The Death of Imagination

Naturally, I didn't end up with my three contenders from a field of three. Here's a sampling of some of the other men I've met who just didn't quite grab me.

We'll start with Courteous Will. I chatted him up at 2Bears the weekend we celebrated BB's birthday and we ended up hooking up a couple times, but--for various reasons--it never progressed beyond that. One reason is, of course, that I was still very much hung up on BB back then and it rather muted my eagerness to start something else, even just a fuckbuddy arrangement. On top of that, I felt like I was chasing him too much. In person, he'd appear interested in getting together, but then he'd never text me to arrange anything. (Hmm...that's sounding familiar...) But, basically, though the sex was good, there just wasn't a spark.

Then there's RG from KC. We met at a street fair back in May and seemed to hit it off. He was interested in having me fist him and I was interested in giving that a go, since I've never done it before--I even cut my nails on one hand to show that I was serious--but somehow it never happened. Getting COVID in early June got in the way, as did the fact that he was trying to quit drinking so I didn't feel right inviting him out to bars or over for cocktails. But in the end, it was just a lack of interest on both our parts that doomed this, I guess.

I met the Cuboricua Furball on the beach along with a passel of cute Latines and, despite having a boyfriend, he started sporadically texting me. It's all very innocuous so I can't quite tell what his angle is--just bored and looking for a little attention but willing to play sometime? Worth cultivating for a bit to see what, if anything, develops.

Who else? Various other randos from bars and parties, most younger than me. I met someone at a party July 4th weekend who seemed really into me, so I spent about two weeks trying to get him to commit to something before I just gave up. Shortly before that, clintswan and I met a cutie at Anvil who seemed down to clown. One night I texted him on a whim and he was very flirty but there's been no follow-up since.

Benty's advice to me yesterday, when I texted him from the depths of a morning funk, was "Focus on work. Formulate a plan of attack for you home goals." Which is excellent advice, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, the anxiety at being left hanging is taking a real physical toll. The last decent night's sleep I had was Friday night. Despite this, I was able to rally yesterday and remain pretty alert at work, only really fading during the last hour.

Today, not so much. I didn't even finish my morning tea. My eyes kept shutting as I drank it and I thought to myself that if I thought there were any chance that I'd actually be able to go back to sleep, it would be worth calling off the morning and staying home. But if I couldn't sleep from about 3 a.m. on, what reason was there to believe I'd be able to sleep at 10 a.m.? I forgot that I'd washed my hair the day before and washed it again. I forgot to take my pills with me. I took a stupidly long time to decide what shirt to wear. And we're not even going to talk about the effects on my bowels.

What's most annoying is how disproportionate this physical reaction feels to the actual level of disappointment. Nu, so you met a guy and it didn't work out. That literally happens every day. But I have to remind myself that every defeat summons echoes of the ones before. That's how my brain moves so seamlessly from "This seemed promising but didn't pan out" to "You will be alone forever". Every new opportunity is freighted with way more baggage than it can be expected to bear.

So about that call to my sister-in-law...

Monday morning about 7 a.m. she texted me. The last time she texted me was last November when we were all in STL for dad's third memorial, so I knew something was up. She started with the words "Everything is going to be ok" which is one of the more alarming sentences to read out of the blue.

What was not OK was that my brother went cycling in San Diego (she's there for a conference and he decided to tag along) and got struck by a car coming back from Point Loma. He doesn't remember what happened so details are sketchy, but his helmet was split open and he still had a skull fracture, so it must have been pretty bad. By the time she gave me the news, however, he was about to have his soft collar removed. He texted a picture of himself wearing it while cracking Darth Vader jokes.

If all goes well, they'll fly back Friday. By coincidence, Friday night was when we were scheduled to get together for dinner. That only came about because of a brunch conversation with my cousins on Pride Weekend where I confessed we hadn't seen each other all year and my cousin Rich called us "pathetic". bunj had actually offered me the 8th and I turned it down for some reason (probably having to do with some dumb boy).

After talking to my SIL and getting a more-or-less complete account of everything from the police investigation to the strings she had to pull at the hospital to get him moved, I called my sister, asked her to fill in our mom, and then called my stepmom. It was only then, after I really knew how close a call it was, that it occurred to me: If things had worked out slightly differently--if he hadn't been wearing his helmet, for instance--Friday might have been my brother's funeral and he'd have died without seeing me for nearly seven months.

