My little sister s getting married. Date not set yet (i.e. she s not pregnant). That hasn t stopped our dearly beloved radical if-a-priest-comes-near-my-coffin-I ll-spit-at-him mother from going wholeheartedly potty with plans to redecorate the entire house in gleeful anticipation of the expected and expectant hordes.
I don t wish to dampen her enthusiasm for one moment; her joy at her daughter s impending nuptials is heartwarming and impossible to begrudge. Even if I detect a hint of giddy relief that one of her two thirty something children has finally seen sense.
Here s an interesting thing. None of my wide circle of friends is married. Of all my gay male friends, none of them is in a relationship that has lasted longer than a couple of years, and most are currently single. The concept of long-term commitment is familiar to us all; but the practice of it, in its traditional manifestation, is a mystery. I know that my group of friends is hardly representative of anything, not even a particular generation. I, a recidivist bachelor gay, have chosen my friends, and they have chosen me. It seems I have an unconscious ban on married people entering into my world.
Well, that ban is going to be lifted next year. I ll have a brother-in-law. Ooer. At least he s a friend of mine. That should sweeten the pill.
If I am to look for reasons as to why it seems that I am light years away from finding a husband, there are two places to look, inside and outside. Both are valid, as far as they go; although I know that love and life don t play according to any causal rules. Ultimately the only choice you have is to like yourself or not, to believe in yourself or not.
Recently, it seems I ve made some good choices for myself. One of them was a decision to stop having sex. I don t remember the moment it happened; but I do remember realising that somehow the decision had been made. Over the summer, I realised that I was sounding like a cracked record to myself. It was like complaining that my head really hurt when I bashed it against a wall. So I ve stopped bashing it against a wall.
lame excuses
In the space of seven days in July, I had two exchanges with men, which illustrate the quality of my headbashing. One day I had a cheerful call from someone I had met once a couple of months before.
He was Latin, vibrant, humorous and cuddly, all very endearing really. He was a born traveller, he worked for a few months, and then would travel for as long as the money held out. I met him, via a telephone ad, just before he left on one of his journeys. We had a lovely time, and he rang on the eve of his departure to tell me he liked me, in the most romantic broken English. He even sent me a postcard.
This phonecall, on a Wednesday, was from the recently returned traveller, eager to see me again. Throwing caution to the wind, I invited him over to dinner the next evening. I cooked a lovely meal, and we had a lovely, fumbly, garlicky meaning-of-life rich red wine evening. At around 10:30pm he looked at his watch and started a badly-acted, ten-minute backing-out-of-a-corner manoeuvre which left me breathless with exasperation. The fact that we had both just had the most intriguing and sensuous evening with each other counted for nothing against his panic that I might entrap him with expectations.
In the hallway, I asked him for his number again, as I had lost it in the recent move; he stammered out some lame excuse that he was moving in the next few weeks and he didn t know what his new number would be and that he would definitely call me. It was so obviously a barefaced lie that I started making fun of his discomfort, mock-scolding him ` la Anna Magnani. I was trying to be funny, but neither of us was laughing. I couldn t believe that this urbane, sensitive and deep-thinking man could regress to age 6 so quickly. Perhaps it shocked him too, I don t know. He never did call. I took it in my stride.
On the Saturday, I had another phonecall. This was from someone that I had met and enjoyed a couple of times before, a few months previously. To say it was just physical is not right; when physical goes right it helps the world go around. But he had stood me up twice with what I considered lame excuses, I had told him I didn t feel safe seeing someone who couldn t be relied upon to turn up, and that we d better leave it. And so we left it.
He spoke about how I had got him wrong, that he didn t mess people around. After about ten minutes buttering me up, I forgave him, for I was, not surprisingly, in the mood for someone to be nice to me. He began telling me about his life, about his previous lover who had died, about his brutal childhood, and before I knew it, it was two in the morning.
I enjoyed listening to him; I thought him to be honest and his humour was confrontational and energising. I was also aware that he hadn t done much talking before about his bereavement. I felt really close to him, and privileged to hear some of the things he told me. By the time we finished talking, we decided it was too late for one of us to trek across the city; so he said he d crash and come over at lunchtime, and see the new kittens.
some lube
The next day dawned, and he didn t turn up. I rang him at 4pm, and apparently I had just woken him. His excuses had always been that he had fallen asleep, so this was nothing new. He said he d call over in the evening. Which he did. But he needn t have bothered.
He stayed an hour at the end of the sofa, and played with the kittens. He wouldn t accept any tea or coffee from me, wouldn t touch me, wouldn t talk about anything we d talked about the previous night. He was a stranger again. He made to go, and I invited him to stay. He said he couldn t that night, but that he d call me the next day. Did he? No, nor since. Again, I took it in my stride.
I was recounting these seven days to a friend of mine who also happens to be the nearest thing I have to a married friend; she and her partner have been together for years and have a one-year old child. She was wondering how I was reacting to the bodyblows of such a double-whammy of rejections.
I found it interesting that she should use such a word; for I had grown used to such treatment from the boyz in my life, almost numb. I realised that I was hurting, and that something was seriously wrong with me or the vast majority of gay men on the scene, or both, if people could treat each other like that and for it to be accepted as normal. It is not normal.
I don t want it to be my norm.
In the shoulder zip pocket of my bomber jacket, I now carry a sachet of herbal tea, where before there used to be a condom and some lube. Sometimes I feel so holy that I expect to be assumed into heaven at any moment. But most times I don t. n