The Death of Imagination

So now that the initial excitement has worn off on all my new flings, the flaws of each are coming into view. None are insuperable, but they're enough to dampen my enthusiasm to the point where it can't overcome my general level of sloth and irritation with humanity.

I should just give up on Eyefield. There were hints before that his situation was a little too fucked-up at the moment to make him a compatible choice, but he stored up some good will by being genuinely considerate on a number of occasions. I also may have some lingering guilt feelings for blowing him off during Bearfest. Unfortunately I'm learning what a really terrible communicator he is in general and I'm not sure I'm willing to keep taking up the slack.

I've already been forced to accept that he'll show up anywhere from 30 minutes late to an hour-an-a-half and he won't do much to keep me apprised of his progress. The final straw came the weekend before last. We'd arranged to go shopping, but he'd set up an appointment for the morning which he missed because he'd misplaced his passport. Long story short, he left me hanging for four hours and was then like, "Oh, I forgot we were doing something. Make other plans." Sounds like a generally-applicable admonishment.

I'll put up with an unreasonable amount of nonsense from someone I want to bone badly enough, but it's not even clear he's still interested in having sex with me. I came close to telling him off but I decided just to let things die a drama-free death instead. And now here he is again today texting me about going out to a bear night somewhere. Well, that might work as a way to get myself out on a evening when I'd just as soon stay in as long as I'm resigned to the fact that he'll show up late if he shows up at all.

El Reconquistador could give him a run for his money in the poor communication and not coming through competition. Months ago he'd proposed taking a trip together for his birthday in June, but June came and went without me hearing from him. Then the Sunday after Eyefield's fiasco (nearly two months later), he texts me about getting dinner that evening and then gets annoyed when I don't reply immediately. We did meet up and it was fine but, again, he doesn't seem that interested in sex and I'm not sure how much bullshit I want to deal with just to socialise.

And what of Uncle Betty? His problem seems to be he just doesn't propose plans. Like, at all. I realised a couple weeks ago that he hadn't invited me to do anything with him all year, something I'd normally take as indicating a lack of interest. But he's always into me when we get together and receptive to seeing me (as long as he doesn't have other plans), so I finally texted his ex Diego and was like, "Is this just him?" and the answer I got was "Yes". And that just doesn't work for me--not in general, and certainly not when so much of my energy is tied up just battling depression.

So I'm taking this as a sign that I need to focus less on fuck buddies and more on genuine friends--like Fig, who sent me a lovely text Saturday night encouraging me to go out and get groped instead of moping around the house or my college pals, who have arranged two successful get-togethers in the time that none of these dumb boys has managed more than one. Then there's the gaming group and the German-speaking bears and other little promising knots of acquaintances who may be good for more, not to mention my fellow widow(er)s who know how to be there for me on a level everyone else can only approximate.

Still, much as I'd rather have sex with friends than sex with strangers, I'd rather have sex than not. Maybe it's finally time to get on Growlr?

I was supposed to host cocktails a week ago Saturday, but I bailed. Only two people checked in with me about them, Eyefield and an ex-bartender friend, so I told both of them they were still welcome to come over if they wanted. The latter chose instead to schedule brunch with me for yesterday while Eyefield opted to meet me at the bar instead.

Later in the week, bantering with him via text took a weird turn. We ended up having a rather serious conversation, I got another glimpse of how maybe we were more attached that we make out, and we made plans for dinner on Thursday that got scuppered by his ex, who's moved back into the house he still owns half of. He sounded mollified when I rescheduled for Saturday, but Saturday came and went without him getting back in touch to finalise plans.

Maybe I should've insisted more, since I'd hoped to use the opportunity to get to know him better and clarify things. I told my therapist earlier in the week that I was dallying with two guys (let's not scare the horses too much) but that they understood nothing serious would come of it because it's Too Early. "Are you sure they know that?" she asked and I took the hint.

You might ask why my usual tendency toward obsessiveness didn't kick in and the answer is basically that I was too darn busy. Fearful of another weekend of staring at the ceiling, I overbooked: Counter-protest Saturday morning, Printers Row Book Fest Saturday afternoon, dinner out Saturday evening. The aforementioned brunch Sunday morning, the Chicago Alternative Comics Expo (CAKE) Sunday afternoon, and dinner out again Sunday evening.

