A Profusely Emphatic "I'm Sorry"

Sometimes it’s foolish to let yourself feel all the things your heart tells you to feel. But there are those rare occasions where it’s even more foolish not to. The trouble lies in the ability to distinguish between when you are supposed to let your heart tell you how it feels and when you need to stop being foolish. No meter exists. A light won’t flash, an alarm won’t sound, a whistle won’t blow. The proverbial angel and devil battling for your decision only appears in cartoons; in my mind, the teenage girl and the old cynic take their place on opposite sides of my collarbone.

The most recent battle came in a potential visit from birthday boy. He’s in the shit. No one would deny that. When I last saw him—-three weeks ago-—we had spent most of our time talking about his friend’s suicide. I happily expended my emotional energy on listening to him and holding him. It didn’t make sense to have sex; he was too grief-stricken. I understood that and was glad I could help. But, after five weeks of not having sex, I felt a little . . . ripe. I planned a day of hooky that coincided with one of his days off. As time ticked away and I waited for him to let me know when he would arrive, the teenage girl sank into her notebook to draw hearts and write bad poetry as the cynic rocked proudly in his chair, content in his appropriate assessment: he would not be coming. Apologies and promises to meet for brunch the next day followed, but the next day followed only with a profusely emphatic “I’m sorry.”

Any reaction on my part seems flawed. We can’t break up because we’re not together. I can’t just stop talking to him because then I feel like I just added to his emotional mess. My inability to decide which move to make next comes from the inability to tell the difference between a man who is in the shit and a man who is shit.

Momentary Distraction

In my attempt at momentary distraction, I find exactly what I’m looking for: hot gym manager. This past May, I “met” hot gym manager on my “dating” website. We spoke for a while and he invited me to the small gym that he manages for an early morning workout. One of my not-so-secret fantasies is having sex at the gym. Something about a sweaty man with a polite post-workout funk gets a certain muscle ready for some exercise. This fantasy excludes the nasty sex that happens in the showers, stalls, and saunas of the most popular gym in New York. No, I want something after hours, where we would be free to use the equipment creatively and without voyeurs feasting their eyes on our newly acquired playground.

Every part of me was up early that Saturday morning I went to go work out with hot gym manager. The gym, not quite as empty as I had hoped, had the sharp smell of freshly cleaned pool. He led me through a total body workout, unabashedly bending in front of me to show me the right pose and eagerly supporting my arms, back, and thighs in various lifting positions. After I spent all my energy on air bicycles, he popped off the mat and urged me to come into the hot tub. I soaked my sore body in the warm jacuzzi and we chatted and played footsie under the bubbles. Again, he popped up, “Let’s go to the sauna.” From hot water to hotter coals, sweat came for a number of reasons as he spread out and relaxed in the wooden jungle. After my body poured out all its toxins, he took me to the shower. The marbled glass of the stalls could not hide my excitement as I watched him shower in the stall next to me. We made eye contact through the glass. He smiled, then turned off the water, and walked back to the locker room. I slowly made the connections in my mind: he wanted to be friends. I walked home slowly, carefully trying not to exacerbate the sudden blueness I felt.

The attention hot gym manager gives me is innocent in spite of my desires, which made him the perfect distraction from birthday boy. I knew nothing was going to happen. “Come, let’s go get some food,” he texted me on a Sunday that had me suffering from a lack of birthday boy attention the night before. Of course, I would go visit him at work; he was safe. He bought me a sandwich and we watched a movie at his desk while the elderly Upper West Siders got their heart rate up for the day. Thoughts of birthday boy fluttered in the margins of my mind as the slightness of sexual tension—never to be fulfilled—stood before me in nylon breakaway pants.

A Little Distraction

Perhaps others may disagree, which I’m open to, but the first thing that popped into my mind was date multiple people. There’s no law, legal or social, that prevents me from seeing other men while my interest most obviously lies in the man that I met on my birthday. A little distraction from the main goal can provide some much needed focus. I also get to split my attention between several men so that I don’t harp on the one special man’s text. This is similar to having a man on the back burner, but meant for people with a greater need to multi-task their men—it’s like having a whole stove full of pots and something baking in the oven, too.

