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Here it is, the second week of December, and right on schedule my seasonal depression is kicking in. I imagine when I say that, most of y'all interpret it to mean seasonal affective disorder, but while the lack of light doesn't help, in my case it's something else. This is the height of what I cheekily call Death Season, when all my various death anniversaries start piling up.

The big one, of course, is Cam's. If anyone besides Mozhu remembered, they didn't take the time to reach out, but I guess that's only to be expected after eight years. She has the advantage that her husband's yortsait is only five days later. Over the years, we've marked the dual anniversary in various ways and we're planning to do that again this year.
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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.
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So Saturday afternoon, in between sleeping off my hangover from the night before and frantically preparing the house for cocktail night, I got the phone call from my sister I've been dreading for some time now. Our stepmother, who had entered hospice last fall, had finally passed away.

A week earlier, when I got word that her condition had taken a turn for the worse, I resigned myself to the fact that her children (who had waited several days to give us the news) weren't going to let us see her before she died. I consoled myself with the fact that our last visit had been wonderful. Realising that the only thing I had left to say to her at that point was "goodbye", I texted my farewell (she wasn't accepting calls) and then began living as if she'd already gone.

It's tough. Not only was she a wonderful caring and fascinating person in her own right, she was also one of the strongest links left to both my father and Monshu. Every time I visited, she would mention how Monshu was her "special friend" and how much she'd enjoyed being with him. And up until the end, she was still telling me stories and tidbits about my father which I hadn't ever known.

As far as the memorial goes, I'm bracing myself for a rerun of my stepsister's wedding, at which we were all present but completely sidelined. At least I learned today that it's a family friend planning it and not her children. Still, I promised my sister that, if need be, the three of us siblings could have our own little service if necessary. As my brother texted earlier, we know what kind of relationship we had with her and no one can take that from us.
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So today's good-new bad-news is a really doozy. The good news is that, after literally years of trying to hook up with Chef Bear Italia, we finally managed to find time last Wednesday. He came over around 4:30 and we spent a wonderful evening together.

The bad news is that I got a text this morning informing me that he'd passed away in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.

The most upsetting thing for me is probably that it's only a fluke that I even found out. A friend of a friend looked at his mutuals on FB, saw my name, and forwarded me a text from another mutual about his sudden unexpected death. If that hadn't happened, I'd probably have texted him tomorrow or Thursday about getting together again and then just assumed he was blowing me off again when I failed to get a reply.

It's all such an unlikely chain of coincidences that we met at all and managed to stay in touch over 15 years. Our friendship, such as it was, outlasted both of our relationships. And now--just when it was possibly blossoming into something else (he asked me that night if I wanted to date him), it's been cut abruptly short forever.

Just one more reason to hate this stupid month.
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It's been an odd couple of months. After the encounter recounted in my previous post, it would be another two weeks before I'd see Big Chick again. It was a frustrating but necessary brake application (I won't be fooled again!) that came to an end on St Patrick's Day Observed.

I got up early that morning to attend a party downtown in the Corncobs and ended up lingering until late afternoon. As a result, I didn't really have the steam to go out later and just had a quiet night at home. Waking up in the early hours of Sunday, I saw that I had a message from BC. Essentially, it was "here's that song I told you about", but the subtext was "I was thinking of you tonight." Seeing he was still online, I asked him how the bar was and he said, "Yawn. You weren't there."

Naturally, I was over the moon. Later that day, as I was out with friends day drinking at Rogers Park Social, I messaged him inviting him to join us. He said he was pub-crawling with a group of guys for a friend's 50th. I found out where they were going and met up with them in the evening.

Was I being too pushy? I ask myself that now but I didn't think so at the time. After all, I had a pretty unmistakable green light and when I pumped him for details on their itinerary, he never made it sound like he didn't want me to come along. I took pains not to be too clingy at Sidetrack, where we finally met up. (It helped that I knew a couple of other guys in the group and a couple were keen to know me.)

Long story short, whatever I was hoping for in terms of attention and confirmation, I didn't get and I went home feeling kind of wretched. The next day, I felt so bad, I called in. At the time, I thought it was a combination of an emotional crash with the physical effects of drinking too much, sleeping to little, and skipping a meal.

Two things happened after that: One was that I came down with a persistent flu that kept me home from work for nearly three weeks. (Stupidly, I put it down to the lingering effects of daylight savings until I finally thought to take my temperature.) The other was that I stopped hearing from Big Chick (thus the second-guessing).

I've run into him twice since then: Once on Clint's birthday when I was feeling pretty terrible (still recovering from the flu and dealing with acute butthole issues) and then three weeks later at the same bar under similar conditions to our second meeting. Both times he was friendly, but not especially affectionate or attentive. The second time, I requested a rendezvous and he suggested we meet today; by Monday, he'd forgotten.