I confess, the implications haven't really sunk in yet. Thanks to my role as intermediary (my SIL asked me to phonetree for her yesterday), I'm still compartmentalising somewhat. It probably won't be until I see him finally that it will become real for me how close I came to going from having two brothers in 2019 to having no brothers in 2022.

Most of this year, I've had this vague feeling of having let down my family and good friends in order to go out and drink with bar buddies. My logic is that this is good time to do that, while I'm still in good health and have a sex drive, but of course the underlying assumption that whenever I get tired of this, they'll be around still ready to see me is faulty. My stepmom said at least two or three times, "I miss you". She's in her 70s and diabetic. Nuphy is almost 80 and I still keep putting off getting together with him. Time to do something about that.

I went at this holiday weekend full tilt and I'm still recovering from it.

Saturday was cocktails. Normally that would mean I'd stay in on Friday but clintswan and I were celebrating the arrival of our swank new fridge. I thought we'd do that by doing some serious grocery shopping but when I went to where he was camped out on the back porch chattering away with our neighbours and reminded him, it became evident that's really not what he wanted to do with his evening.

So we went to the Anvil, where I posse of our friends were gathering. On the way, Clint started coughing and detoured us to the drugstore for some meds. As we were crossing Broadway towards the bar, I spotted halfway down the block a chubby bloke in a colourful form-fitting shirt. "Think he's going where we are?" I asked.

He was. He caught up to us while Clint was at the ATM and I was waiting at the bar. Vampire Hobbit skittered away to the back patio but I engaged your man in chitchat while the bartender went in search of Goldschläger for Clint's shot. He found one, and my new friend immediately ordered two and brought them to Clint so they could do them together. He glommed to us for the rest of the night and fit in so well you'd've thought he'd been part of our group from the beginning. One of my chub friends floated the notion that he was only into chubs, but I saw him flirting with everyone--me included.

We were responsible, however, and left shortly after 10 so we could do our shopping in the morning. There was less cleanup to do than I'd anticipated (or maybe I just wasn't as anxious about who was coming) so I asked for Clint's help with a somewhat gonzo idea: Monshu's lesbian friends--the couple who had been invaluable to us during his annus horribilis and then 86ed me shortly after his death--had invited me to a party at their place starting three hours before mine. I wanted to know if he'd drop me off there for about an hour and then whisk me away again.

He was amenable so I went. It was about as odd as I'd expected. They seemed surprised and genuinely pleased to see me. (I'd been waffling so much about going that I'd never RSVPed.) Particularly the one who hadn't spoken to me in five years, strangely enough; "We should get sushi together!" she said as I announced I was leaving. I'll believe that when it happens and not a moment before.

As for my cocktail evening, it went just about as swimmingly as I could have hoped. The neighbours were on the porch and in their cups and happy to make their seating available, the weather was perfect for al fresco drinking. Only a couple of the new folks I'd invited showed up but they were delightful. One spent a full hour studying my collection (which involved tasting all of the piscos and baijius) before launching into full-on mixmaster mode.

The result of this was that I never actually made it to the bar. A couple contingents went over, I promised to join them--even changing into my hoochie daddy shorts in preparation--and then ended up sitting at the dining room table jabbering and watching Squarebear's husband turn out one amazing cocktail after another until just shy of 3 a.m.

I wasn't even badly hungover the next morning and managed to get a couple chores completed and feed myself before heading over to the beach to meet yet another contingent of the RP bears. It was nice but I was a little too conscious of not burning and making it back home to rest and shower before my party that evening to really cut loose.

The party was hosted by a couple I knew in Lakeview. I think they're roughly my age, but they both seem to like them younger so the average age of the guests was probably about 20 years south of mine. This was enough to make my wingman uncomfy so he bounced, but I threw myself into it. I got some nice attention from a number of boys but the one I ended up on the couch with was a homely lad with mad talents. He was studying to be a surgeon before pivoting to culinary school, speaks five language (three of them learned on the job), and decided to get up and serenade us on the piano for a bit. He even gave me a ride home at the end of the night and didn't so much as ask for a peck on the cheek in return.