A co-worker set me up with one of the teachers at her old school. She gave me his number and I called that night. To my surprise (and hers!), we talked on the phone for two hours. He, like every other man I meet, has a lot going on and we wouldn’t be able to get together until the next week. Before I got a chance to see co-worker set-up, the middle school teacher texted me randomly on Thanksgiving, “Happy Thanksgiving. I think about you quite often and I hope all is well with you. Enjoy this beautiful day.” What do I do with that? We texted back and forth before deciding that we should go for drinks during the week. I thought we had a good exchange. I thought the co-worker set-up and I had an equally promising exchange over drinks two days later. Neither have responded to texts or calls.

Solution: online “dating” website that I haven’t visited in over a month. I go on when the getting of men gets tough. I’m not particularly upset at birthday boy and the fact that two men gave me the pocket veto doesn’t really bother me either. But, to be honest, a little male attention can lift the self-esteem back to a comfortable height. The struggle comes from birthday boy. We’re not committed or exclusive or anything like that, so I suppose the dilemma starts and ends solely within my mind: when I’m genuinely interested in one guy, I can’t mess around with another. This exposes the inherent flaw in my desire to date multiple people. Ironically, instead of squandering my attention so that my heart doesn’t focus solely on birthday boy, I wind up wanting only him, unaffected by unreturned flirtations.

That Third Elusive Component

Obviously, I shouldn’t base all of my happiness on men. I think the reason that I have so much frustration, grief, and anxiety with romance is because I have everything else. I realize that sounds a bit cocky. I see things the same way Carrie does on an episode of Sex & the City; all New Yorkers are searching for three thing: a job, an apartment, and a man. Unfortunately, you can only have two out of three at any one time. As torturous as teaching can be, I still can’t imagine going to work every morning and not being challenged by the bright, smiling faces of adolescents each day. Teaching is more than a job; it’s a career and at twenty-five, how many others can say they have a career (with decent pay and good benefits)? My apartment is small, but it’s in a great neighborhood and I have a great relationship with my roommate. So why not strive for perfection, prove Ms. Bradshaw wrong, and get that third elusive component?

Patience escapes me. I want to be able to wait, to take things slow, to let my feelings and his run their course. This feels unattainable and I can’t quite determine why. Confession: I’m an only child. I grew up with three adults in my household, all of whom were eager to give me their attention. Does this mean I am doomed to forever expect the same thing from a potential partner? I hope not! How do I manage my impatience so that I can, like Toni Braxton suggests, “Let It Flow”?

De Facto Ostracism

I hope for him being wrong because I don’t think I could ever give up hope and consign myself to being alone. This Christmas, I’ll be sitting amongst family as the only one not in a relationship. It makes sense that my grandparents, my parents, and my aunt and uncle look at each other lovingly—they deserve to be happy and it makes me happy that they are together. Then I will look over at both of my cousins, who bring their significant others to dinner. I enjoy the company of these new additions to my family, but I somehow only see myself as very alone and very gay.

Being single in a group of people doesn’t always bring about such sharp feelings of loneliness, but being the only gay person and the only single person just smacks of de facto ostracism. My imagination can’t help but fast forward twenty years. My parents and aunt and uncle are enjoying their old age with each other, my cousins have begun their own families, and I’m the gay uncle who comes and goes to family events by himself. The weight of my sexuality overburdens the feelings of loneliness. At a certain point, I wonder if it would be easier to couple up with a woman; all the straight people in my family seem to have found someone.

Perhaps I resent my cowardly friend for his forwardness. The psychological game he plays with himself that allows him to enter into a win/win situation seems so tempting sometimes. If I put up a front of accepting defeat before I actually lose, then I, too, can have a sense of comfort if I lose at my own losing bet. For me, this game lacks viability. I cannot trap myself in mental fake outs to perhaps wind up winning. Hope comes from within to sustain the believer in the goal. I hold onto that hope, even if its validation comes from the bring that tells me I have a text. My birthday present sends me a message, “Please know that if I didn’t have to work, I’d be there, holding you and looking into your eyes. And of course cracking jokes and tickling you.” The corners of my mouth turn up, the tears of frustrating welling up in my eyes evaporate, hope is restored.

