The Death of Imagination

Yesterday we celebrated our half-year anniversary and it was delightful. We didn't get up to much--I played hooky from work, he made dinner--but we laughed a ridiculous amount. It did me good to see him so happy, especially after how miserable he'd been the day before.

That was partially my fault, of course. The previous week I'd made some reference to being curious about his backstory and he promised that he'd answer all of my questions. Coming up on Sunday, he was so anxious he vomited on the way. I wouldn't've been surprised if he'd spent the ride hoping for a train derailment just so he wouldn't have to go through with it.

Honestly though, he story was pretty much what I expected it to be and didn't substantially change my opinion of him. He describes himself as "a good man who's made some terrible decisions" and I think that's accurate. I'm not concerned with the person he was then but rather who he is now and that guy is pretty great.

He's still staying with someone in Naperville to be close to his job there (which he quit only to return to a couple weeks later) and spending two or three nights a week here. It's not a perfect arrangement, but it's working well enough given our moderate level of commitment. (He admitted to me last night that if I called him in the middle of the night asked for help hiding a body, he'd tell me I was on my own.)

He also told me that he doesn't think he'd be able to maintain a friendship if we ever broke up, which makes sense given just how madly he claims to be in love with me. With every passing week, that seems a bit less likely. But, then again, falling in love with Monshu completely blindsided me so who knows what this world has in store for us yet.

So I've been anticipating a come-to-Jesus moment with my weekend binge drinking for a while now and it may finally have arrived.

Last Friday night, I ran an errand for AOC (our new nickname for the guy I'm seeing) which put me close to Rogers Park Social, so I popped in for a drink or three. When I started to get hungry, I headed home and made a sandwich. I figured my night out would end there--I had a new novel to get back to after all--but then clintswan invited me to go to Anvil with him.

After several more drinks there, he suggested a change of locale, so we left together to catch a rideshare. Apparently, while standing at the corner talking to him, I pitched over backwards "like a cartoon character" and slammed into the sidewalk. After maybe 10-20 seconds of unconsciousness, he managed to revive me, bundle me into the car, and get me safely home.

I know this only from his account. I remember leaving the bar, throwing up at the corner, and getting in the car. But it gained a lot of plausibility the next morning when I realised I couldn't take a step without feeling like my brain was bouncing around in my skull. Any rapid change of direction was accompanied by a feeling of motion sickness and my neck was sore as hell. (Strangely, not my head, not was there a goose egg to be found on the back of it.)

I took a couple Tylenol and laid in bed until I heard AOC buzz at the front door. He had to leave about an hour later for work and not too long after BDDLD showed up to take his place. The rest of the day was spent in quiet recovery and reflection.

The dizziness hasn't entirely gone, but it's much less than it was, as is the pain (chiefly in my neck and pelvis). I think maybe relying on vibes to pace myself is not working and I may need to start picking some arbitrary markers, like no more than one drink an hour or four in a night.

Things are moving fast with Mississippi Boy.

A week ago, he came to campus and we talked through our horrible time that night. My ego still isn't entirely mollified, but I'm willing to forgive and move on.

Thursday was Bear Happy Hour at SoFo again. The original plan was for Clint to pick him up on the way home from work and drop us both there together, but he got an unexpected summons from his boss. I could hardly tell him "don't go", but it made for a pretty shitty first hour at the bar. My other friends I was hoping to meet up with just wanted to get dinner together afterwards and the few folks I knew there were pretty frosty.

Things perked up when an old friend from the bear gaming group came by. His boyfriend was chatting with someone and he wanted to give them space. I'll admit to feeling some envy when I saw them kissing in front of me. By the time MB appeared, I was a bit in my cups and enjoying myself.

Dinner was at Vincent, an Andersonville restaurant I've always liked but haven't patronised in a while. The boy and I split the cassoulet, which was delish, and I ended up feeling so magnanimous that I bought not only treated him but both my pals as well, one of whom was BB. They both gave him a thumbs up.

