The Death of Imagination

It is amusing how much my taste in men overlaps with that of my Chilean bestie. And now that he's free to play without his husband and we're on the same app, the pool of men we've both slept with is only growing. It's convenient, since I was already going to him for dating advice and now he's likely to have additional insight into the personalities involved.

I needed that after what happened yesterday. First a little background: This boy (he's 29) and I began chatting about a month ago. We seemed to hit it off, but he's a grad student who's begun looking for work so scheduling time together has been tricky. Finally, a week ago Saturday, we were able to make it work. It was an afternoon filled with lovely surprises and if I'd made a post the Monday after that, it would have been very different to this one.

Things went so well, in fact, that he immediately proposed another meet-up and I immediately accepted. He proposed the Sunday after my cocktail night; I warned him I might be a bit listless and tired but he wasn't overly concerned. We kept chatting during the week. Then early Sunday afternoon, as I was struggling to get out of bed for the second time that day, he texted to confirm.

So far, so good. As I was running late, I messaged him once the bus had pulled away from the stop to let him know I was on the way. Next thing I know, he hits me with this: "I fear I'm not in much of a sexy mood today unfortunately Hopefully that doesn't bother".

Reader, how would you have reacted?

I was torn. On the one hand, you could read it in a quite flattering light: Even though I'm not up for it, I still want to spend time with you. And the truth is we enjoyed ourselves as much outside of the bed as in it last time. On the other, we met on a hookup app and this is only our second meeting. Perhaps he's interested in being FWB but we're not friends yet. So why exactly and I riding a bus an hour across town on a beautiful day just to sip tequila and shoot the shit? I could have walked five minutes to a purely platonic friend's house in the neighbourhood and had the same experience. And why is waiting until just after I've fully committed to coming to him instead of giving me more warning in case I'd rather reschedule?

I didn't say any of these things. I didn't even ask for clarification. I decided it would be best just to follow through with it and see how things played out. Maybe he meant he wasn't up for bottoming, but he'd be fine with cuddling. And there are many reasons to be not in a "sexy mood". Maybe he wasn't feeling well, like the boy who cancelled the previous Sunday due to tummy trouble. It would seem churlish to cancel under those circumstances.

As it turns out, "not in much of a sexy mood" means "I don't want to be touched." And he speculated that the reason he felt that way--and had the day before as well--was that he'd hooked up with someone else early on Friday. I can't fault that per se--I spent my lunch break on Thursday getting a bj after all. But I knew that wouldn't interfere with having fun on Sunday. Early Sunday morning, in fact, one of the cocktail guests who crashed over tried to get something started with me and I held off. And for what?

I did my best to put aside my disappointment and enjoy the afternoon for what it was. And it was enjoyable--like before, we chatted and joked. But without the physical aspect, it all felt diminished. In my moody post-party state, I couldn't decide if I was being too selfish, so I checked in with my bestie (who's fooled around with the same guy) and another veteran of the scene, just for good measure. They both validated my feelings of being somewhat hard done by. My Chilean friend, looking for some explanation, even asked, "Is it possible he forgot about the date?"

Now we have a good two weeks before we could possibly get back together. I'm not sure I want to. At the very least, I'm going to make quite clear in advance what the expectations are AND I think it's high time he travelled to me for a change. Hearing me rhapsodise about our first afternoon together, my friend told me, "You two should date." That's not appealing now.

Over ten weeks ago, I wrote:

Also problematic is Hump Day, who's been MIA for two weeks. Yesterday I reread our old messages and spotted what I think was the problem: I told him about hooking up with with an Ozzie a couple weekends ago. It was just something I mentioned in passing, but from his response it seems like he may have interpreted it to mean that we were dating now and his services were no longer required.

If that's the case, clearing it up should be a simple matter, but I'm kind of annoyed. This is the third time something like this has happened and I'm asking myself "Why?" Why does he assume that I'm so ready to kick him to the curb? I've done what I can over the years to make it clear to him that this relationship is valuable to me without making it sound like I want him to leave his man and yet it doesn't seem to have taken.

I was, of course, utterly correct. He did, in fact, leap to the conclusion that I was dating and "needed space". Clearing things up, however, turned out not to be such a simple matter, mainly because even after he discovered he'd been mistaken he still didn't reach out to me to reestablished ties. He could tell I was annoyed and retreated. Meanwhile, although I continued to reach out to him (sending him greetings on Pride, on July 4th, on his birthday, etc.) I resolved that I was going to wait for him to take action to repair things.