Coward's Logic

Without my dude on the back burner, I was forced to reach back into my dating missteps to find some entertainment when birthday present bailed on me without warning. With the World Series freshly over, I found myself newly connected with adorable, mixed sports-lover. We cheered for opposite teams, but tension sparked feisty texts. We met at a club, danced, flirted. At a diner afterwards, I began to remember his issues. He’s terribly afraid. I’m not sure what inspired his dating phobia, but talking with him reminded me of his deep cynicism. He claims that he hates sex, finds cuddling repulsive, and consistently exclaim, “What’s the point? I’m going to end up alone anyway.” As with all things, he comes on quite strong—sharp and bitter like poorly sweetened lemonade that hits you right in the jaw with a surprise stab. Without even considering his friend’s presence at the table, I reminded him that he enjoyed sex when we had it and then afterwards he fell asleep in my arms. “That was different,” he protested, “I was drunk.”

I imagined us on the street, me calling him a cab and telling the driver, “The nearest AA meeting, please.” This type of destructive thinking is the loud coward’s logic. Unlike most cowards, some think they can mask their craven thoughts with bravado, boisterously claiming self-imposed platitudes that no one would dare dispel. The logic, however, reveals a glimmer of hope. The loud coward tries to capitalize on the win/win situation. If my former love interest does wind up alone, he can always bitterly claim “I told you so.” However, if he finds someone with whom he can enjoy sex and stand to cuddle afterwards, then he still “wins” because he reaches partnership with an individual he loves and wouldn’t mind being wrong. I explained this to him. He changed the topic. Typical: what makes a coward craven is his inability to face his own fears. I suppose he wouldn’t even name this trait as cowardly or fearful. I’d bet he call himself pragmatic.

He did say something interesting while we were out. He said that a man is not ready to enter into a relationship until he has faced the fact that he could very well spend the rest of his life alone. Once he becomes content with the prospect of being alone—not lonely, but alone—then his relationships will be much stronger.

All Rondezvous Have to End

But, everyone knows that you never move onto the next one. Your first instinct is to move back to the old one. Last month, I read a New York Magazine article about sex diaries. The editor who compiled all the sex diaries the people of New York posted mentioned “the lover on the back burner,” pointing out that every unattached individual, no matter if they have someone on the front burner that they focus most of their energies on, has someone that they can call, “just in case.” Just in case they don’t have a date on Saturday night. Just in case they need a date for a wedding. Just in case they need a little sumthin’ sumthin’ at two in the morning. Just in case the one on the front burner turns out to disappoint rather than satisfy at any particular moment.

My dude on the back burner, whom I referred to as my “jump off” to friends, proved to be intolerable after a good three months of what can be termed nothing else other than hot sex. Several key factors remained a mystery: name, age, occupation. He was forward, direct, smooth. I guess he was in his late thirties; I never asked because, well, it’s rude, but also because I have a very young mother and I would have creeped myself out before my first orgasm if I knew he was closer in age to her than me. He was short enough so that even I could see the shine on top of his shaved head. I was never a big fan of the purposefully bald until my palm gripped the smooth skin stretched over his skull when he went down on me. The texture of his sweaty scalp on my smooth palm felt slick and slightly morbid, which oddly excited me more than I thought it would. Perhaps it was how well he did everything that made me not care that I technically could not call out his name in bed—-or in the bushes of Central Park where we flipped one night in August. He put so much effort into each stroke of his hands, each kiss of my neck, each thrust of his body. Sweat poured off his well-developed chest, flooded down his sinewy back, slid between his smooth cheeks.

But, sadly, all rendezvous with him had to end. Nothing we did together went wrong. He seemed the perfect hook up until he started texting me. Now, I will fully accept any snobbery associated with being a teacher of English. Punctuation is my friend and if I can’t spell it, then I figure out how to do so properly. Understandably, not everyone has this same drive. My preference, however, is to only surround myself with students who do not have this drive and for me to get paid to help them have that drive. No one paid me to instill the same drive in my hook up, so when it came to a point where I had to say, “Half the time, your texts make no sense,” it also came to the point where I stopped responding to them.