2001-08-08 - 12:51 a.m.
Shelter and Sustenance

Shelter and Sustenance

Good God, I’m glad to be writing. And I feel out of practice. Thanks again to all the wonderful readers and writers who’ve been keeping these pages full of guest spots!

(Oh yeah, and I love reading your guestbook entries and emails too, by the way. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to answer them with any regularity over the next month but once I get settled after the move I’ll be my usual responsive self, eh?)

Home, Again

Okay. I am back from the big city (3 ½ weeks till I move there, but who’s counting?) and I have a fabulous new apartment.

My good friend (and ex-lover) Matt has always said I have a horseshoe up my ass when it comes to this sort of thing. I never let him top me back in the late 80s, so I guess he can’t say I’ve had his horse-dick up there. But that’s another story.

Now where was I?

Oh yeah, so I’m lucky when it comes to shit like finding a place to live.

Listen to this:

I got into town Thursday night, checked in at the Y—more about that later—and had dinner with my ex-boyfriend Colin—more about him later—and then I was tired. I walked up and down the gay street, drowsily cruising boys and trying to calm my panic about beginning the apartment hunt first thing Friday morning. (Apartments are not only expensive in this new city, but also extremely scarce. And I simply had to find one during this weekend trip.)

I wandered into the grocery store to pick up some toiletries and potato chips. And there he was, browsing in the baking goods aisle: Bruce.

Now I knew Bruce slightly, years ago: we’re talking the mid-to-late eighties, when I first came out in the dinky little university town I lived in then. Bruce was a well-known homosexual about town: dashing and popular and forever on the arm of his even more gorgeous lover, Justin. Let me tell ya, Justin was to die for.

I’ll never forget my 21st birthday party. I was dating Colin at the time, who rented the upstairs suite at Bruce and Justin’s house; that’s how I got to know these two slightly. So they came to my party, at which I got rip-roaring drunk. I begged Justin to dance, and I’ll never forget the couple slow songs I staggered to, pressed up against that lean, muscular body, his thigh royally-bumping my woody.

Sheesh.

Anyway, at some point after that Bruce and Justin parted ways, and then I moved away. Shortly after I moved back there three years later—yeah yeah, I know: I move around a lot—Bruce had to leave town suddenly.

You see, he’d had a fun time in the shower at his gym with some young guy: the young guy turned out to be 15. Oops. What’s more, after all was said and done, the young guy had some guilt attack or something—I don’t claim to know the whole story here—and told his dad what happened. So later that day, the police showed up on Bruce’s doorstep. Rather than fight the charges—what exactly the charges were, I don’t know—and plead that the groping or cock-sucking or whatever was consensual, Bruce fled.

He vanished, it turns out, to the big city I’ll be moving to. I saw him when I was there the May long weekend, and had a decent chat. But I’ve never known him all that well, so when I spotted him grocery-shopping at 10:30 pm Thursday night—he didn’t see me—my first instinct was to ignore him.

And then I thought to myself, “Now look here: you are desperate to find a place to live. You need to make contact with absolutely everyone you know who lives here and let them know your mission.”

So I did just that. When I went up to Bruce and revealed my quest, his eyes widened. “I’m dying to get out of my lease,” he said. “I just live around the corner. Wanna come over and see the place?”

Too good to be true, or what?

Turns out Bruce has a large one bedroom. He moved in just a couple months ago—his first downtown apartment in all the years he’s been living here—and has discovered that the smog (something I barely noticed, having lived in Toronto—pollution capital of Canada—for six years) wreaks havoc with his allergies.

It was that simple, eh? Bruce and I talked over all the details, and we’re going to be a little sneaky about it. He doesn’t think his landlord would go for an immediate transfer of the lease because I don’t have a permanent job lined up yet. So until I do, we’re going to pretend that I’m moving in as Bruce’s roommate. He’s already got a place to move into for September 1st, but for the first month or so he’ll “pretend” to still be residing at his old place with me; once I get a job, we’ll approach the landlord about signing over the lease.

The cost of living in this city is quite high, and so apartments are incredibly expensive. I’m paying $765 a month for this large one bedroom with hardwood floors and 9” high ceilings; believe me when I say that’s a steal. (The only other place I looked at was a shoebox one bedroom—glorified bachelor pad, really—for $940.)

