.

Things ultimately turned out stable, but the dowager's continued state of open denial and constant pestering for him to find a girl to knock up has kept the ex in an interesting state of accomodation. He has taken to living in the closet with doors wide open, something I continue to chastise him over till today.

The second was my own "coming out".

Convinced that I was well and thoroughly gay (having, at the time, held a steady boyfriend for five years), the older of my two younger sisters urged me to have a grand speech over dinner for our visiting parental units. She was either fairly confident that my parents would be able to handle it, or secretly hoping they would force me back on the "straight and narrow"; she was a classical bible-thumping, church going, hymn singing, err, person. To this day, I cannot say which, but her rather impersonal supportiveness of my in-and-out-again romantic situation says that we will at the very least be civil about it.

The younger, being more greatly influenced by more enlightened and insidious minds as I, was generally of good disposition towards the idea, although not particularly forceful in calling for it. For her, she was glad enough to have an older scapegoat for a lot of the unwanted parental attentions typically foisted on wayward teenagers.

Now, as a quick aside, I have never really felt the need to "come out" for the simple reason that I don't feel particularly strongly about sexing men or women. As a teenager, this used to confuse me greatly, and caused a fair bit of consternation for the girls in class who would decry my lack of gentlemanliness in not treating them with the deference apparently due to ladies. Indeed, I could not feel the need to bend over backwards for either gender. It was only later that I discovered that there was a term for this, but in a world typically so starkly polarised, things like ambidexterity, dual-wielding, and bisexuality are not commonly known or understood.

So my "coming out" was rather unspectacular. I announced over dinner that I had romantic dispositions for men as well as women. My parents seemed confused at the idea, and so asked for elaboration, and further queried about having any male partners since the last youthful liason with a lovely lady I had met through writing this very blog. Having told them of him and how things seemed a bit off due to his need to "find himself", my mother was quick to quip that maybe I needed to find myself, too. My father, to his credit, seemed his usual nonplussed self, and said I should just stay safe and be happy.

The only remarkable change since then, I guess, was the total lack of interest expressed by either of them in any facet of my romantic life. It used to be that they asked after all my friends, as well as if I was seeing anyone, or how things were going. Now, after three years, still radio silence on the topic. I'm pretty sure they are aware I have been out and about, but the lack of official curiousity on the topic has proven to be a deafening silence. This is especially so when they quite openly and actively question the girls about theirs.

Further noticeable is that their decreasing queries about anything not job-related at all. It is, admittedly, a refreshing break from the horror stories of friends (and some enemies), but one can't help but wonder if I am entirely comfortable about this lack of confrontation. I would surmise this is their way to maintain a little Christian diplomacy and tact, but it does make me wonder if they're hoping against hope that my next fling would be someone of the vaginal variety, and that the fling would turn out quite permanent? It worries a bit to consider that they may be sabotaging my stock of prophylactics if it were ever the case to make marriage a strong argument (not that I'm the particularly responsible sort, nor am I in anyway against abortion).

Certainly, their occasional ribbing about my vehemence against the idea of marriage is certainly indicative of their preference in the matter.

sexciting...

When I finally walked away from the wreck of mediocre disappointment that was the shambolic remnants of an ill-advised relationship, I had the distinct impression that it was pretty similar to watching a cake bake. A dry, crumbly, and disappointing cake. You can see it slowly rise, browning ever so marginally, before popping out of the oven full of promise, only to disappoint. It is, after all, a mediocre cake.

So I had made my rather expensive goodbye. I've always been the one to do important things right, and 3,000-odd Ks would nary dissuade me from a proper face-to-face breakup. Especially one that had been a couple of years coming.

When I bid adieu to the treasured, but now-forever-placed-beyond-my-greasy-grasp bunny boy, I was pretty damn sure I had signed away any sense of romantic pleasure for the next odd years, if not for good. After all, that's what a seven year moratorium on fishing does to your baiting and tackling skills. 

As luck would have it, not four hours after landing did I get offered a project that would take me to some obscure side of our local pond. A series of similarly mediocre, if purpose-filled, events later, I was to find myself placed in somewhat sexciting company.

Being nothing but blind to any external opportunities during the duration of my match, I was quite caught unawares at the value placed upon my personal equity. Truly no blue-chip stock, it turns out that I was worth some fair bit of fun-time coinage in the market I had long eschewed.