So rather than pester Eyefields, I figured if he really wanted to see me, he'd do something about it, and after killing time at Printers Row helping my colleagues at the Press re-place books knocked over by sudden gusts, I accepted an invitation from Bunj to come and hang out. He'd been hunkered inside with a possible cold, but felt better when I arrived and took me on a stroll around his neighbourhood, a fast-changing corner of River North.

By the time I got home, I was tired and hungry, but I saw how the unseasonable heat had wilted the grounds and threw myself into watering them. Dinner ended up being some reheated rice and beans on tortillas and before I went to bed, I told myself, "I'll sleep soundly tonight," which I mostly did.

Despite lollygagging the next morning, I would have been spot on time for brunch if not for the behemoth of Midsommerfest acting like a planetary body, curving the paths of CTA busses with its huge centre of gravity. One block away from Vincent, my namesake texted me, "We've made a terrible mistake"; Vincent, as it turns out, only opens at 11 a.m. "Why not Big Jones?" I asked, since it was just around the corner and I knew it was open.

We ended up spending most of our time chatting about alcohols and mixology, so I proposed a visit to the local liquor store afterwards. They disappointed me by not having my preferred apricot liqueur in stock, but we had plenty of time to ogle and chat. He wanted to do a lap of the fair, which was just filling up, before heading home and I accompanied him on the first leg before sprinting off to CAKE.

JB had gotten there nearly an hour earlier and systematically worked his way around the perimeter of the main vendor space. We started on the fleshy heart of the room and were joined by GOP. One of our fellow gamers from Necessarily Evil was wrangling volunteers that day and introduced us to some fresh meat recently transplanted from Boston. But JB and I needed a bite to eat and I pointed out that martinis were half off at the lounge across the street.

Small plate service didn't start until 4 p.m., so we contented ourselves with fries and two "candy manhattans" while GOP opted for a big blue drink. An hour of girl talk, and who should come by but Mr New Meat. He was in the company of a member of the Rogers Park Bear Crowd that I knew well enough to call by name and not draw a look of confusion. He even noticed the absence of my hair so I had to explain why I'd been so scarce the year before.

I convinced them to stay for drinks and, in return, New Meat convinced me to have a third martini (and fourth drink of the day from the julep I'd had at brunch). Everyone else drifted away and it was just the two of us talking about his pending divorce and recent move to Chicago. He's another Missouri boy who's lived most of his life somewhere else; he's also another Far North Side bear working around the corner from my brother.

I ended up so drunk I thought I'd forgotten my phone when I hadn't. Of course, it took walking all the way back from the Addison platform, where I'd seen NM onto a southbound train, to discover this. Again, I'd expected to hear from someone regarding afternoon/evening plans and again I'd heard nothing. This time, though, I still treated myself to dinner out, though there was more watering to be done when I got home.

I went out over the weekend. It was fine.

After brunch Saturday morning, even before I remembered it would be Bear Night, I thought it might be nice to go out. Then a friend whose offer to take me back to King Spa I'd previously rejected asked if I was free for dinner. We batted back choices before deciding to take a chance on Hopleaf. I had some half-baked idea that the cold might keep people away. We only waited about 40 minutes for a table despite arriving right around 7, so perhaps I was right.

Afterwards we ventured DILF night at SoFo. I've probably complained before about how impossible the crowds become there later in the evening. My buddy also pointed out how the daddy/chaser ratio drops as the old men go home and are replaced by younger pups. By about 10:30, we'd had enough. I'd caught up with a few acquaintances and successfully talked to a few cuties. So we headed up to Touché.

Here there were more people I knew, mostly in the bar buddy class. One was without his husband for the day; by the evening's end, he was coming on pretty aggressively. Another was a friend from the Great Lakes Bears going way back ("Don't do the math," he pleaded) who was seeing me for the first time in a couple months. "This isn't the appropriate place for this," he said before giving me a crushing hug beside the back bar. I've always appreciated running into him, since he's also lost a husband (at the same hospital, even) so there's a depth to his sympathy most others can't approach. He acknowledged upfront how worthless words were even while conceding the importance of saying them.

I also ran into one of the cuties from SoFo. In our brief exchange, he'd given me reason to hope. In the course of chatting, I quickly learned that he'd been roommates with clintswan, which told me he was good people. (Well, that plus the information that they were still on speaking terms.) I also learned about his boyfriend in Little Rock, which again indicated that he was a decent sort and not one of the game-playing assholes I'm told the gay dating scene is rife with. We left at the same time, and wished each other a pleasant rest in our respective beds.