I'll text him shortly and see if he's still interested in getting together later, but I won't be surprised if he says no. And if we do meet up, my expectations will be modest. I'm willing to play a long game here (at our dinner date, he told me a story about how he was best friends with a guy for months before dating him) but only if I think the rewards justify it and the jury's out on that.
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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.
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Looks like I've managed to collapse the complete heartbreak cycle into a week. Is that progress?

Thursday I met an exciting new guy (or technically remet him, since it came out that we'd met late in 2019 at SoFo). Friday we had our first date and it went swimmingly. We had a really good conversation about where we were coming from and what our expectations were, agreeing that while we were open to dating, neither one of us wanted to rush into anything. Then I went home with him and had a lovely time getting acquainted with him in another way. Saturday and Sunday, we sent each other flirty texts but didn't make any further plans.

Monday he left for a week-long business trip. I was prepared to take a break until he got back, but he kept texting and I kept responding in kind. Wednesday we discussed weekend plans; he said he was free Sunday "but let me check that before I commit". I told him I'd hold the day open. We kept chatting. Sunday dawned without a message from him. I gave him until early afternoon and then sent a text saying I'd decided to go to the beach with friends a few blocks from his house. He replied saying he was "laying low", still recovering from travelling, and told me to enjoy myself.

Nothing bad, right? But I read it as a brushoff and it sent me into a complete tailspin. I showed it to my friends at the beach and they told me I was catastrophising; my friend Benty, who I had dinner with that night, wasn't so sanguine. He told me to hold off contacting him for a while and focus on other things. Damn, how I wish I had the kind of mind. Instead, I have the kind that gets off on speculating wildly.

The most likely explanation, of course, is that he was genuinely tired from travelling. Another possibility--quite compatible with the first--is that after giving things a bit too much gas, he's decided he needs to pump the brakes a bit. The problem I have with either explanation is that there was no reassurance that another meeting is going to happen. So--in order to steel myself for the worst--I've decided that it's all over before it began and I've been fooled yet again.

Is this healthy behaviour? Damned if I know. All I know is that the whole situation is far too reminiscent of what happened with BB and I am double-damned if I'm going down that track again. As soon as I can without sounding too needy or demanding, I'm going to ask him point blank if his feelings have changed so I can adjust mine appropriately. And if the answer is "yes", I'm going to make a real effort not to rehash our interactions endlessly, pondering what I could have done differently, and move on.
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Jun. 15th, 2022 04:58 pm

post-COVID

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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 [personal profile] 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.
Jun. 1st, 2022 02:17 pm

Crush death

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So how do I overcome crushes? Obviously I've been giving that a lot of thought lately--predating BB, because I had a crush last summer that was less severe but still notable. Before that was lockdown, during which I reviewed in detail basically every vaguely romantic relationship I've ever had ever.

One way is a hideous betrayal, as happened with Ragoton (and to a lesser degree with his immediate successor). But a gentler way that seems just as effective is time and distance.

Last Friday was the 5th anniversary of my first meeting with a man I call "Flying Pig". I had such an amazing time with him at Steamworks that I went to his hotel room the next day for seconds. Despite the fact that things didn't work out exactly as planned, he blew me away both times with his kindness and generosity. I was smitten. So smitten that I kept messaging him for for two-and-a-half years despite receiving almost no encouragement at all.

Eventually my persistence paid off and he got back in touch. It had been a rough time for him even before COVID due to a chronic magnesium deficiency that went undiagnosed for far too long. He apologised, he thanked me, he whispered sweet nothings. We reached out to each other sporadically. Early last week I texted him to ask if he was coming back for IML this year and he didn't respond. I tried one more time on Friday morning and he asked, "Can I call you?"

It was a bittersweet call. His voice didn't sound how I remembered and I'm not sure if that was more due to the fallibility of memory or to the vicissitudes of the last couple years. He confessed that he'd lost "all his muscle mass", which probably fed into his decision not to attend (although he placed more weight on the fact that he was finally feeling himself again after several years of exhaustion and depression and wanted to plow that energy into causes he'd neglected at home). But the most bittersweet thing? That feeling of excitement I used to get when I thought about him, that rush of erotic yearning? It wasn't there. Not even when he told me he adored me and he loved and he really looked forward to seeing me again. I wasn't indifferent; I was pleased to hear all that. But it didn't make my heart leap.

Would some of that come back if we finally did see each other again? Perhaps, but I'm not sure. It's a sad thing when a crush dies, even if there is a certain relief to knowing that, whatever sleepless nights lie ahead, they won't be due to this man. There was a window there and that window has closed and c'est la vie.

Will I get there with BB? Eventually. Will it take five years? Who knows? But when it happens, I know I'll feel a bit melancholy. The pain of this moment will be mellowed with time and what will be left will be a memory of a window that opened suddenly and unexpectedly but inevitably and inexorably shut again.
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Well, I'm back again which can pretty much only mean one thing. I'll try to follow this post up with one about all the truly positive things from IML Weekend, but I just need to process the stinky parts and this seems to be where I do that these days.