How did that work out? I ended up waiting three months during which I went through a lot of feels. At points, I thought maybe this chapter in my life was closed and that's not such a terrible thing. I took it as an opportunity to explore other avenues. Unfortunately (and unsurprisingly, alas) those haven't really panned out. A couple of times, my longing got the better of me and weakened my resolve but I held firm.

Sunday he finally messaged and invited me to get dinner with him. Well, he invited me to "stop by" and get dinner after; I said just dinner was fine. There was too much that needed to be aired for us to just going back to hooking up like we did before. He agreed and we settled on a place on Argyle.

I wasn't looking forward to it, which may be why I didn't sleep well the night before. That of course only made me dread it more. We hadn't even ordered when he just blurted out an apology. It was exactly what I'd wanted to hear and yet all I could do was stare at the table in silence.

Nevertheless, we had a pleasant dinner, though I was very aware of how my feelings towards him had changed subtly. Did his voice always have that peculiar timbre? Had I actually considered what it would be like to date him? Afterwards he proposed a walk and we headed towards the park, where the Full Moon Jam was underway. We watched that briefly and then I dragged him toward the shore for some privacy.

I don't know that we said everything we needed to but we said most of it. He reasserted that he'd never meant to hurt me and I acknowledged that. He told me that he never wanted to do anything that would impede my search for a long-term partner. I told him to trust me to make decisions about what that entailed and not think he had to make them for me. He talked about the many competing demands on his time and I talked about the strains of being a sidepiece.

Then I proposed make-up sex and we went back to his place and went at it. Was it like old times? Kind of. More than once, to maintain the intensity, I found myself having to push away intrusive thoughts. Hopefully those won't stick around. You don't heal a rift of three months in three hours and things are never the same again because things are never the same full stop. But I put work towards being okay if this turned out to be the end of the relationship and the consequences of that still hold validity.

I've been thinking lately about how, when it comes to relationships, I dwell too much on my failures. Part of the problem is simply classifying relationships as "failures" in the first place. Not every relationship is meant to last; some aren't even meant to exist in the first place. So focusing on whether I'm still in contact with a particular person or whether my association with them ever took the form which I'd imagined it would is basically the wrong lens.

This is on my mind because last weekend I got together with my first boyfriend. He was in town for a journalism conference and asked me to "round up a pack of ursine types" for dim sum. I happily complied and invited several friends to join him, me, and my brother at MingHin in Streeterville. A couple people begged off due to torrential rain, but the rest of us has a great time. I was especially pleased that we ordered tripe, cuttlefish, and chicken feet and everyone at the table ate some; I don't think that's ever happened before.

In any case, it's kind of amazing to me to realise that I'm still in touch with someone I broke up with 28 years ago. In particular, I was struck by how much he still resembles the 21 year-old whose letter jacket I once wore and how clearly I could see both those elements which attracted me and those which annoyed me. He's still with the guy he met a few years after leaving me (and Chicago) and I had my own 19-year relationship, so I think it's indisputable that we did better apart than we would have together.

To go back to my simplistic dichotomy, he's a success. Even if we couldn't get together again for a couple hours of enjoyable conversation, he'd still be one, because we both learned from each other and can look back on that time without regret. Or at least not much regret: I still do feel bad about some of the things I did and said while we were together, but he's long since forgiven and forgotten so I should, too.

Seen in this light, BB is also a success. We didn't become boyfriends--and we shouldn't have, since he'd've been a rotten one, way too self-centred to satisfy my needs. But we successfully found closure for that stage of our relationship and remain friends. Even Bama Clint is a success. He turned out to be (in the words of a foaf who met him briefly) "a lying liar who lies", but the good thing is I discovered that early, maintained healthy boundaries the whole time (never letting him crash at my place for convenience, for instance), and gave him just enough rope to hang himself with. (Last week, he claimed again he wanted to see me so I called his bluff and left it up to him to set up a rendezvous; as expected, he didn't and I can walk away now satisfied that I've given things a fair chance and am better off without him around.)

Now if I could just have the kind of success which results in me having someone to cuddle with regularly...