On Monday, the late nights (I don't think I was in bed before 4:30) were catching up with me and I almost gave the impromptu barbecue at our Chilean friend's place a miss. But Clint wanted to know and I knew he really wanted to see us both so I tagged along. We brought ćevapčići that he'd grilled along with some pita and kaymak to add to the spread. The average age was much higher and you could see it in the lethargy of the guests. We had to leave before one of us ended up sprawled out on the couch napping.

To my surprise, he also wanted to accompany me to my last gathering of the weekend, another casual potluck. This was at the home of someone I'd met very recently. (He says at the IML vendor market although I don't remember clearly.) There was a fair bit of overlap with the Lakeview party, which had the same effect on <lj user="clintswan" as it did on my other friend; after less than an hour, he'd buggered off to Touché. I, on the other hand, stayed until it got dark and the fireworks started launching from all the alleys around. Sitting out on the patio, I had a string of interesting conversations with--among others--an infectious disease expert and the boyfriend of an old trick who'd grown up just minutes away from my ultra-Catholic relatives in Kansas. Also, there was a boy there who I'd chatted up the night before and was hoping to make time with but, alas, my charm must have been at a low wattage.

Sunday I went to the beach. It was my first visit of the year and it felt well overdue. On a whim, I texted a mature gentleman in North Park who I have sex with sometimes and convinced him to come along with me. clintswan came along as well and I was chuffed to see them relaxed enough to take their shirts off. Neither wanted to spend too much time in the sun so I was on my own by about 3 o'clock.

So I did what I usually do in these situations and bounced around the beach until I ran into someone else I knew. I set up my towel right by the water and turned my attention to the boys who were in it--one of whom, to my utter bewilderment, came right up to me and greeted me like we were old friends. Seeing I was at a lost, he said, "You dated Fernando for a bit."

Folks, I didn't "date Fernando". I attempted to go on one date with him which went completely pear-shaped. The one good thing I can say about it, however, were his friends, one of whom I gave a shout-out in my write-up for "show[ing] some genuine sympathy for me that night". He was there, too, as it turns out.

Almost immediately, however, the boyfriend of my aquatic amigo introduced himself and began chatting me up. Once he found out I was a librarian, he was like, "We have to be friends." I got introduced all around to their little gang and invited over hamburgers that evening. Since I'd purposely not made plans, I was entirely free. At one point, an absolutely adorable furball came over and chatted with us for a while before returning to his little pod further down the beach.

Their apartment was only two blocks inland. It was a nice casual affair, though a bit odd. There were two other Anglophones present besides me (the boyfriend and a Black man from SF I'd had a nice chat with on the beach); the other three guests were, like our hosts, hispanohablantes. One of them, despite chatting with me briefly at the shore, pretty much totally ignored me here, speaking exclusively Spanish to the others. Only the Simpático from the failed date made a real effort to include me.

Fortunately, two things happened to change the dynamic: The Furball came and joined us and the other three left, leaving the rest of us to have a good two-hour conversation about food and culture on the back porch. It was exactly the kind of gathering I've really missed over these last several years of pandemic. Here's hoping I get invited back!

So if you'd told me two years ago that my response to eventually testing positive for COVID-19 would have been a shrug of resignation, I'm not sure how I would have responded. At the time, I was confident that we'd ultimately get the upper hand over the disease but I was still prey to a lot of anxiety over it. Even earlier this year, fully vaxxed and boosted, I had plenty of worry. (I chose not to attend my sister's 50th birthday in no small part due to fear of transmission on airplanes and in airports.)

Thanks to the vaccine, my experience was (like many other's) little worse than a cold. I had one particularly bad day at the onset with a fever close to 103℉ followed by two days of feeling just regular bad and since then it's been pretty much just coasting. I still don't feel 100% but I'm not sure at this point how much of that is a combination of things like allergies, the heat wave we're in, and struggling a bit to get my sleep schedule back after over a week of remote work.

I'm still ambivalent about the CDC's guidelines which basically amount to "if it's been ten days and you're asymptomatic we're just gonna assume you're over it". After months and months of admonitions to do all we could not to spread the virus, this feels a bit like giving in. I'd feel better if I'd tested negative, but now the information I'm getting is that the chance of a false positive is too great to make further testing worthwhile--again, quite the reversal from earlier messaging.