So the big dance party was Furball at the Metro. I was last there three years ago and I remember it being pretty amazing. It also struck me as something BB would enjoy, so before I ordered my ticket I suggested he get one too. He took a little bit of convincing, but I promised that we would "drink, dance, and have a good time" and so he agreed to come.

A couple hours before doors opened, I began to realise just what he had to overcome to do that. His therapist has been urging him to accept all the invitations he can in an effort to have him confront his social anxiety and this was kicking into high gear as he contemplated being surrounded with buff bodies at a monster event someplace he'd never been. So I did my best to reassure him while preparing myself, traveling to Metro, and then waiting in the hour-long queue outside. Fortunately I had company for that, as a guy I know and his best friend hopped into line right behind me.

BB showed up maybe five minutes before they starting letting people in. At my urging, he'd worn his harness under his t-shirt but he was worried he hadn't put it on properly. We eventually ended up going to the vestibule by the upper balcony exit doors so I could adjust it for him. For the first hour, he never left my side while I showed him around and introduced him to what friends I knew were there.

I was pleasantly surprised when he finally relaxed enough to remove his shirt. There was a moment in particular when we were standing at the base of the stairs with my pals from the queue. He was in front of me looking away and I contemplated for a moment draping my arms around him but I didn't want to make him uncomfortable so I held back. A short while later, I was standing on the other side of my pals from him, chatting, and I glanced over and realised he wasn't there. I just figured he'd gone to get another drink. Finally, after maybe 20-30 minutes I texted him and he replied "I'm getting laid! Hahah"

I want to say I was happy for him. I want to actually be happy for him. This was, after all, an expected outcome of this kind of event, a vindication of my efforts to get him to come. But in the moment I felt wretched. I know we weren't going as a couple but, I confess, on some level I was enjoying the fantasy that we were. I also realised that I'd somewhat unconsciously made the focus of my evening making sure that BB had a good time, so without him there, I was suddenly at something of a loss.

I wasn't really getting any play, so I reminded myself that what I'd enjoyed most about this events in the past was dancing with my friends so I started looking for friends to dance with. But the old crowd wasn't there and the new crowds were small and scattered. I bounced from one side of the main floor to the other trying to find them and when I did it was underwhelming. When I managed to locate someone in particular I knew--someone who I'd danced with there before, who had told me just two nights before he was looking forward to dancing with me at Furball--he ignored me. I just couldn't figure out what was going on and realised I didn't want to. I made one last desperate circuit (my pals who had been stationed at the bottom of the stairs for at least an hour were suddenly nowhere to be found) and decided to go.

As a saving grace, on my way out, I ran into an opera singer from New York who I know and like and caught up a bit. He was similarly unenamoured of the music and preparing to leave as well. I ran into him on the street maybe ten minutes later with his best buddy; they were heading to Touché and graciously offered me a ride. I won't say it turned my night around, because my night was effectively over at that point, but it at least arrested my downward emotional slide. At least someone was showing some concern for my well-being.

I literally cried myself to sleep. I lay in bed, played some sad music (drawing the line at "How Soon Is Now" though!), and felt myself tear up before I drifted off. It was fitful sleep. At quarter to 7, I glanced at my phone and saw that BB had finally responded to my request that he text me when he was safely home about half an hour before. (I confess that the first place my stupid mind went to was that when he hooked up with me, it was also around 2 a.m. and he left after three hours, not four.)

Without trying to be too nosy, I asked some questions and found out some basic details. He had only a first name and no picture, so I don't know if this is someone I know or not. I also don't know if that would matter. In any case, we left it that we would chat more later. (I thought we'd have that opportunity Monday, when we had tentative plans to go to the vendor mart together, but he ended up bagging.)

The whole rest of the morning I spent lying in bed trying to sleep and being foiled by my anxiety. It took me a while to sort out what the source of that was. Jealousy, yes (I always thought I'd be the one to fuck BB in that harness, ever since he first sent me a picture of him wearing it the day after we met), but also fear. Fear that he was being taken away from me, that this new guy would become a regular thing and instead of jumping at my invites BB would soon be begging off to spend time with him instead.

I'm well aware that none of this is a healthy reaction to a good thing happening to a friend. It's humiliating to realise I'm not as over him as I thought or want to be and I don't really have a good solution. I talked at length with a couple friends that day and the next and--though they had good advice--they didn't have any remedy for the way I feel now. Not only will BB never love me romantically, this is further evidence that he'll never give me all that I expect from a good friend. (He did at least ask "did you get lucky?" but that was all and there's been no follow-up since.) And at some point, I need to accept that and reduce my investment or I'm just going to grow resentful.