A nap and a grope later, I now find myself in the surprising membership of a "time-share" arrangement. How delightfully sexciting.

place...

It used to be our place.

Now it's just his place, and I have no place.

It's good. It's refreshing.

Don't think I miss it anymore.

talking to toys...

I have spent a lot of time talking to a lovely little stuffed wolf doll. It was the most significant thing, I think, I have ever received from him.

Fluffy Wolf represents the sociopathic, unfiltered voice in my head that even I have to modulate outside the confines of the company of witty folk. In the stark, but padded, halls that I spend too many hours a day, I find myself speaking in a stilted, meaningless babble. The words are coherent, but the truths are not.

In a way, talking to a stuffed toy is cathartic in a way a therapist could never be. Of all the incredible hurt and rejection a person as remarkably outsider-ish could receive in one lifetime, it could never really compare to that a concious stuffed toy would suffer.

Fluffy Wolf keeps me sane in a way that no drug or therapist ever could. The saddest thing that could then happen, of course, is if I should end before setting him on with someone else. After all, human lives are far shorter than that of a simple toy.

eating in front of starving men...

It's true what they say. You notice most acutely that you are missing something only when it's painfully being pointed out to you in example.

Back when I had the vague (but it turns out extremely misguided) notion that I was somehow still attached, I did not very much notice how paired up (or lack thereof) the peasantry were.

As my not-so-newly-but-fairly-recently-hammered-into-me-found singlehood has begun to settle in, it has been brought to my attention that I am, well, single. It has been "seven" (well, really it's been five before and the following two floundering in some sort of limbo nether-zone) years since I was last single-single. Naturally, this whole measurement of seven is mostly in my head, for it has realistically only been 3 years, or actually 6 months, of any real relationship-py stuff, and the rest of the time up hoping against hope, paying-full-fees-but-only-getting-visitors-only-section-benefits.

Digression over, it has been slapped upright into my head in the past month how alone I really am, even in a crowd. Some time ago (the fabled seven years), I would be fine with that. I guess you could even say it was the relish on top of the hot dog. But the years have not been kind to my ideals. The job even less so. I have taken all sorts of human weaknesses and failings, having only a moderately prettier shell to store all this additional weaknesses in.

I am lonely, and here and there people are finding others to cuddle. Even the purportedly single ones have something to cheer about; Our-Lovely-Lady-of-Spring herself, no stranger to spreading her legs for the somewhat decent flight, has found the delightful benefit of enjoying work, spinsterish-but-horny as she is. Lady Lamb has herself recently rejected a pair of suitors, but finding relief in the therapy of paper and plastic.

In a fit of self pity, I can only write to myself as to how impossibly alone I am. Alone in having a job I despise (which is, strictly speaking, very good on paper, and certainly several shades brighter than the other blighters who are bludging onward with only a minimal compensation). Absolutely alone in not having a warm body in bed, to hold in my sleep, to cuddle while watching not-teevee, to kiss goodnight.

Indeed, the only one to share bedtime with is a stuffed wolf, a gift from him. This Fluffy Wolf has been the best friend I could ask for in times recent, and certainly a refreshing chatting companion. There is, however, a slight worry that our back and forth banter has been lately causing a development of some sort of schizophrenia. But still they talk me on, only encourage the talking to stuffed toys.

Why do they keep eating in front of a starving man? Is it because they wish him to know it will be better? Perhaps they are less charitable, and is an intentional infliction of anguish. Or is it as innocent as the fact of NOT realizing it?

being a weed and living alone...

Another one married, and is just as well. They are lovely together, and you can only see good things happening for them.

The wedding was better than your expectations allowed. You knew there was a reason you were friends. They had rather impeccable taste in just about everything, even in the head waiter.Shame he left before you could summon up the courage to give him your number proper.

Like the weekend past, everything was lovely, and besides little imperfections brought upon by your own inability, or anal-retentiveness, things were, as far as they go, flawless. And from such, you cannot hope but to be painfully aware of your own solitude. How alone can you get surrounded by a sea of people who know you and see you and understand you?

On that rooftop overlooking this tropical nightmare of a city, not an hour ago, they all noticed your melancholy. Even those who had no reason to understand your history. And you, past your prime and tact, had no sense to stay on good taste and deny the all-too-truthful barbs of history.

Tomorrow he returns, bearing gifts. You don't know how you should greet him. He still showers you with the same affection of a generation gone by, but you have a niggling feeling it's more out of habit than any true emotion demonstrated by the habit.