He was working the next two days, but Sunday he came by again. I was exhausted from a long day on Saturday--a wine-tasting, then an opera, then dancing, and finally a backroom bar--and basically spent the day in bed waiting for him to get off work. We went so late, neither of us willing to call it a night, that I ultimately had to call in the next day.

Last night he made me dinner. Clint let him in and I came home to find him taking a call on the porch and everything pre-prepped in little bags on the counter. I took him downstairs for a very fun time and then stood by the ready as he browned chicken, sauteed vegetables, and otherwise transformed ingredients into to food. We managed to part before midnight this time, but neither of us slept all that well afterwards.

So, okay, that's what's happened, but how do you feel about it all? As you might expect, it's complicated.

Obviously, I'm thinking of Monshu a lot. After all, he was the last person to cook for me like this. Plus the meet-up to work through things was very, very reminiscent of the kind of work I used to do with him. But more than those echoes, he's still my gold standard for a relationship and I can't help but use my memories of how it felt with him to gauge where I'm at. At one point, as I was lying there pondering what I considered the relationship possibilities to be, I told myself outright, "You're not going to find another Monshu." It was a call to me to adjust my expectations: Yes, you might not feel overwhelmingly devoted to him, but that doesn't mean this isn't worth giving a go.

Another strange echo occurred on Saturday night, when I ran into someone who I'd been crushed out on two-and-a-half years ago and never entirely gotten over. On Monday, I was looking through photos on my phone where a snap I'd taken of him outside Big Chicks sat juxtaposed to the new boy and I felt a shudder of emotion. I still feel regret at never truly getting to shoot my shot with him; part of me held out hope that the opportunity might still exist, and pursuing this feels like closing that off (all though of course it isn't).

In the same way, there's a certain accumulating FOMO. I'm really enjoying my second Year of Whoring and though I'm absolutely loving every evening we spend together, it's one where I can't be sampling the wares of another hot man. I'm already wondering if I should be informing some of my regulars of the situation so they don't feel like I'm ignoring them for no reason. It's forcing me to face questions about what I want from sex and why and what tradeoffs I'm willing to make.

Naturally, I haven't really felt ready to raise any of these issues with him. Maybe I don't need to; they really are mine to figure out. We just need to decide how open we want our relationship to be and then it's up to me to sort out how other men fit in those other men. At this point, there still are no parameters. We're taking everything day-by-day and not putting a label on it. (When I need to describe the situation, I say, "I'm seeing someone" or "We're dating".)

A friend told me to "enjoy the crush times" and that's what I'm committed to doing. Nothing else feels like these heady early days and I'm almost wondering if we should see each other less in order to stretch them out a bit more. There's still no need to discuss explicitly what we are to each other beyond two guys who like hanging out, swapping music, and fucking.

What else to I come here for besides posting about boys? Time for a few updates!

It's been a banner season since I got back from Seattle. As lovely as that trip was on many fronts, it was really frustrating when it came to cruising. My fresh-meat status meant that I was deluged with offers but sharing a suite with my mother meant there was no real opportunity to act on them (except for the last day, when I took advantage of Mom's earlier departure time to lure a cutie to my room in the last hour before checkout).

I made up for this with a vengeance when I returned. When I look back, one of the striking things is how successful these were. Of the seven guys I was with that first week, I've since been in touch with all but one and I've fooled around with three of them again--all quite different. One is a tall, older, muscled bear who's really into fisting. He wants to take my whole hand, but we'll need a few sessions to get there. The second is a chubby little cub who loves to cuddle. He wanted to go to an orgy last Saturday but felt shy, so I offered to go with him. And then the last kinds of splits the difference: a married short king with amazing equipment who really loves mine. I invited him over expecting a quick session and really got carried away with him.

The same thing happened last night with a new transplant from Mississippi. He looked cute enough online and I budgeted about an hour in order to breed him; after two-and-a-half, I kicked him out so I could wind down and get some sleep. When we finally stopped making out long enough to talk, I found a more interesting man than expected, one who was as comfortable discussing philosophy as he was discussing dicks. I remember thinking "I could fall a little in love with you".

