The mechanism which allows your to feel

On the occasion of urso's memorial service (via Zoom, since that's how we do anything anymore), bitterlawngnome; mentioned that I hadn't posted in a while. To tell the truth, I sorta forgot this journal existed. My December funk persisted into January and then this fun little thing that I guess we're calling the Capitol Insurrection happened and my life became all about refreshing FB and Google News a hundred times a day for a while there. Now I'm back to work after the break, back to feeling like a productive human again, and I'm thinking about what I've let slide and why.

I'm doing so-so on my relationships. The service was an opportunity to renew some connexions--bitterlawngnome; and I had a longer exchange than we've had since the last time we were physically in the same place--but also to muse about some of the ones I've lost. I think at this point, with all the quiet hours I've had staring at the ceiling wondering if sleep will ever come, I think I've reviewed every single relationship of more than a single's day duration that I've had since childhood. It's not part of any grand pattern-searching or anything either; each episode is sui generis and just a chance to reflect briefly on the whimsical twists of fate which have brought me together with some folks but not others.

I had another of those only recently. Shortly after Monshu died, I got a message from someone who'd read the obituary and been moved by it to look me up on FB and send me a message inviting me to a conversation. I thanked him for it, said maybe I would, and then the incident disappeared into the fog of grief. It only returned recently because I was scrolling through Messenger looking for a particular contact and I stumbled on this name which I didn't recall. On a whim, I gave him a ring and we had a lovely chat, during which I found out we were connected through a mutual friend (wife of a college pal to me, dissertation advisor to him).

But there was another connexion, too, which I wasn't aware of at the time: He'd met and begun dating someone I'd fooled around with (inadvisedly) once at a Halloween party in the suburbs at least a decade ago and added to my FB friends only to Unfollow after it became clear what a firehose of nonsense his feed was. This guy is also now a widow, so your man called me back hoping I'd have some words of wisdom . I shared quite a bit about my own history in the hopes that it would help him navigated the complicated situation he finds himself in right now. Whether it does or not, talking made me feel a bit better and seems to have made him feel a lot better, and that's all good.

Unfortunately it also had me pondering the standstill in my own lovelife. I know a pandemic is terrible time to go looking for a boyfriend, but I've been surprised how many folks seem to have made this work. I thought at least it would offer the opportunity to get to know some folks I might be interested in dating without the pressure to have sex. After all, that worked with my second boyfriend and with Monshu himself. Turns out, not so much. Every couple of weeks, I'll have an exchange with Candidate #1 (which sometimes he initiates and sometimes I do), but it's always at the same casual level. I wouldn't say I feel any closer to him or know him any better than I did a year ago, when we had our one and only coffee date. That felt like a real leap forward and everything sense feels like treading water.

And that's still more success than I've had with anyone else. I basically stopped even trying to chat with Candidate #2. Candidate #3 was more just a fling than anything, but still showed potential to be a fun one, and now our interaction consists almost entirely of me sending him a cat picture a day in order to help keep him from sinking into full-on depression and him heart-reacting it. Some randos have friended me and we've had some fun chats, but more often than not they end up being one-offs. For a while I was chatting daily with a Syrian-Canadian who was in Toronto for surgery, but that all ended once he was back in Qatar, making me feel like some weird digital analogue of a summertime fling.

And maybe that's all fine. After all, it's strain enough trying to maintain a relationship with Pasillero when all we can ever do is talk about all the sex we're not having. A good chum in California (who I'm sure would love to be Candidate #4) has described his pandemic sexuality as having two settings: 1. What Even Is Sex? 2. I Have a Crush on Every Boy, and I have to say I feel basically the same. So if he catches me with my setting on 2, it's off we got with some exciting but melancholic sexting. But if it's 1, it's hard to come up with any kind of response at all. So maybe it's just as well I'm not spinning possible futures with some distant man I might not even be particularly compatible with in the flesh. But it sure doesn't make the inevitability of my demise any easier to face.