So if it's easy to date when my one-sided romance with BB began, it's harder to say exactly when it ended. You could say it was last night, when clintswan got me to acknowledge that I need--for myself, if not for him--to tell him that going forward I'm not aiming for being anything more than friends. You could say it's tonight, when I actually deliver that speech. Or maybe it's Thursday, when I spent the whole day resenting him for, basically, not being something he never asked to be. Or even just after midnight on Tuesday, when he told me baldly "I don't really ascribe a lot of thought or feeling" to making out with anyone, me included.

At any rate, sometime this week. Let's say today, which gives us a total of 76 days or just under 11 weeks. Some of it was fun, a lot of it was awful, none of it was really easy. That's a clue, isn't it? If romance is this much work, then it probably means you're trying to force something into existence that isn't meant to be.

Realistically I know that declaring something over doesn't make it over. I'm still going to have lingering feelings for who knows how long. Part of the reason I'm telling him, after all, is so that if I need to not talk to him for some weeks or even months he'll know the reason. I promised him friendship and I intend to keep that promise if I can.

What else is there to say really? Overall, I'm content with how I've handled things. I wish it had all been less painful but, as Steve Buscemi's character says in one of his earliest film roles, "Wishing is for whining self-pitying assholes." Actually, scratch that. Because if there's anything I'm particularly proud of from this latest tangle with Eros it's how I've been making a point of being kind to myself. I have a tendency to call myself "stupid" for loving too early and too well. But that has nothing to do with smarts, it's just how I'm wired. I can't brain myself out of that tendency, I can only become more aware of it and try to check my behaviour as I go along--not by berating myself but by being realistic and doing calming exercises to dissipate some of my anxiety and help me redirect. Hopefully, the next wild ride will be less pain and more ecstasy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Let's recap, shall we?

Sunday evening, after spending the weekend in, I went out for a walk on the Loyola campus. It was nearly deserted. I watched one undergraduate who seemed to have gotten the memo that everyone was to leave for home that Saturday walk up to the Information Commons and rattled the locked door. I sat for a bit along the shore and watched the sun set, but I was a little underdressed and got impatient so I continued on to Berger Park, which is still wrecked from winter storms. I'd planned to get takeout from the Korean wing place on Granville but they'd already closed so I went to Nori instead. Later, I went out again, hoping that Devon Market would be quieter an hour before close but it was still busy. Only one other guy in the place was clearly practicing proper social distancing and I couldn't wait to get out.

Monday I slept in all morning. Partly it was that I hadn't slept well overnight but mostly I just didn't know how to face my new reality. I had a good cathartic cry and then tried to connect to work using the shared laptop I'd taken home. (I'd actually spirited it away over Winter Break and never bothered hooking it up.) Unfortunately, nothing worked and I had to bang out e-mails on my phone. After a couple hours, I felt like I'd be at work half a day.

Tuesday I went back to the Library for what will most likely be the last time in weeks. IT decided against trying to troubleshoot the old laptop and simply issued me a new one. I had good chats with a few colleagues still present, including my boss, who said she'd take a broad view of "work-related training" for the duration. For someone who's spent countless mornings dreading having to go to work in that brutalist monstrosity, I felt strangely wistful taking one last look of it before heading home. I'd forgotten to get any kale for my St Patrick's Day colcannon so the neighbours gave me a quarter of a cabbage, along with some homebaked bread, and I chatted with them through the screen door while swigging Irish whiskey on the back porch.

Wednesday I was still wrestling with my emotions as I tried to figure out how working from home was supposed to go. It felt like another wasted day, though at least I was able to test out software and sites and find--to my pleasant surprise--that everything is working fine.

Thursday was better. Although it was chilly, I went out for a walk in anticipation of a shelter-in-place order from the Mayor which ended up not coming to pass. I hit the market at midday and found it even crazier than before, Some poor shlemiel broke a carton of eggs in front of me and I finally bought flour but no yeast. I picked up eggs and sour cream for my neighbours and left them on the back porch. We had our first Zoom meeting for work and I found everyone rather positive and motivated. Afterwards, I chatted with my bear colleague and he suggested some interesting work I could be doing with Wikidata. For dinner, I had homemade pierogis that my neighbours made and left in the front hall.

Friday we had another Zoom meeting in the morning. This one included my more challenging direct report and we managed to get her at least somewhat on track for doing work from home. I was looking forward to a productive afternoon, but I got to chatting with the student worker I'd been training whose job is now suspended in light of an "essential personnel only" order for the campus. It's very interesting to see how differently he's processing all of this. In the afternoon, the Governor issued a "shelter in place" order for the entire state.