When I told folks I'd been with over Memorial Day weekend, the most common response was "Furball, right?" Of course it's impossible to say with any certainty. From the Welcome Party that Thursday to Sidetrack on Mem Day itself, I was at a lot of large gatherings with minimal masking this weekend so there was no shortage of opportunities. Moreover, it's moot at this point; I knew from the onset that going out during a time of high community transmission was risky and I don't know that I would have stayed in even if I'd known with certainty that I'd catch the virus. So no regrets.

Was I bummed to have to cancel so many events (including a concert I'd been given free tickets for, my cocktail night, and a friend's birthday)? Of course. It felt especially frustrating that just as the social season was really picking up and I was getting the nourishment my extrovert spirit needs we had to suddenly slam on the brakes. But--as BB pointed out--it's still early summer, there's lots more to come that I will be able to participate in.

Speaking of BB, I was at first very disappointed by the prospect of not seeing him before he left town. Then I began to think that maybe this wasn't such a bad thing, as it would give us a longer break. Now it looks like I'll be able to see him after all (he and our mutual buddy invited me to dinner with them tomorrow) and I feel fairly neutral about it. The important thing to me was that after initially being kind of shitty about me getting sick he eventually came around.

Crucially, though, I wasn't focussed on that because I had enough other friends get in touch, many of whom with very generous with their offers. At least a half dozen offered to do errands for me (I let one pair bring me back dinner from H Mart and another friend get my prescriptions for me) and others kept in touch to check on my progress. And all that's without making any sort of public announcement, just mentioning my status in passing.

Who I feel worse for is poor clintswan, who most definitely got the virus from me and is now stuck in isolation through the end of the week. He started isolating right after I tested positive so in total that'll make at least two weeks for him. And though he never felt as punk as I did at the beginning, he's suffering loss of taste, and I'd take a day or two of fever over that any day of the week. He's not resentful toward me (I asked if he wanted me to go into strict isolation and he said no), which is good, but I think that may get tested if I start going out and having fun tomorrow without him.

So enough angst, what went well last weekend?

The lesson isn't lost on me that I had my best time when I put hooking up out of my mind and just enjoyed being with friends. That started on Thursday with the welcome party at Touché and concluded Monday with the farewell party at Sidetrack--just like it did in the glory days of Bear Pride. Of course, both experiences were considerably different--the welcome party was flooded with IMLers rather than the parade of bearsonalities I knew from the BML and LiveJournal and our group at Sidetrack was a mere dozen rather than the couple hundred who used to invade. But I wasn't interested in making comparisons to How Things Used to Be but only in enjoying them for what they were and what they were was pretty sweet.

To be honest, I was a bit on the fence about the welcome party. Although I'd decided to go, I was still on my bed playing solitaire when a friend texted me that he was there, prompting me to head over and keep him company. I wasn't in the door two minutes before a couple I knew bounced up to me. Before I knew what was happening, one of them had thrown himself supine onto the floor and was rimming a dude who had just walked in. It was a striking change from the days when anything "in front of the tires" would have gotten you tossed out.

I myself ended up getting head while sitting on the bench in the back room just inside the door. It was a friend (a friend's boyfriend, really) who I'd made out with there before and it was fun but not exciting. Afterwards, I went towards the back. First I got whacked in the head by someone at the bar making expansive gestures. A moment later, I heard someone drop a glass and I decided this crowd was too messy for my mood and left.

Friday I didn't have any fixed plans--just some vague idea of getting together with the GOAT (a fast friend relocated from Phoenix) and possibly going down to the host hotel to people-watch. But then a group of pals organised an afternoon get-together at SoFo and I invited him along with a couple other friends. That all worked out beautifully. In particular, I treasure the memory of glancing around after having been chatting with someone for a while and noticing that four of them, not all of whom were connected before that day, had been deep in conversation at a four-top for at least an hour. I ended up going out with them all to Middle Eastern Bakery and Café for dinner afterwards and just having a whale of a time.