The next day, I met up with Diego for the beer bust at Big Chicks. This was something I didn't even do when I lived in the hood. (Sunday afternoon always meant dinner with monshu--generally at my place, so I'd be busy with preparations.) I ran into my buddy from the night before plus Coleman and some other regulars. All very pleasant and affirming (everyone likes the new do, apparently) and I'm entertaining making it part of my regular routine.

Wednesday I had a terrific lunch with my newest colleague where I learned both that we have closely shared tastes in fiction and that the new Chinese place downtown is good. However, I managed to forget the risks of having several cups of oolong with lunch and, as a result, slept pretty fitfully. Then I had to get up early for a start-of-the-day meeting followed directly by an all-staff in a chilly former chapel across the street. But after that I broke free.

It was itchwoot's last full day in Chicago and I was flattered that he wanted me to be a part of it. Since it was his clean-up day, I left the itinerary up to him and he announced an interest in the vintage store on Belmont between Clark and Halsted. Remembering his interest in music and a conversation we had about grits, I suggested combining this with a meal at Wishbone and a trip to Reckless. It was like a trip back to my misspent youth.

As always, though, I misjudged the distance from the Belmont station to Lincoln and the interest value of that stretch. I was completely surprised by the huge construction pit on the northeast corner; whatever complex they're building there, I'm sure it's going to be just awful. Lunch at Wishbone, though, was anything but. They do their seafood chowder the wrong way (i.e. with tomato sauce), but their fried green tomatoes are almost as good as Dixie Kitchen's and their crabcakes are better.

Even though I promised we'd take the bus back, I needed a little time before I was ready to rise. Reckless had moved, but only down the block and across the street. We spent over an hour there pawing through shelves of CD inserts in small mylar sleeves, so I would call that a success. We spent at least as much time at Hollywood Mirror, which wore on me as we inched toward 4 p.m. and my damn backpack kept getting heavier. Still, I offered up the comics store up the corner, but his response was "Lassn uns mal in ein Café".

I couldn't think of a good spot nearby and, since his next stop was Loyola anyway, I decided we'd get a jump on rush hour and head directly up to Granville so we could visit Metropolis. At this point, his tiredness was finally beginning to show a bit as well and the conversation drooped at times, but we managed not to push things past the point of diminishing returns before the time came to walk him up to dedos' and say our farewells.

I'm going to chalk down the limpness of last session to a combination of the absence of vianegativa and everyone's need to reacquaint ourselves with the system and setting after such a long break, because today's session was terrific. I still feel like I'm not quite holding my own with the other players, but two of their characters are so OTT that I feel a certain responsibility to play someone, well, responsible. This has left me casting about a bit for a story arc, but now I'm thinking it could be Dante's in Clerks: the realisation that not everything rests on your shoulders just because you claim it does.

A few days ago, it had occurred to me that, at about this point in Necessary Evil, vianegativa had found a way to make my skin crawl with he'd done with a character of mine whereas JB hasn't come close to that, so I began to question whether he really had that in him. I think I have my answer now, and I didn't have to wait for my character to get screwed over in order to find it. Enjoy your new body, Boo! Hope it suits you better than your last one.

I think the weekend had a good balance of staying in and going out, even if I was more of a slug yesterday than I meant to be. I did consider returning to the beach once it became clear that the thunderstorms were a no-show once again, but I thought it might be anticlimactic after the great time I had Saturday.

You could not have asked for better beach weather: hot, but not too humid (not for this Missourian, at least), and a bit of a breeze. As expected, everyone and their lover was there, yet somehow I managed not to see anyone I knew when I arrived. (It only occurred to me after I'd been there a while that a chunk of the Far North Side Mature Bear crowd would be attending the wedding of two of our own and a number of the remainder would be in NOLA for Decadence.)

After a time, however, I ran across BDA and his two frisky friends, which allowed me to lay my towel very much in the thick of things. At times I was like a weathercock, not sure which direction to turn in. One advantage to the company I was in was that whenever any of us fell silent for a moment, there was no reason to ask why or to excuse oneself. As they left Diego came by, then his hot new Peruvian daddy.

Actual summer weather has arrived and with it such a flurry of street festivals that I can't keep track. Yesterday, Nuphy met us in Chinatown for our first trip to Xi'an Cuisine and we found ourselves smack in the centre of the Chinatown Summer Fair. This may not be the most useless Chicago festival, but it holds the distinction of being the most useless one I've ever attended more than once. It's the weekend of the year when all the souvenir shops dump their tacky junk on folding tables in the street so that instead of sifting through it in air-conditioned comfort you get to do it in full sun and suffocating humidity along with a thousand other clueless merrymakers. Hold me back.