Still trying not to do that, though I am allowing myself to entertain the notion of enhanced FWBs. There's another smart one, a former mathematics grad student now baking bread for Jeff Bezos, who I enjoy talking to as much as I enjoy fucking. We've already had a couple dates of sorts, once visiting a museum and a yarn store together (he's a knitter) and once just canoodling on the back porch of his cohousing in Rogers Park. He's also young enough to be my son, which is bringing out a certain protectiveness as well. We'll see where that all leads us.

Welp, might have to start friend-locking entries again. The Meta fuckery is prompting a mini migration to other sites. A lot of folks have set sail for BlueSky (not me; Twitter never appealed to me so I'm not sure I'm looking for a Twitter Lite, although I have thought about creating an account solely to follow friends who I won't be able to keep in touch with elsewhere), but--to my surprise--a few have evinced so much nostalgia for LJ that they've actually made the jump to DW. I'm not sure many folks still have the stomach for the kind of longform blogging that is LJ/DW's strong suit, but I guess we'll find out.

So I confessed something to Clint recently. There are any number of projects around the house that I've been putting off indefinitely. I suppose they fall generally into two categories, dejunking and home improvements. Obviously these are interrelated, as a lot of improvements aren't possible until the area is cleared.

For a while, my excuse for kicking the can was that I wasn't sure how much longer I would be keeping my place. Why redecorate if you're not staying around? (Sure, "resale value", but that can be a chimaera.) But after four years of cohabitation, it's clear that I'm not going anywhere, he's not going anywhere, and if we're going to continue living here, it's worth it to fix it up.

Then I had to confront something else about myself. So I've long known that I'm extremely externally motivated. That's why it takes the prospect of, say, moving house to get me to actually sort through my stuff and decide what's worth keeping. And nothing in my life has ever motivated me like making a romantic partner happy. I don't think this is inherently unhealthy. My life has always been about leveraging others expectations to get me to do things I actually want to do but lack the motivation for. As long as you're honest that that's what you're doing, it shouldn't end up leading to resentment.

However, to work, it requires a partner who's willing to play along, and that's something I haven't had since Cam died. Clint's influence is limited; despite my willingness to treat as an equal when it comes to making decisions about our place, we both recognise that at the end of the day there's only one name on the lease.

Despite my poor track record, I still haven't given up on the prospect of finding a romantic partner who could fulfill such a role. Again, that's not inherently unhealthy. The dysfunction comes from the fact that, with no current prospects, this effectively offloads my impetus into an individual who may or may not ever exist in reality.

So where this leaves me is that I guess I need to figure out how to be my own partner. I need to look at my life through the eyes of someone who loves me and wants the best for me and is willing to do whatever it takes to make the person happy and fulfilled. How do I do this? That's the question I guess I'm going to be rassling with this year.

It's been ages since I've posted about anything I've been reading mainly because I haven't been reading nearly as much as I used to. But I've recently made a renewed push which included choosing something a bit easier on the eyes than the volumes I've been struggling through for the last couple months: a debut historical novel by Eleanor Shearer called River, Sing Me Home.

The narrative is pretty straightforward: Newly emancipated Rachel flees a plantation in Barbados where she's being kept in an exploitative "apprenticeship" with the goal of tracking down her lost children, all sold to various other masters while she was in bondage. This takes her first across the island, then to British Guyana, and finally to Trinidad. It's a perfectly enjoyable book, a respectable first effort, but nothing to write home about. The characters are relatable, the prose accomplishes what it needs to, and historical events are woven into the plot in a way which doesn't seem too clunky.

Where I think it was lacking was first of all in the specificity of the setting. A great deal of the book takes place in semiwild areas. Native flora and fauna are constantly being mentioned--the grandeur of nature is quite important to the protagonist's spirituality and awakening to the world--but nothing is named. Literally, out of all the birds, trees, vines, fish, herbs, etc. featured in the work, the only two given a specific name are sugarcane and the caiman. I don't expect the account of an enslaved woman to read like it was narrated by a naturalist, but, c'mon, who doesn't know the name of a single wild plant in the place where they grew up? Or a single species of bird? Even the most urban among us know what a dandelion is or a cardinal.