Saturday I decided to give Wet 'n Wild a pass and simply go directly to Bearaoke at Bobby Love's. It was a slow start, but within an hour I was singing along and even dancing with my pals in the middle of the room. I headed up to Argyle with a craving for bún and turned down an invitation for dinner (and a separate invitation for sex) in order to satisfy it at Phở 777 next to a large Korean family.

We've already covered the highlights from Furball; honestly it was half of a good night out, it's just unfortunate that the good half was the first half and things took such a turn. Sunday would have been a wasted day if not for two things: The first was hitting the vendor mart with Huevoncito and Kiel and the second was the cookout which I'd thought was Monday but which turned out to be Sunday instead.

Huevoncito drove, which maybe wasn't a great choice given the traffic. (There was a Latine music fest in Grant Park that none of us knew about.) However, it gave us a chance to talk about a lot of things, mainly my problems with BB and just issues with gay friendships in general and our friendships in particular. We only had an hour at the vendor mart before it closed, which unfortunately meant we weren't able to catch up as much with the friends we saw there as I would have liked, but I got to try on a harness I eventually bought and meet up with someone I hadn't seen since well before pandemic. He turned out to be a MTG fan like Kiel, so we left the two of them to chat while H and I scooted back to the RP so he could walk the dogs and I could hit the cookout.

It was a small casual affair. I arrived two hours after the starting time and they'd already closed to the side gate so I ended up hoisting myself over a banister to get in, which caused surprisingly little consternation. As a very pleasant surprise, the most gorgeous guy there turned out to be someone I'd met before. He gave me a few clues and I was like, "We had a conversation about the mugu pine my condomates destroyed!" which jogged his memory as well. I didn't think things would go that late but in the end I broke up the party a little after 10 by announcing I was heading out, thus prompting one of the couples to leave, too, so they could give me a ride.

I finally got a decent amount of sleep that night, though still not as much as I needed, and woke up both looking forward to meeting up with BB to visit the vendor mart and dreading it. In the end, it turned out not to matter because he cancelled on me. I was disappointed but also relieved. When I told clintswan, who was also pretty worn out from the late nights and all, he said, "we will go to the market. BB be damned". I literally had tears of happiness in my eyes.

Unfortunately, I forgot that it was a game day and our el car was packed with Cubs fans, including a half-dozen underaged douchecanoes we had the misfortune of sitting right next to. Things picked up at the market where we ran into a string of old pals again. One of them gave me a tongue kiss and then proudly announced that his great morning had included rimming a mutual friend who'd just passed in a sling. When I found Clint, I complained to him that I could taste the secondhand ass, so he suggested I wash my mouth out with alcohol. I went to the adjoining hospitality suite, got a generous shot of Jack Daniels, and did just that.

Not long after that, we bounced. Our Lyft driver, Joel, was a hoot. I was feeling the alcohol, Clint was feeling his Southernness, and we joked around raucously the whole way to Sidetrack. We found our people on the top deck, as expected. I immediately ordered a drink despite having had nothing to eat that day except a KIND bar and an English muffin with a smear of labne and spent the rest of the afternoon in a pleasant fog. I met two new couples, both local. One of the first pair said he recognised me from FB and was very charming; one of the second pair seemed to take an instead dislike to me that even the GOAT picked up on, and I laughed it off.

walkthelight organised a post-Sidetrack dinner at Wilde's for seven of us. I delayed our departure looking for the sunblock I'd left upstairs only to have SquareBear spring it on me once we were all seated. Our service was scattered but the server was new and so gay and cute we all forgave that. The food was also a mixed bag, but we got free pie for dessert so I'm not going to make a fuss. After that, we split into four contingents and I rode back on the el with Sad Cub, who rested his arm on my shoulder in the most casually affectionate way as we tried to ignore the overtired children and ranting crazy in the corner.

So maybe not the most memorably Memorial Day weekend ever but plenty worth remembering. And I should make a note to myself to review this entry in 360 days so maybe I avoid a couple of the missteps I made this go round.

So yesterday I finally got something I've been trying to make happen for months: I got to just hang out with BB at his place after a vigourous fuck session. Of course, the fucking involved a completely different person, but nothing ever turns out exactly as you want it, does it?

The lucky devil was that guy from 2Bears, who I don't have a better nickname for because he's, to be frank, kind of boring. Nice enough guy, but if he really turned my crank, I would have tried harder to get him on the schedule. I was worried, though, that we were getting to the point where if I put him off much more he'd think I wasn't interested at all.