The weather was perfect for a beach day, and when I posted this, a friend said he was tied down working the "Celebrate Clark Street World Music Festival". This said nothing to me, and I assumed it was in Lincoln Park. No, it's just the same old local street fair rebranded to highlight its musical acts. Personally, I think of it as "DILFest". I don't go for the music or the food but for the "stroller meat". My friend owns a pet accessory store (what else do you call this proliferation of little shops full of treats and chew toys but no actual pets?) and hanging out with him and his cronies was way fun. One thing about the homo world which will never cease to amuse me is how often I learn more about a man's sexual tastes than I could tell you about those of people I've known since highschool even before I learn his name. There's more of a range there than merits the alternative nickname "Papifest", but for those of us who love Latino daddies, it is sort of one-stop shopping.

Meanwhile, there were at least two other fests the same day, plus a White Sox game. I'm glad to have dodged all of these coming back up from Nuphy's place by bus and bus even if it did take a real bite out of the afternoon. The Old Man and I were still too full from lunch to fix a real dinner, so we nibbled on cheese and fruit and then I had a bite of a squash blossom quesadilla and two filled churros. (Not my wisest choice ever.) Between the meat-heavy lunch and the meat-and-salmon-heavy appetiser dinner of the night before, I expected a gout attack and was pleased to experience none.

Good weekend, with the right mix of leisure, work, and socialisation. Friday I went to work on the parkway corner. At some point, I decided the amount of sand in the subsoil dumped in the middle wasn't sufficient to loosen up the dirt enough (Dad warned me later that adding too little sand to clay and "you end up with concrete") and lugged a 70-lb bag back from Clark-Devon Hardware for this purpose. Mixing in more compost would also help, but without Scooter's assistance, I wasn't about to attempt our plan to empty the composter into the wheelbarrow and work it all in. All that effort left me more worn out for the barbecue that evening with Turtle and Turtlewife than I wanted to be. When's the last time I was the one nodding off in the front room while monshu kept chatting away?

Saturday, however, my power nap turned into a two-hour sleep binge, so making it through cocktails with mollpeartree's coworker and two of his female friends was no problem. To my surprise, the Old Man not only made it through fireworks on the roofdeck afterwards but was up at home reading until past midnight. I know this because I was up until nearly two carousing at Touché and at some point realised I didn't have my phone. Before panicking, I decided to stroll home and check and found it sitting on the computer desk from whence it had never made it into my pocket. (I did not want to get down and start searching that floor!) Slow night, with few of the regulars about, but I did run into a couple nice fellas I hadn't seen in a while.

Besides, I'd shoehorned my Bear socialisation earlier. dedos and his better half hosted an impromptu game day, where I was introduced to Gloom, a cheery card game where the aim is to make your extended Gothic family as miserable as possible before bumping them all off in ghastlycrumb fashion. I was very close to winning the second hand until karma bit my ass and took my most miserable relation out of play. I don't know what it is about the warmer weather, but JB's game night went so well he's got another planned for this Friday. I'm wondering if I shouldn't get into the action myself one of these days.

Sunday it was back into the fields. I finally got tired of waiting for the new neighbours upstairs to remove their tulips and did it myself so I could transplant the bargain kale, carrots, and beets while they still had some time left to mature. The cardoon is looking pretty sad; I'm not thinking will get anything from it at this point, but now that I've had time to mound it properly (à la asparagus) we shall see. Fig came by Friday morning with more plants and diagnosed an earwig infestation, so we're going to lay some traps and hope for the best.

Oddly, given last week's revelations, Scooter was around all weekend, doing chores (such as watering the grass) and hanging out with his wife as if nothing were amiss. So who even knows what's going on there. Thursday night I ended up chatting for a couple hours with the Bear Upstairs and he eventually joined us, quite visibly lit. He was a teetotaller until recently, something which--given that he bartends--I'd always ascribed to alcoholism. So I'm not sure if this is a cause of the current rift or a response to it (and probably shouldn't be speculating either way).

I'm feeling very good about my gay friend group right now. It's important to say so because of how much whining I do. I really do know some good people. And some very funny people and some very clever ones. And some who are all three, plus talented to boot. And I know a lot more people who will put up with me, even when I'm being something of a dick or wanker. I'm tired and still a little buzzed, but tomorrow will be an easy day and there's gaming to look forward to in the evening (with a selection of these same gay friends).