When you love someone who doesn't love you, it hurts. It's a hurt that can't be fixed, can't be healed. Paradoxically, I find myself celebrating it. It's not that I enjoy being hurt; it's that I'd rather feel such good feelings about someone than not. To not do so is to be empty; and I know I'm not empty. It's entirely illogical; it's what stops me from disintegrating, and yet, because it's unrequited, it threatens to bring me to my knees in terms of what I believe about myself, what I like about myself. For one can only love, truly, if one's love outweighs one's need. Ironically, that's never more explicit than when love is unrequited.

Do I give up? Do I stop loving? It seems I'm unable to. Am I ashamed of that? I don't think so, although there are times when it seems sorely tempting to concede that love is impossible, and adopt a philosophy that is closer to a rock-bottom existential state, in which one takes one's pleasure where one can, and expects nothing. Healthier, perhaps; but without hope, there's not much point in carrying on. But hope can be a killer too; the Buddhists are down on hope, believing it to be an escape from the moment. Perhaps they're right. But I'm an escapist and I don't know anyone who isn't, to a greater or lesser degree.
As difficult as it is, something has been changed in me and I can't unchange it. I've felt what it's like to be with someone who brings out the most sensitive feelings in me, and for a brief while they were matched. To wish to turn the feelings off because they sting is only natural; I will, in time, learn to find a way of opening up my heart in a different way, to someone else. But no matter how sensible it would seem to move on, it seems that I am powerless. I have let go of him, in that I have accepted the inevitable, and can do nothing to change it; but there is still left a well of warmth that surges up inside me when I'm with him.
For some time since we broke up, I've pretended that I am cool, that I'm able to withstand the implications of unrequited love. I think I can get back on the saddle and pretend that something fundamental hasn't happened. But I'm not cool. I can play The Game of sex with the best of them, but at heart I want to put all the roleplaying and toys and sexual intrigues away and stop playing, to rest instead of fight, to comfort instead of thrill, to relax and be close and hold hands instead of getting high on the testosterone stress of playing out fantasies.
No matter how hard I try to be, how thick a skin I need to develop to join in the rough and tumble of the sport called gay sex, I am unsuited to it. My feelings leak out. I keep on being drawn to it, but it's a distraction, an ersatz intimacy, a mistaken attempt on my part to feel close and engaged with others, when the reality is that sex, as practised by so many gay men, is only fun when you leave your feelings elsewhere.
Well, my feelings are not elsewhere; they're fully present at the moment, warm, soft, and full-blooded. And sad. And I find it so hard to find others who share them who are gay men. It's not that I discount the reactions of my women friends or heterosexual male friends it's simply that, for those men who love men, it seems to be a tougher journey to try to position love at the top of the tree; to admit to vulnerability without it being seen as a weakness, or a symptom of a whining self-indulgent victim mentality, connected to the last time some bastard let you down. I don't feel let down; I don't blame him or anyone else for not matching my feelings. It's life.
In myth, one of the main gay characters in the Greek pantheon was Ganymede, the beautiful youth who was snatched up by Zeus, the bisexual philandering King of the heavens, to be his playmate and cup-bearer. From his name comes the pejorative word catamite, or bum-boy, in the vernacular. In looking up Ganymede's story, there is one fleeting glimpse of him, in another story, when he is found playing dice with Eros, the god of love who was playing with loaded dice, and cheating the hapless Ganymede.
So it seems, in the lives of so many gay men that I know; we're unlucky in love, and learn to accept the roll of the loaded dice as they fall. Those that are lucky enough to find soulmates often find that they have to remove themselves completely from the gay scene to let their relationships flourish, for there is usually one of them who is likely to be tempted with The Game of sex, which is not the most conducive to long-lasting healthy relationships. Not necessarily, of course; but it's common sense.

But then common sense never really applied to love. It's impossible to control; impossible to force it in another. Without the sting of it ending, we would probably be a lot more content; but it seems the sting of Eros' arrow is what brings us in touch with the highest qualities in us, if we don't let them fester in cynicism or bitterness. Yes, love hurts, but if what you love in someone else is good, then it brings it out in you, even if it doesn't work out. It's growth by osmosis; the aspiration alone, if it's done without selfishness, brings its own rewards.
Of course it's not unique to the gay experience, this "love hurts" business. I was dragged out of my depressive state last night by a very sweet young woman who brought me to a gig by Mark Eitzel, a delightfully morose American singer/songwriter, who during one song had the entire audience singing gleefully along to the chorus: "I-don't-know-if-I-will-ever-love-again". He was at his funniest when he told us that he had no self-esteem issues and proceeded to share how once someone shouted at a gig "I love you, Mark" and he heard the words "Fuck you, Mark" so he shouted straight back: "Fuck you too". Fab. "Welcome to my world," he said.
I know that world, and so did everyone else in that sell-out gig. The wonderful thing about creative artists like Eitzel is that when you turn pain into art, something healing happens; the misery of being alone is lessened.

Mark Eitzel s website is at:
www.missionrock.net