The whole book is so starved of local culture that I began to wonder if the author had ever even been there. Apparently she did fieldwork on Barbados and St Lucia but I guess she never ventured out of the cities? This is also evident in the dialogue. Of course I don't expect full-blown creole in these passages (though you know I'd eat it up if there were) but it's possible to effect a compromise that preserves some of the prosody and grammar while still being comprehensible to non-Islanders. I've encountred plenty of Caribbean authors who managed this, but Shearer must not have read them. The mishmash she comes up with sounds thuddingly artificial from the first page to the last.

But I think the real issue I had with the book--the reason it didn't engage me on more than a surface level, despite all the weight of cruelty and tragedy underpinning the narrative--is that the whole setting feels nerfed. Being a runaway in the British Colonies mere months after the end of chattel slavery is an exceedingly dangerous situation to be in, but I didn't get a sense of that from this book. The narrator mentions the danger she's in at several points, but the plot is basically advanced by her meeting one generous benefactor after another. Only a couple of people try to exploit her condition and neither of them is that successful at it.

As a result, it reads like a YA novel. Adult themes like prostitution and abuse are touched on, but not much shown. And that's another bit of awkwardness. One of Shearer's goals is to present something of the range of experiences of formerly enslaved people, which is laudable, but her means of doing that is a bit rote: Our protagonist meets a character, who befriends her for underbaked reasons (yes, she's a sympathetic figure, but so are hundreds of others these people must have met), and then at some point, their tragic backstory gets recounted. There's no real subtlety to it, nothing much in the way of subtext. It's a text you could assign to fifth-graders and be confident that nobody in class would miss anything important.

Do I regret reading it? No, but as the sultry summer days begin to dissipate I'm definitely looking forward to diving into something more meaty.

So what am I being a baby about now? Something that happened at the monthly cocktail party last weekend--or rather didn't happen.

To explain, I'll have to go back a month. At the previous cocktail party I was stressed. I ended up inviting too many and the first hour was just me running around trying to take care of everything--making sure there was enough ice, the newbies knew where the glassware was, nobody was trying to open a bottle with a hammer, etc. Eventually, things calmed down and I was able to enjoy myself, but in the meantime I bitched to a lot of people about how annoying it was.

One of them was my new friend Hot David. He suggested I hire someone for next time and I told him that if that's where this was headed then I wasn't interested. I said I would be willing, however, to ask some of the regulars for help. Like maybe assign one of them to keep an eye on the ice bucket, another to make sure recycling wasn't going into the trash, etc. He encouraged me to do this and offered to come early to help out himself.

Flash forward to Saturday afternoon. I sent a message to a chat group with a dozen of these friends (all couples) and Clint in it, prefacing it by explaining how poor Clint was sick and couldn't fulfill his usual duties. At first, I got no response. Then someone asked what Clint had--not because they were concerned about him but worried they might catch something. He replied saying he had a "stomach bug" and one-by-one I watched half of them cancel.

It was deflating to say the least. Oh, and how do I know they weren't concerned about Clint? Because not a one asked what they could do for him, nor has a single one of them inquired about him since. What makes it all the more baffling is that most of them spend these evenings on the back porch anyway and they all know the layout well enough to know that Clint's bedroom and bathroom are downstairs, so their contact would be minimal with him even inside.

I reached out to a friend for support and he basically took their side. I told him I understand that they might have legitimate health concerns, but the fact that none of them asked what they could do without attending (e.g. doing an ice run or something) made their decisions feel awful selfish. (But, you ask, haven't they checked in with me to see if everything turned out okay? Also no.)

We were supposed to meet for brunch this coming Sunday, but you know what? I just don't feel like it. I'd have to deal with them all telling me, "Sorry I didn't come on Saturday BUT..." while I sat there with a sympathetic expression on my face not saying what I actually thought. To hell with them.