Honestly, sometimes I wonder if that isn't the solution. I think about how I overcame some of my bad crushes in the past and often it was the eventual realisation that I was making someone a priority who had no intention of prioritising me and I deserved better. But this is a worse crush than those were and I'm kind of afraid of the level of anger it might take to reach that point. I honestly don't know where things go from here, but I know I need to step back and see what he's willing to do while I work on shifting my focus to all the better friends I've been neglecting for too long.
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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 [personal profile] 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 [profile] 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.
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This was intended to be a somewhat lighthearted post about my misadventures with men, inspired by a week that features two strikingly similar online encountres with radically different outcomes. Unfortunately, I'm anything but lighthearted today. This isn't a full-on griefstorm like I had several weeks ago, but it's an unwelcome return to the former landscape of my life when most every Saturday was a lost day.

As I've explained it countless times at this point, Saturday is the day when it's least possible to escape the cold fact of the absence of Monshu. I did spend some time preoccupied with BB, who I might see tonight purely as a "friend" (though I'm increasingly being forced to acknowledge that what he considers "being a friend" has little to do with what I need from one), but I realised that's just my emotional defences trying to fill up the gaping emotional void with whatever's handy.

With any luck, the worst of it will pass before evening, I'll go out for a bit after more than a month of isolation and start adding to my dangerously depleted store of Humanity Points, and tomorrow I'll be able to make another attempt. And if I don't, you'll know the blue meanies got me.
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Dec. 16th, 2021 11:40 am

Bad night

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Well, any hopes I had that yesterday's post would prove cathartic enough to help me move past where I'm currently stuck were sent packing at about 1:30 a.m. this morning when I woke from a brief fitful sleep and returned to obsessively churning the contents of my mind. It doesn't seem to matter how many times I tell myself "You can't brain yourself out of a fundamentally emotional crisis". Braining is what I know how to do best so it's the hammer I keep reaching for.

The frustrating thing is that it did seemed to work at first. I was kind of mopey through lunchtime, but after that I began to perk up at the prospect of the holiday party at work. If [personal profile] clintswan and I hadn't already made plans to go get our tabletop Christmas tree, I probably would've stayed till the end boozing and shmoozing.

My evening might still have ended up the same way regardless, because I'm seeing an emerging pattern and it ain't pretty: I find myself in a good mood and missing BB, so I text. He texts back and I try to extend the chat. I give him opportunities to affirm me (by flirting, by being vulnerable in the hopes of eliciting a sympathetic response, by suggesting getting together) and he doesn't take them. I finally abandon the chat feeling like I've only annoyed him. Lather, rinse, repeat. As I told a good friend later that night, that does not bode well.

But it's not really any fault of his. That's not part of how he views our relationship or part of how he interacts via text (he's much better in person). In terms of what's going on beneath the surface, I'm leaning toward the second explanation in yesterday's second post: I'm having an emotional crisis of confidence and my inability to get BB to respond emotionally how I'd like him to is a big fat finger that keeps poking it.

I got some confirmation of that this morning when I had another crying jag. I started repeating things to myself that I feared were true and the ones which got the strongest response were: I miss Monshu. No one is ever going to love me again like he loved me. I'm going to be alone forever. These fears have been there for a long time (even before he died) but I've done a good job of pushing them away, asking myself things like: Do I even want someone to love me again like loved me? Is it worth doing all that hard work again? Am I really ready to date in any case?

I guess the answer to that last one is "No" if a fairly simple flirtation can unravel me this much. Looking back over the last five years, I note with a bit of bitterness that my two most successful sexual relationships (measured by intensity and longevity) are with two married men. My attempts to date anyone nominally available have mostly come to nothing. (Trust me, I had plenty of time to review the track record while lying there last night not sleeping.) Frustratingly, there's no clear pattern to the failures (beyond the fact that, in each case, communication was a real issue, but that's like saying that the ultimate cause of death was lack of blood to the brain; the story of all good communication is the same).

But I'm tired of this. I'm tired of showing up stag to every gathering. I'm tired of feeling like I constantly have to be the best version of myself or risk alienating someone I want to be with. I'm tired of feeling like I'm begging for sex when all I really want is to be held. I'm so very tired. And I see men my age or older who are also tired, so tired they've given up completely, and that terrifies me. I don't want to be one of those men. I don't want to think the chapter of my memoirs concerning my love life (as opposed to just my sex life) has been closed forever.

And I don't see any alternative to doing what I've already been doing: Putting myself out there, being open to the possibility of a relationship without trying to force it, and not getting too invested in any one prospect. But it goes against my grain. By nature, I'm an obsessive romantic and I doubt I can change that about myself. All I can do is try to practice mindfulness and set myself on the path of no-desire and hope that helps.