You find that you still love him, though you are both ready, and forcing yourself to be ready, to accept new guests as and when they come around. That, and cheese.

52 pickup...

It's been a long time since our last revisit. For posterity, it is good you write it here while the musings are morose again.

Since we last left off, the job search in the lovely city South was of to minimal avail. For the record, you are far too picky. Sure, solar panel company operating from B-grade horror movie set may be a twitch dodgy, but it's probably far better a place than you are in now.

Your hopeless optimism is offensive to your own sense of self, but you had nothing left but empty promises. Next time, go with your gut, for it seems far better at this game than your brain does. Consulting had promised to be everything it did not turn out to be. That should be the last time you do a paper evaluation.

Strictly speaking, you are in a far better place than most, and should be satisfied with that. But again, you should realize that the best of a bad situation is unlikely to ever be as enjoyable as the miserable of a fabulous situation. So while this consulting gig pays better in nicer conditions that what your compatriots are settling for, it is not for you.

If there's any takeaway from this, it's that you gave it a shot, and you should have let it drop.

And finally, you have managed to end something that should have ended so many years ago. Rightfully, you made the call in such a way that he had enough control to know that it was the way he wanted it to be. The pathetic on-and-off you had let go on with him, love of your life he may be, could only mean to kill any sense of self you had left.

Now that you've called it quits, you think that things can move on. She tells you that you should give it time. It has only been a few months so far, anyway. She's had to endure years of seeing and not touching, so she'd know better than any other. But the big difference that, you suppose, she could never fully comprehend, is the fact that ultimately the pain is that you honestly did love him. Had he asked, you'd have given a kidney, liver, your still beating heart if he asked. And that you still would.

You take solace in knowing that you're doing this because he was not happy with you. In hindsight, he never was. He let you stay around because you were comforting. You were good at providing, protecting. But you were never what he wanted, and maybe not even needed. Seven years is a long time. In some jurisdictions, you may even have been common law spouses. But you know better now. The last couple of years were merely zones of comfort. It was as apparent to you then as it was to anyone else that he had no honest affection for you. The last year painfully so when you were no longer Love.

And soon he will return, as his annual pilgrimage dictates. You are friends still, since there was no real wrong. But can you honestly say there's any right?

Shocking then it should be that you should finally, after so many years, come across another someone who so quickly smote you, so different than any you would categorically find attractive. Too much of a Princess, this one. Too delicate, and certainly too much of an Oriental persuasion for your typical liking. And yet smitten you were.

After all, he was rather pleasant to the eye. A little shorter than you would normally find, but that added to the charm. He was of fine face, chiselled cheeks, with shoulders that belied the hours he put in, and, to put it directly, an ass that wouldn't quit.

They were only too happy to oblige you, since the whole notion of Princess in distress is a trope all too appealing, in all iterations, in all flavours. While you continue to thank them for their enthusiasm in helping in this pointless pursuit, you have found yourself in these past hours, pondering if this is merely a delayed rebound, a rebound from finally letting your internal turmoil set and say that things have already ended with him.

From their giggly interrogation, its obvious that you will likely not have a chance with him. At least, in no more or less certain terms as the impatiently-awaited End that you have been pursuing with inconsistent skittishness.

Your generosity in this final season of annual gifting was born of death throes of someone who has honestly given up on life. The promises of things unseen, of sensations unfelt, of loves not affected, of pleasures not experienced, holds far less dread than the idea of having to live a life in knowledge of the pointlessness of the whole pursuit.

You buy them expensive gifts because you cannot shake the feeling that you may not live out the following year. And hope against hope that this is true, because like all things that you know are meant for you, it will be cruelly denied, as the world deems it rightfully should.

You crave a labour that interests and rewards, and are granted false promises and perspectives, methods that offend your carefully crafted sense of self.

You yearn for a life simple as it used to be, uncomplicated by the treasons of "modern living".

You long for the touch of a love gone past, gone by your hands and deeds, gone by your affections, and gone by the lack of his.

You lust for a new one, another living body with a physical attraction so great as to be inexplicable, but so far away from your ideal that your body and mind are at constant odds.

And you reach for a grave that will not be filled by a body yet, only the hopes and dreams long left to rot by a world that is not ready or interested for them,

Thanks for the memories, and may they serve you well.