I might have suggested last Friday but Hump Day pulled rank and came over instead. He wanted to do a light BDSM scene so I told him to wear clothes I could rip off him. He surprised me by showing up in a slightly shabby Mika concert t-shirt and I actually had to be prompted to tear it because something about ripping Mika's face in half just didn't sit well with me. (As part of the aftercare, we apologised to him by watching txcrewcut's lipsync video of "Lollipop".) Fortunately, he'd provided me with a loose script which I was able to more-or-less follow to both of our's satisfaction so yay.

Anyway, Sunday I woke up a bit hungover from Pre-Bear Night Cocktails. Figuring that I wasn't going to be productive anyway, I texted your man and told him to expect me around 3:30. Awkwardly, that's right around the time Mom decided to return my Mother's Day call so I was standing outside his apartment for about ten minutes chatting with her while he waited patiently (and nakedly) inside.

We fucked for about an hour and then, after a nice long cuddle, I realised I was ravenous. He wasn't hungry though, so I got in touch with BB, who had just left his place to take his dog for a walk. We agreed to find a dog-friendly place in the area for dinner. "Start walking my way and I'll start walking your way", he told me. We met near the El stop and chatted about possibilities until he convinced me to try his local fave Mexican, XOchimilco.

It was an absolute delight. The staff (despite the stylised name and such, it's a family-run place) could not have been nicer. Although it was a bit nippy, we sat ourselves on the patio and shared some queso and good conversation. Afterwards, I walked him back to his place and--without any discussion--he simply opened the door and let me follow him in.

Fortunately, this time I knew exactly what was and wasn't freely on offer, so I tossed myself on the couch and let him put on a Bollywood movie (turgid family drama Khabi Khushi Khabie Gham) while I snuggled the dog. He pointed out two envelopes of baby pictures his parents had mailed him and I started shuffling through them while he kept up a running commentary of celebrity gossip around the all-star cast.

It was, in a word, lovely. Back when I'd known him less than two weeks, I'd tried to convince him to let me just come over and hang out if he didn't feel like fucking. I tried again in December, when our plans to go to the movies got erased by Omicron, and he used the excuse that it was a Sunday evening and he was too anxious about work. And here it was, another Sunday evening, and he was in no hurry to send me home.

Afterwards, he thanked me for getting him to go to dinner and helping him "get outside my comfort zone" a little. Sometimes, in some ways, I still feel breadcrumbed by him. But for the most part, I recognise that he's a very different person starting from a very different place and these are genuine efforts to meet me in the middle--a pretty decent middle, all things considered.

As I've done before, I began a full write-up of my much-anticipated conversation with BB but petered out before I got it into a shareable form and never came back to it. At this point, I doubt I ever will so the tl;dr is: It went well and we decided we'd try to continue being friends.

How's that going? Pretty well, actually, except when it's not. Which is basically what I expected. A breakup is a grieving process and grieving processes are nonlinear. That is, seen from afar, there may be a discernible trend away from sorrow and into acceptance but from day to day, the swings can be wild. You can have a smooth couple weeks or even months and then something comes along that completely throws you for a loop.

Which is basically what I think happened to me last weekend. Since our Valentine's Day weekend conversation (don't think for a moment the irony isn't lost on me), we've gotten together at least every other weekend. Mostly it's been hitting the bars, though for his birthday I took him out for brunch at a place called Superkhana International, which is easily the best dining experience I've had all year. There have been pangs, but nothing crazy. So when we made plans to attend a queer desi dance party hosted by Trikone Chicago, I wasn't expecting it would be much different than the last several times we went out together.

But there was something about that night. First off, it was a great event. The venue was subpar, mostly on account of terrible bar service. But it was a nice space, the music was excellent, and the crowd were all-in--including BB. I was concerned he might consider it all a bit cheesy, but no, he was so into it he was absolutely radiating happiness like I'd never seen before. At one point he shot a video to send to his sister, who was also "doing gay Indian shit" that weekend, he informed me with an enormous grin.