And be gentle with myself. I have to say, that's somewhere where [personal profile] clintswan has been a great help. Yesterday evening, as we were driving to the tree lot, I outlined some of what I've just described at length here and he said, "If it helps at all, it's not really 'five years'. Two year of that is pandemic, so it's really three years." We also reaffirmed that, whatever lies ahead in our lives, we'll continue to be there to support each other. ("PLiPs, Platonic Life Partners," as he puts it.) And that is nothing at all to sneeze at.
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So now for last weekend.

Friday night was the 5th anniversary of Monshu's death. I'd thought about getting together with my friend Mozhu or at least going to visit the scattering spot, but in the end I didn't feel the need for anything elaborate and simply burned some incense while I recited the Heart Sutra. The next morning, I reenacted what I did the morning after his death (also a Saturday, due to some calendrical quirk) and laid down for a bit in the room where he died. I felt reflective, but not particularly moved, and started to get ready to meet BB.

I'd decided to treat our rendezvous at a breakfast spot before heading over to JB's as a first date and approach it without any preconceptions about where it was going. I wasn't going to bring up anything we'd shared in our moments of intimacy or try to steer the conversation toward weighty subjects. From that point of view, it was a complete success. We had an easy rapport, I learned a bit more about his mysterious past, and I was buoyant taking him to meet my friends.

At JB's I got my most burning question--whether he was still interested in fooling around with me--answered as well. We played footsie under the table and stole a few furtive deep kisses when left alone. He hadn't been exaggerating when he told me he was lousy at boardgames, but he greatly enjoyed playing them. At about 5 pm, he rushed home to take care of his dog and I stayed to keep playing and catch up with a friend I hadn't seen since before lockdown. JB eventually ended up ordering pizza so we could keep playing into the evening.

It was probably about 8:30 when I left to walk home. I felt blissful; although I considered popping my head into Touché to see some friends, I soon decided it would be an anticlimax to a wonderful day and instead just sat in the frontroom savouring all that had happened.

Sometime after this, things took a turn.

I was in bed listening to music. Talking about 80s bands with the young-uns had put me onto a nostalgia kick and I found myself playing the first side of Upstairs at Eric's in its entirety and wishing I had BB there to share the experience with. I began to get moodier and moodier, found it hard to sleep, and soon it seemed every song I played was making me want to tear up. It seemed inexplicable given that everything that day had gone as well as I dared hope.

The next morning, it was worse. I woke up feeling completely bereft and didn't want to stir from the bed. I managed to complete the very basics of my routine but soon I was under the covers again. I moped around the house all day and got nothing done. Well, I did call my mother, but I was only half listening to anything she said. I tried texting BB but we couldn't get beyond mere banter. I went to bed feeling miserable and began deliberately playing grief songs until I was sobbing almost uncontrollably.

So what happened? I have a couple of hypotheses:

One is that this was a simple case of delayed grief. I wasn't really neutral about Monshu's yortsait, it's just that looking forward to a good day with friends allowed me to delay dealing with it. Once I was alone again, it all came flooding back all the stronger for having been damned up.

A more complicated explanation is that something about my experiences on that day triggered the grief. After BB left, the party was down to me, JB, Hildy (the friend I hadn't seen in ages), and his husband. We talked about their wedding (which due to lockdown we hadn't been able to attend) and Hildy and I had a good conversation about sex with friends v strangers in the kitchen.

In retrospect, I wonder if being alone around couples (JB's husband wasn't there but of course he came a lot in conversation) combined with the anniversary to tap into my fears of being alone indefinitely. I liked the feeling I had of being in a couple with BB, even though we aren't, and thinking that we might never be (which is honestly the way to bet) depressed me. There's no set time limit to find someone, but I guess I felt I'd be further along that track five years on. Instead, this year has brought me only a brief crush which ended disastrously (back in June and I'm still resentful), a mostly unsatisfying summer fling which ended that day with the guy's return to the Southwest, and my crush on BB.

Then there's the possibility that it's specifically my crush on BB which is making me miserable. The weekend after I returned from St Louis, he told me he just wanted to be alone and though I told him I understood I was pretty bummed. I ended up going to a house party and pumping our one mutual friend for info on him. "Don't lose your heart to this guy," he warned me. His take is that BB is looking for to have fun and not much more. And he's probably right.

But I've been through this whole journey in my head over the past six weeks as my mind keeps spinning possibilities and then trying desperately to rein myself back in. Frankly, having a week or two where I wasn't constantly checking my phone for a word from BB felt like a relief (hence my reluctance to get back in touch). I feel resentful of him for "doing this to me" when really I'm doing it all to myself, and that realisation turns the resentment back onto me and this flawed emotional makeup which repeatedly leads me to take crushes too far and then have to keep constantly consciously checking myself. It's tiring and it's no surprise that the strain should lead to bouts of depression.
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It's interesting how much my recent experiences have changed my attitude toward certain situations. It used to be when someone went into the hospital I would be anxiously but guardedly hopeful. "I know this looks bad, but it will probably be alright, won't it?" I'd lived through two miraculous recoveries in my 20s: first my mother flipping her car on the interstate and walking away with more more than some broken bones and then my ex having botched surgery, falling into a coma and spending almost a full year in the hospital, and then making a complete recovery. So it was natural to view the best outcome as a distinct possibility.