Meanwhile, we went from under 3,000 confirmed cases in the USA Sunday evening to more than 22,000 and counting. New York State alone has logged 1,834 confirmed cases today. Illinois' have increased tenfold over the same period. Clearly, the crest is still coming. When my other direct report asked me yesterday how long she'd be working from home, I told her "at least eight weeks", because that seems to be the best estimate for the minimum amount of time we need to get a handle on the pandemic.

Today I was going to laze around and nap in preparation for a naked housewarming/sex party at friends' in the evening. Obviously that's been cancelled and instead I'll be doing a virtual Kaffeeklatsch with some bearfriends. Maybe I'll finally get around to doing some baking, which would also spur me to sort out my wreck of a baking cabinet.

Waking up this morning with a tummyache turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it allowed me to complete a couple errands that I didn't get to during the long weekend because of a combination of torpidity and uncertainty.

The more important of these was getting an HIV test done at the local LGBTQ+ clinic. I'd been trying to work up the courage for at least a week. Saturday I'd even gone so far as to walk to the clinic only to find that it closed at 3 p.m. Today, I actually made it in the door.

As I'd expected, it was fairly busy. I had an hour wait to see anyone but I was determined to get it done. Sunday was World AIDS Day, so I'd been bombarded on social media with reminders to get tested, which of course did wonders for my anxiety. The staff was terrific. When they heard the details of my possible exposure they offered me the rapid response test at no extra charge and let me wait in the examination room while they ran it. As expected, it came back negative.

By this point, my discomfort was mostly gone (raising the possibility that it had been due more to stress than eating the wrong thing) and I decided to go into work after all despite it being so late in the day. On the way, I had time to knock off one more errand and pick up four waiting prescriptions. Not only that, I also fit in a visit to a local café for a little lunch and to a chain restaurant to say hi to a friend.

By the time I made it to work, it was already after 3 p.m. To my surprise, there was a box on my chair from a local tea emporium containing a sampling of a dozen varieties. The note said, "Our sincere condolences, your colleagues". It was a really unexpected gesture and choked me up a bit.

So the title of this post is borrowed from the title of the Spanish translation of Die undendliche Geschichte. Unlike its English cognate, interminable has no negative connotations in Spanish; it's just a neutral way of describing something never-ending. But I can't resist double entendres, especially when it comes to naming these posts.

Handsome Bastard and I did not go out last night. By the time he got in touch, he'd already committed to working that evening. Did he accept the job because he thought I was blowing him off? Or would he have accepted it even if we'd made firm plans? And does it matter? I felt a little miffed and then I checked my full-time-with-benefits privilege and remembered that most people younger than me (and a depressing number my age or over) have no choice but to chase cash-earning opportunities whenever they can.

The evening seemed a bit ill-starred anyway, since when I did hear from him later, it was after his hellish commute home and it was cut short by some sad family news. (I assume a death, but he didn't elabourate and I won't press.) So it was just as well that went forward with my usual Tuesday routine and had dinner at Sea Ranch. Afterwards, I didn't something I haven't in far too long and took a long walk after dinner.

We were half hoping for storms to soak the lawn and garden but they sideswiped us. Unfortunately I was late in realising that this would mean potentially gorgeous clouds in the east. By the time I reached the shore, the light had faded, though at least I had a few brilliant glimpses on the way. The surf was still up and I spent some enchanted moments listening to it before heading back and catching up with the neighbours.

HB's job, btw, was a shoot on the South Side. Specifically, a Disney's Aladdin-themed quinceañera on Wooded Isle, in the Japanese garden which--when I wasn't paying attention--was renamed "Garden of the Phoenix". (Nice branding there, UofC.) I think he was a bit scandalised to discover that it had been a hotbed of cruising back in the day. The storms which missed us on the North Side eventually drove them out, but not before they manage to wrap up.

In any case, fast forward to this afternoon. I'd basically given up on having him respond to the "get in touch when you can" message I'd left before leaving the house this morning. But respond he did and he seemed genuinely delighted when I revealed that I'm taking tomorrow off (though not why). We made tentative plans to get together before my dinner with Nuphy.