And as a result, he looked beautiful. More beautiful than I think he ever has before. And of course my stubborn-ass brain had to point out, "This would be a perfect night if only we were here as a couple." At the time though, I was able to wash the thought away with gin. The event came to a close, BB suggested moving on to Touché, and I found someone to mess around with in the backroom. Sunday I was too tired and emotionally drained to process much so it was Monday that my anxieties really struck.

Analysing it for the benefit of clintswan, I said my brain was fixating on the fact that all I wanted was to see him that happy forever but that I knew I was never going to be the person to make that happen. That, in turn, set off the fear that I would never be able to make anyone that happy ever again, that it's just going to be random tricks and occasional sex with friends until my body gives out and I eventually die alone. That's probably too neat an explanation, but all those things were mixed up in why I couldn't drag myself out of bed until an hour after I was supposed to have been at work.

The other thing I've been pondering is a conversation I had with JB about five years ago. It was a heart-to-heart after a breakdown in our gaming group and at one point he told me, "I love you, I think part of me is still in love with you." JB and I have known each other for at least 25 years; I don't know when he fell in love, but 1999 is when he told me.

In considering what would finally get me over this guy, I first thought I could achieve that by willpower alone. Then I thought, okay, it'll take falling for someone else. Now I'm forced to confront the possibility that I will always be in love with him, at least a little bit. Like my grief for monshu, this won't be something that I'll ever "get over", it'll just be something I manage. And some days will just be better than others.

It's really kind of incredible what difference good sleep makes when it comes to my entire physical and emotional state. Friday night I feel asleep about an hour later than I should have (12:30 as opposed to 11:30); as a result, Saturday I was a complete wreck: my bowels were in an uproar, I was eating badly, I was crying at songs that normally don't even make me choke up, I was obsessing about BB like I hadn't in a couple weeks, etc. Sunday night, however, I turned the light off at 11:15 and slept through until 5:20 or so and I woke up today emotionally balanced and full of energy.

So let's give that proposed post another go, shall we?

A week ago Sunday, I got a random friend request on FB, so I did what I usually do when I get those and I sent the guy a DM. He replied, we chatted in Spanish, and it soon became evident that he had confused FB with Growlr. But he was hot and local so I went with it. He quizzed me about my deets and we exchanged naughty pics. I was horny enough that I almost asked him to come over that afternoon, but he didn't have a car so I suggested that we try to meet up the next weekend, when <clintswan> and I were intending to go out. He seemed amenable so I said we'd chat later and wished him well.

The next evening, I went to send him a message and found that he had unfriended and blocked me. Since I couldn't think of any cause I'd given him to do so, I shook my head and shrugged it off.

Then Wednesday, almost the exact same thing happened again: random request, chatting in Spanish, deets and pics. He even asked some of the exact same slightly odd questions. Now I've been approached like this before over the years, but twice in the same week is surprising. Moreover, despite the fact that Wednesday's cub had a completely different name, he looked so strikingly like the guy from Sunday that I actually put their photos side-by-side to compare just to make sure this wasn't a lunatic's sockpuppet account.

Soon we proceeded to videochatting. Since then, he's been messaging me every day. By Friday I could tell that--despite my attempts not to make my flirting too encouraging--he was developing a crush on me and decided I needed to splash some cold water. When he asked, "Do you think you could date someone long-distance?" I said, "I honestly don't know", which was clearly not what he wanted to hear. Saturday I hardly heard from him, but by Sunday he had bounced back and it was more dirty talk, sharing banalities, and so forth.

Two men with similar backgrounds in similar circumstances, two vastly different outcomes. I ended the week with gay whiplash.

Fortunately, I did eventually pull my sad self together on Saturday and went out with my bestie to Touché. Sad Cub was looking for something to do, so he joined us there. It was slow though, so to make things interesting I hailed a cutie over and struck up a conversation. He introduced us to the guys he'd been hanging with, acquaintances from the day before. One of them was entering the sashless leather contest that night, which gave me someone to root for, and by midnight I was in a completely different headspace than twelve hours earlier.

It never got packed (which, honestly, I'm grateful for) but it did get busy and I ran into a few bar buddies, but nothing like I would on a regular Bear Night. Clint was long gone and at some point I lost track of Sad Cub, but I found my new buddy in the back bar and engaged him on the topic of BDSM.

That's about the point where BB walked in.

[to be cont.]