Now it's, they're going into the hospital? With those symptoms? Better have POMA, a DNR, and a will all ready and I'll start preparing myself. Once I'd finally pressured Urso into giving me a decent account of his situation I knew how bleak the picture was. I expected we'd have him around for another couple years at best and already started planning my next trip out to see him. In the end, we didn't have two weeks and that trip may still happen but he won't be at the end of it to hug me.

It was a long night. Once it became clear where things were headed (you're not called to a hospital in the middle of a statewide lockdown to visit your friend if the medical team expects you'll soon be taking him home in anything but a box) I swore off sleep because I knew it was going to be a long night. One of Urso's best friends I stayed on a video call with until he told me he was ready to try to sleep. That was 1:30 a.m. I woke up at the regular time and tried to go back to sleep but the messages kept coming in from the group he set up for video chats and then the announcement went public and the posts started to come in and I kept reading them, crying, pausing, and then finding new ones to read.

I was so disoriented by the afternoon I had to ask my flatmate if it was time to feed the cat who was obviously begging to be fed. By four p.m. I was back in bed in a completely dark room. <lj user=clintswan> came in to sit with me. I talked out my grief until it was possible for me to look at photos and feel more consolation than grief. Then he brought me a gift of cookies and edibles from the neighbours which I took upstairs to eat and found them outside under their heater. We spent the rest of the evening hanging out and chatting and it did me a world of good.

I still need to distill my feelings down to fit the more concise demands of FB before I consider posting there. It's hard to explain just why I feel as privileged to know him as I did. It's not just because he was a legend on SF Bear scene (and beyond), it's the reason why he was a legend. Clint and I both joked about being mourned in spite of our abrasive personalities. But I tried to remember ever hearing Urso run anyone down to me and I simply couldn't. I literally could not recall him having a single bad word to say about anyone. In this scene, that is like walking into the bar and finding someone who's never had a drink or smoked a cigarette.

People were drawn to him and he had a knack for drawing those people together. Months ago now, he set up a Messenger group for video chats and invited me to it. Even with him out of the picture for a while ("like the host of the party falling asleep in the back bedroom" as I rather saltily put it) the group kept going. When we got the news early this morning it immediately made the transition from shitpost central to a support group for everyone who needed it. It'll be interesting to see how long this persists; certainly, whatever happens, some of the blossoming friendship there will.

There's a lot more to say but, as my friend Charlie reminds me, no rush to say it. You don't find out what a loss like this means right away. I'm only just beginning to really learn what we lost with the death of Urso.

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I suppose I was overdue for a COVID-19 scare. A couple months ago, I felt a bit overheated and broke out the thermometer, but my temperature was actually below average. Since then the weather has warmed up and my allergies have blossomed but without becoming acute enough to require medication.

I've also been exposing myself a bit more than I was before. It started the weekend before Father's Day with the barbecue. I was a little antsy for the next two weeks but showed no symptoms and relaxed a bit. Then <lj user=clintswan> arrived last Thursday to live with me, which was fine, except he brought along a friend I didn't know, which made me a bit nervous. Sure, he'd been isolating himself in rural Washington, but then he did just complete a cross-country trip through several hotspots. I was particularly dismayed after I learned from his Facebook that he'd made a sidetrip on the way to visit his relatives and the pictures he posted didn't seem to indicate much social distancing.

I'd hope to have the upstairs bathroom fully function so we wouldn't have to share facilities but didn't manage it. Despite being a sizable apartment, it's a pretty cozy arrangement. I did my best to maintain some separation without being too obvious about it, but it's so hard to navigate being a good host in the age of Coronavirus. Am I supposed to use tongs to hand someone a glass of water or Chlorox every doorknob every time? No, I just washed my hands a lot and tried not to fret.

He left on Monday and my new roomie and I started to negotiate a routine. He's been having more trouble sleeping than me, so when I woke up suddenly from a weird erotic dream around 3:30 a.m. last night, I figured I could count on him being awake, too. My heart was pounding and refused to slow down. My stomach was upset, but I figured that was due to to snacking too much during trivia. However, when I got up to pee, I noticed dizziness, aches, and fatigue. As I crawled back into bed, I thought, "Well, here we are. You'd better get your affairs in order."

I did my best to remain calm and went upstairs for the thermometer. The reading was normal (still a bit below 98°F). I thought about how, the first time I became seriously dehydrated, I mistook the symptoms for a summer flu. So I drank some water before heading back downstairs. But I still texted <lj user=clintswan> and asked him to bring me his pulse oximeter.

