Wise & Young

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Me, Myself, and I

I’m not pressed.

After a few years of searching, too many dates, and even more well let’s say discretions, I’m done with looking for a relationship. In fact I don’t care anymore if I’m in one or not. In my early twenties I used to see gay and straight people coupled, break up, and repeat this never ending cycle. It seemed that everyone had been in a relationship; even the biggest whores I knew tried it, all except for yours truly. I started to think well is something wrong with me, why haven’t I been in a relationship yet. Was I too shy, thought of purely as a jump off, inhabit the permanent wrong place at the wrong time, looking too hard for love and not letting love find me. All these thoughts and many more culminated in strengthening my determination to be in a relationship, if nothing else than to experience the trials and tribulations necessary for human progression, or so I thought.

I started to change myself, and help “cure” certain things about me that I thought were hindering me from being in a relationship. I went out and bought books that taught you how to speak to anyone about anything, how to open up lines of communications, and how to attract people to you by the use of your personality. Then I went to functions, gay functions to meet use the skills I learned to see how well I had done in the application of such tactics. Book clubs, volunteering for DC’s White Party, gay volleyball games, house parties, birthday parties, networking events, church functions, and just out and about. After every such event I would replay the events in my mind while driving, or taking the metro, giving myself a mental grade, which usually was in direct correlation with the amount of conversations I started or participated in. I usually scored low.

Then I started to set my sights first a little lower, then a lot lower. In the beginning I wanted someone who was emotionally, mentally, and physically together, or in the process of working towards it. Someone who out, preferably a man of color, and someone who I was attracted to, and who was attracted to me, was my “type”. Soon after my only litmus test was attracted to me, which was very dangerous. I met a coke head African, a Cancer survivor who had kicked out his lover of 15 years 3 DAYS before I even knew him, a Marine with Iraqi War syndrome, and guys at Bally’s who suffered from one mental ailment to another.

Concurrently I began to think well maybe I have a reputation of being easy, (in retrospect me having a reputation in DC would be hard to fathom considering how the kids act) or I’m sowing my wild oats with people who would be interested in me but I am “too easy”. On some level I rationalized that I had said I wanted to be with one person, but my actions spoke differently. So I became celibate, for 8 months, never having sex and I felt that I was sexually “pure”, and that maybe this was just what I needed to do, open up my heart not pull down my pants. During this time, I went out with guys, we had dates, we had fun, but just as if I had sex with them, they fell by the way side sooner than I expected. So my celibacy ended, not with the person who I was engaging into a LTR with, but rather at a sex party. I called up two of my friends, and I cried.

To some degree I even think that my wanting to be in a relationship was a driving factor in me wanting to move. At the time, I felt as though I had exhausted the amount of datable men and that Baltimore, and with grand illusions of me traveling to Philly and NYC, had much better prospects. I will say this, the men in Baltimore, and the men in Philly tend to be nicer, down to earth, and generally easier to get along with. But, well beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and for the most part this beholder don’t see it. I mean, jagged teeth, finger waves, knock off Fubu, it’s a bit too much for me. So yes I moved, but to a city where I know no one, and actually have no real motivation to go out and meet new people, explore my surroundings, at all.

So where does this leave me? Here, right here, typing on a laptop on my way to work realizing that I’m happiest being alone. I’m rarely lonely, and when I am, its not really for a bed warmer but the company of my family and friends. I’m happy being alone, I like who I am, and I have more fun dancing around my house, enjoying the music blarred up, cooking up a storm like its Thanksgiving dinner, and more just because, well I can. If someone comes along, sure why the hell not, but if Mr. Right never does, I never will worry. I’m no longer pressed.

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1 Comments:

  • I'm not pressed either. I grew up a fat kid all to often dismissed because he was fat. It wasn't until attending university that I lost the fat. By then, I had suffered all the prejudices of being fat. Coming out stll fat into a gay community where image is everything hurt. I was a virgin before I lost the weight. I am a virgin now after the weight.

    I regret nothing about my past. Being big boned for so long changed my own priorities in life. Books always interested me along with foreign film, jazz, the blues, and on and on. I developed interest outside the stereotype of what I am suppose to like as a black gay man. Today, I know what I want and do not want in another brother. Yes, I am still a virgin but I am a contented virgin knowing my Mr. Right is out there for me. No, I am not a weirdo of some kind. A lot of folks see a virgin my age and think something has to be wrong. There is nothing wrong with me. I just know what I want now more than ever in a brother.

    By Blogger BronzeBuckaroo, at 9:27 PM  

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