Oh the party? A smashing success. I made a point of not mentioning it unless the other person brought it up or had explicitly asked me to remind them and that kept numbers down to a reasonable three dozen or so. I actually got to talk to everyone and even make some fun cocktails and one of the guests took over the kitchen to make some warm appetizers without me wanting to kill him. Hot David made sure someone was answering the door and El Huevón showed up with an extra big bag of ice, despite having spent the entire day getting sunburned at the state fair. You don't need a lot of friends, just the right ones.

I'm coming off a full week of daily hookups and, man, is my penis tired.

It all kicked off a week ago Friday. I was lunching with El Huevón when the smoking hot young guy I was supposed to spend the afternoon with cancelled on me like I pretty much suspected he would. (See previous posts.) I debated looking for a substitute--I was concerned it might lead to invidious comparisons--and ultimately pulled the trigger. I ended up with a cutie I'd been trying to chat up online through various channels for almost two years; it was quite the fun time.

Things only snowballed from there. I picked up someone at the bar that night. The next day, my morning hookup cancelled (again, as I suspected he would) and the guy who made out with me at El Huevón's afternoon gathering slipped away but I scheduled someone else who was also a great way to while away a couple hours. And so on for the new week until Friday came by again and I had a rematch with my previous substitute.

The second time, he stuck around for the rest of the night. We drank on the porch and probably would have gotten horizontal again but I had an Israeli friend in the process of moving arriving in the evening and staying through the weekend. Knowing that was the case, this lovely gentleman kept a respectful distance (though we did manage to hang out for a couple hours on Sunday night) and then popped up on Friday afternoon to stay and spend the whole evening with me.

Reader, I married him.

jk. There's something going on here, but it's too early to say what yet. The sex is fantastic, but we spend as much time in cuddling and pillow talk as we do going at it like frenzied rabbits. We have things in common and we've been talking about what we'd like to do together--hiking in the woods, trying new restaurants, going to concerts, etc. In the course of a week, the paradigm has shifted from "if we see each other" to "next time we get together" and it's a nice feeling that I'm trying to enjoy for what it is rather than force it into some preconceived form.

My stepmom's memorial was pretty much what I expected: The twenty-five years she spent with my father were hardly touched on. Three of the speakers mentioned him (and us) in passing: Her best friend, her brother, and an old friend of the family from a terrible home who was kind of an adopted daughter. One of my stepnieces put together the slideshow. Out of dozens of slides, there were exactly two of him with my sister's kids and one of my sister with our stepmom. There were seven speakers altogether, including a woman who knew her from the retirement home where she'd only lived six months. Nobody from our side was asked to speak.

Nevertheless, I managed to put aside my resentment and egoism enough to get some catharsis from the experience. bunj was there for support and at one point he saw me getting very weepy and squeezed my hand. We had some laughs as well. The bonus daughter told a story about our stepmom dropping an entire lasagne on the floor on the eve of her wedding to my father. Her spouse slipped a cookie sheet underneath it and just flipped it back into the pan. I turned to my brother and said, "I ate that!" He was like, "Oh yeah, I think I knew that happened because I was in the kitchen at the time."

It was a nice venue. Our stepbrother used his theatre connexions to get the Steppenwolf and there was a lovely reception afterwards in the upstairs bar. I immediately sought out the three people who acknowledged our family to thank them and then began hitting the sauce. I sat down with the bonus daughter and we had a lovely conversation where she showed genuine interest in catching up and talking about our family. We may even get together and go for a drink sometime.

As for my stepsiblings, fuck 'em. After yesterday, I'll never need to talk to them again for any reason. Not so my brother, who has to deal with our stepsister, since she does work for his condo association. I left the venue alone and went directly to Rogers Park Social, where I was joined by a relatively new friend and we had a really lovely conversation about our respective families, health issues, and whatever else felt worth talking about.

My sister was watching from home via Zoom with her husband and five children. By the time I reached out to her to ask how she was doing, it was too late to have a good conversation, but fortunately my brother had already called and touched base. I know the whole thing must have been much rougher for her than for me, since she'd spent so much more time with our stepmom and really felt like her daughter. To not have that acknowledged at a public celebration of her life is just cruel and I don't know I'll ever be able to forgive those jerks for doing that to her.