He showed up almost immediately with his comforting voice and reassuring presence. My reading was completely healthy: 98%. I thanked him and went upstairs for more water. It took me more than an hour to fall back to sleep, but when I did, I stayed out until nearly 9:30. I wasn't feeling 100% but my symptoms were no longer out of line with what I'd expect from mild summer allergies, disturbed sleep, and too many chips before bedtime.

While it wasn't a pleasant experience at all, the overall effect was to calm my nerves somewhat. Whatever I have to deal with in the coming months, I won't be going through it alone. That is a huge, huge deal.

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Today I'm dealing with some shit. Out of the blue, the president of my high school (who's held the position since I was a student there) sent out an email with a link to a list of confirmed molesters among the the members of the order who ran it. At least three of the names were familiar from my years there and two of them--not coincidentally, the two I had the most interaction with--were no surprise. (One was reassigned to a different establishment where he no longer had contact with minors and then left the order shortly after; you don't have to be Sherlock to understand what that trajectory means.)

The cover letter said this was being shared "in a spirit of sorrow and accountability". So I fired off a reply to the effect of, "Where's the accountability for the enablers. You know, like yourself?" I was about to hit send when I had second thoughts.. I'm not sure why; I guess some residual goodwill from when I still looked up to him? Not to mention that it felt somewhat like kicking a man when he's down.

But some men deserve kicking. After all, he's still occupying the exact same position of authority despite what's finally come to light. He only sent the letter because it was required of him. (The list was for the entire order; every president or principal probably had to send out a similar letter.) Most of all, he took no measure of personal responsibility for things that happened when he was in charge.

For all I know, he put a stop to the abuse as soon as he heard about it. But--crucially--the perpetrators were never held publicly to account. Every listed member who served at my school is deceased or no longer a cleric; I don't know that any were ever formally charged (and I googled the living one every couple of years, which is how I know what became of him). No one contacted me or my classmates to find out what we might have been subjected to.

In my case, it wasn't much. One incident, basically, where a brother came up to me while I was studying in my dorm room and gave me an unexpected backrub. Inappropriate, a little confusing, but not deeply upsetting. Certainly not compared to knowing that the Assistant Principal and latter Principal of the school was fondling students while the President played dumb.

And that got me thinking about the wider effects of these incidents. The focus is always on the direct survivors--as it should be, because what they go through is devastating. But what happens to those around them is not nothing. To be put in this impossible position, where you know that crimes are taking place but you don't feel like you can stand up to the authorities that are allowing them to happen, if not outright perpetrating them. How do you make your peace with that?

One friend my age, who saw similar bullshit go down at a different school, said that it destroyed his sense of "mentorship" (since the "mentoring" relationships he observed were just covers for sex with minors). A classmate from the same school said the revelations had him questioning one of his own mentors who spent a lot of time tutoring him one-on-one. What were his motives? How lucky was he that ultimately nothing happened to him?

It's all complicated by the fact that, at the time, I was just coming to grips with my own sexuality. I even tried flirting with the principal once. Either it was so clumsy that he never noticed or he wasn't interested so he never let on, I wasn't sure. Let me tell you, it did wonders for my self-esteem. How fucked up is that? To feel rejected by a molester? But I knew he had no ethical objections to sex with students, so what did it mean that he didn't want to have sex with me?

I didn't mention any of this in my letter. I kept it short and bitter: Hey, remember that time my best friend tried to talk to you about the principal's shenanigans? 'Cause I do. You knew and you pretended not to, so fuck your false piety and your "spirit of sorrow". And--by the way--thanks for your contribution to making me an atheist who thinks your entire organisation should be burnt to the ground and the ashes dumped in the sea.
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I've been thinking all week about posting an entry here, which is to say I've been spending all week avoiding posting an entry here. There's a lot I want to talk about but the days go by so quickly and leave me with so little energy. Plus the background anxiety is manifesting as insomnia

Usually it's not too bad: Wake up at 4 a.m., take an hour to fall back asleep. But last night was awful. I woke up thinking it was 4 a.m. only to discover it was 2:20. Then I made the fatal mistake of checking FB, which was flooded with images of Minneapolis. It took me another hour of doing chores, reading, and stroking the cat to fall asleep again after that. I had disturbing dreams, woke up every hour, and finally crawled out of bed just before 11 a.m. feeling like I hadn't really slept at all.

I'd been planning a morning shopping trip--which probably fueled my anxiety--but that wasn't happening. I stumbled through half a day of work, did a little bit of gardening with the neighbours, who cooked me a hot dog. They're really helping me hold it together.
May. 17th, 2020 04:02 pm

Reckoning

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It's been a week.