So I'm letting myself be a little giddy. Later I'll remind me that--based on prior experience with Chicago Beardom--the actual changes of getting together even with firm plans is probably only 50/50. Frankly, I'm thankful that at my age (and after some of the shit I've been through) I can still feel a little infatuated now and again.

My first meeting with Sad Cub back in January was unpromising. As I wrote at the time:

The boy toy was cute but had minimal social skills. He could answer direct questions with full sentences but had no conversation and spent much of his time playing Pokémon Go. The roommate was even less interactive, but I'm not interested in nailing his roommate so whatever. (I'm only mildly interested in the boy toy, so there's only a slight chance you'll be hearing of him again.)

I was seated across from the roommate (who I've known for years and feel very neutral towards) so I could easily ignore him, but next to Sad Cub, so I did what I could to draw him out. His behaviour was at least partly attributable to not having taken his anti-anxiety meds that day.

He was new in town (like just-moved-two-months-ago new) and mentioned he wanted to explore Chicago so I was generous with recommendations. I'd been talking with Acting Pixy about planning a visit to a restaurant in Pilsen with many vegetarian options so I invited him along. He joined us, but it was boisterous and we weren't sitting near each other so I didn't really get to talk with him.

We chatted a bit more at a Bear dance in February and I learned a bit about his sitch. He'd moved to be close to a "sir" who I'd actually met at the initial incarnation of that event the previous fall but who never accepted by FB request. They'd been living together but the guy wanted him to move out and he was working on finding a place by the end of the month.

This activated my empathy glands (I would have been devastated at that age if that had happened to me) and I became a little more solicitous. I started checking in with him on Facebook periodically. When I found out his new place was near me, I began inviting him to my cocktails nights.

I found out a few things about him, like the fact that he's a cinephile. While most of the bear crowd can only talk about blockbusters, he was making an effort to see all the nominees for Best Foreign Film in advance of the Oscars and posting cogent comments about them on his Wall. He likes whiskey, so I had fun giving him new things to try when he stopped by at the beginning of March.

I still didn't really understand his relationship and the picture only became more muddied when he referred to some guy that I'd made out with briefly at a bar as his "ex". Yesterday I tried following up on that and quickly came to the conclusion it would be something better discussed in person. "I only call him my ex because its less complicated" he explained. All of this makes me reluctant to get involved with him. We cuddle a bit when we see each other, but there's been no talk at all of becoming sexual.

It was my neighbour who finally forced me to articulate my reservations. Breloom wasn't the only one to remark on his behaviour at my cocktail party. The next day, I told a story about inviting another little cublet, one I'd met around the same time as Breloom, over for a cooking lesson. "Was this Sad Cub?" she asked. And when I explained it wasn't, she followed up with "Do you want to mentor him or sleep with him or what?"

I had to confess that I don't know. If there wasn't some sort of sexual interest, these boys and I would never have crossed paths. But I'm very new to the role of daddy and very conflicted about the implications. As I explained on the porch, I know very well what the expectations are in a friendship based on equality and reciprocity, like what I have with them (or Pasillero or Breloom or anyone I've slept with lately).

But this would be something different and, frankly, I'm not sure I'm ready for the responsibility. On the one hand, I feel a certain responsibility, as someone well-established both in the local "Bear community" (such as it is) and in life in general to nurture the baby bears. On the other hand, the thought of man-child latching onto me for care and guidance is repulsive, and using them for sex would feel exploitative.

I suppose I have a good model for how to proceed from my summer as a houseboy back in my college days. Yes, I wouldn't have gotten the job if one (or both) of the older couple whose apartment it was hadn't wanted to shtup me. But while I was working for them, their attitude was flirty but hands-off. Initiating something was up to me--and maybe if we'd had more time (the one who'd hired me died while I was in Germany) I would have.

So now I'm left with the question Is this what I want to do and why? And I'm still working that part out.

I finally heard from Pasillero. Yesterday morning, I decided to use the holiday as an excuse to send greetings, figuring that I probably wouldn't get a response. My plan was to follow up with a last-ditch attempt today or tomorrow in the hopes of getting some closure and moving on. Then he confounded all that by replying promptly and completely nonchalantly, as if nothing was amiss. "I don't know how we got here," he confessed. Having worked through so much angst already, I was completely blunt in my response: "You stopped texting." I said it was something we needed to talk through face-to-face and he agreed, but he was too tired out after a day spent taking care of his mother. So now the plan is to meet up tonight and I'm trying to work out what I need to say.

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