On Monday, we learned what the President and Dean had been hinting at the Friday before in their vague references to measures to address the dire budget situation for the current fiscal year: 52 of my coworkers--a quarter of our full-time workforce--were furloughed. This came right the heels of the outright dismissal of all temporary employees, including all student workers. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long to find out if I was on the list: my supervisor e-mailed the same morning to let me know that I was safe (for now). Unfortunately, at the same time, she informed me that both my direct reports were on the list.

I was asked not to contact them myself since they'd be hearing soon from HR and concentrating on work was out of the question. I had a sinking feeling in my gut that threatened to consume my whole being. So I went downstairs and snuggled the cat for a while, hoping I might nap. But I didn't and--conscious of the fact that my employees might contact me, I guiltily made my way back upstairs to the laptop.

Sure enough, I found several notifications waiting for me. Two were from HR informing me that the employees had been informed of their one-on-one meetings the next day and one was from one of the employees, who had adroitly surmised exactly what that meant. I took a deep breath, reassured her that her performance had nothing at all to do with the decision (I'd literally called her "a model employee" in the evaluation I'd written for her the week before), and apologised wholeheartedly.

The malaise lingered all the rest of that day and the next. I checked on a couple of coworkers and they checked on me; we traded speculations but I held back from divulging what I knew. What I learned started making me angry: no professional staff had been affected, only paraprofessionals. I was at least somewhat mollified that when this became known to my professional colleagues at our workgroup meeting the next day, they looked suitably abashed. I know, like me, they were feeling that peculiar mix of relief and guilt at having been spared.

We learned some details then; I got more the next during my one-on-one with my boss, and then the closest we can expect to hear of the full story on Friday during a townhall with the Dean. It was both more and less reassuring to hear that they'd had very little discretion in the process. The instructions from on high had been that decisions were to be made at the directorial level without consulting workgroup leaders; that everything had to be done in secrecy and in a very tight timeframe; and that no extenuating circumstances could be taken into account. My boss called the process "opaque by design" and if I needed any confirmation that she and the rest of the administration would have done things differently if they could have, I got it when the Dean concluded her remarks to us by bursting into tears.

I feel slapped in the face by my own foolish complacency. Although I had some misgivings giving up the protection of a union to take this position, I was lulled by the fact that in every other way, it was an improvement. And that's all fine when things are good. But now they're anything but and we're basically unprotected. We were targeted for furloughs because we could be. Everyone else--faculty, physical plant employees, adjuncts, etc.--are covered by contracts and agreements which make letting people go a more involved negotiation. But we are strictly work-for-hire.

I'm really impressed with how well my employees are taking this. They're both older and, if they lose their jobs, they might not bother looking for another. I really hope they return, but there are no guarantees and next year's budget situation is going to be, if anything, more dire than this year's. I'm trying to resign myself to the fact that, even if they do, some of my colleagues won't. Those with more options aren't just going to sit and wait for three-and-a-half months to find out whether their job still exists.

Technically, I'm one of those with more options. I should be taking advantage of this time to explore them. But it's hard when I can't even imagine what the landscape will look like a month from now, much less a year.
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When Sis called Sunday, it had been nearly a month since we'd last talked, so a chunk of our conversation was about the contrast between what we'd thought we might get done during our confinement and how we're actually spending our time. She's doing more watching and less reading than she thought, but that doesn't surprise me because I always remember what [profile] mollpeartree said about watching the most television when her job was more exhausting, and keeping five boys busy in a twelve-room house has got to be pretty tiring.

I'm glad she reached out because I was--perhaps predictably--feeling pretty down. I saw other friends posting about family video chats and realised that, not only had we failed to organise anything similar, but that none of my family had reached out to me weeks. Right when things blew up, I called both mothers to check on them, plus my sister, and texted my brother, and that was the last I heard from any of them. I know we're pretty atomised, but I've long treasured how we pull together in a crisis. But not this crisis I guess.

Sis told me Mom is getting pretty restless, which hardly surprises me, and that she can't go anywhere because she let the battery in her car die, which surprises me even less. Our stepmom, at least, has neighbours to visit with. I know she's as thankful as I am that Dad isn't around for this mess; having him in a home right now would send everyone's anxiety through the roof.

The next day, I finally got around to checking my mail again. I don't expect much these days, but I had ordered a book from friends' shuttered bookshop in the hopes of keeping it afloat. I wasn't there but I found an unexpected package that turned out to be a handsewn mask from my SIL. I wore it day after for a walk with friends. I say a walk; what actually happened is that we rendezvoused on one street corner, went a block, and then made a loose pentagram while we yelled a conversation. Once we started getting chilly, everyone went their separate ways.

So I guess we're just going to see how long we can survive on this strange mix of online socialisation, phone and video calls, and kinda getting together but not really. Illinois is expecting the peak in hospitalisations to crest soon but it's not clear what happens after that in the absence of a proven course of therapy and testing regime, much less a vaccine.

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