My pad is three blocks from the big gay street, right downtown where all the action is. So yeah, the horseshoe-up-my-ass syndrome continues.

Friends: Genesis & Genitalia

I had some interesting sexual and erotic experiences this weekend. I’m dying to write about them. But you know what? While I was away I thought a lot about life—my life, queer life, the life I’ve led these past couple years, what life might be like in this big new metropolis with its humongous gay ghetto—and one of the richest aspects of my big gay life is its (mostly platonic) friendships. And I have not done justice to that fertile dimension of my experience in these “pages”.

For instance, I visited the “new big city” in May and virtually all I wrote about were the erotic shenanigans. In fact, I reconnected with old friends that weekend and some of those reunions played a big factor in my ultimate decision to move.

Too, this past weekend I ran into more folks I’d lost track of: everyone, it seems, ends up living in this city sooner or later.

I probably have 10,000 words to spurt about my Bacchanalian misadventures. believe you me: I’m itching to tell you all about it.

But for now I want to talk about the friendship side of my life.

And now as I write—it’s 11:30 pm, after a wild and wooly weekend—I don’t think I’m going to get very far in cataloguing my newly-rediscovered friends either.

Alrighty, here’s a synopsis.

Colin: Colin and I dated for about three or four months in 1988. We actually hooked up New Year’s Eve, 1987. I remember that we had inebriated sex in my parents’ bed that night (don’t worry, Mom and Dad are sound sleepers—just kidding, they were away) and that Colin farted in the middle of our romp. Two firsts in one night for 21 year old me, eh?

He was the first guy I ever said “I love you” to; unfortunately, I didn’t mean it. Or not in the way he needed me to mean it. I didn’t know much about love back then. (Yeah, I know; some things never change.) Colin got clingy; I pulled away. Then—the night after I slept with Joey—I broke up with him. Two or three weeks later, I met my first lover, Matt.

A couple years and a lot of wound-licking later, Colin and I became great friends; he moved away to another city with a new lover and we lost track. So I’m delighted we’ll be geographically proximate once again. He’s a great guy, a talented artist, and it’s going to be great to hang out. Colin, now pushing 40, is in a new relationship with a much younger Asian guy, Chang, who I already adore.

Ethan: I first met Ethan about ten years ago; he started dating my good friend Rob at the same time as I had a one-nighter with his extremely recent ex. The first words out of Ethan’s mouth when Rob introduced us? “Hey, I heard you slept with my ex; geez, we four should double-date, eh?” I knew we’d get along from that moment on. And we did.

Ethan and Rob dated for approximately ten minutes, and then became friends. By the time I moved away a few years later, Ethan and I were close buddies; we acknowledged a mutual attraction that we never felt compelled to consummate.

Again, Ethan and I lost touch over the years, and he’s been living in the big city for about five years now. We don’t have as much in common as we once did, and I can already sense I won’t be socializing a lot with he and his circle of friends; but I can still taste that old resonance of heart and mind, too. We shaln’t hang out on any frequent basis, but I predict that Ethan and I will get together for occasional, rich conversations. Sounds great to me.

Jordy: Jordy is such a sweetheart. I first met him at a gay bar a decade ago; at the time he was just starting to come out. We went for coffee; he made it very clear he didn’t need or want sex so much as he wanted a gay guy to talk to, to befriend. While I never lost my attraction to him—such a sexy, creative, high-spirited guy!—I was happy to get to know him and provide support at that early stage of his journey.

Later Jordy became totally infatuated with a friend of mine, Darrell; unfortunately he got so weirdly obsessive over him that both Darrell—who wasn’t interested in Jordy “in that way”—and I stopped speaking to him for a few months. But that all got sorted out and we were all friends again.

To mark my going-away to Toronto back in ’93, a group of my gay friends congregated at a rural bed & breakfast place to see me off, including Jordy and Darrell. Darrell ended up hooking up with Ethan (see above) and they had a few months’ long fling.

Meanwhile, on the last night for some reason Jordy and I were sharing a bed. I don’t remember why; I only remember not minding, not minding one bit. I’d always flirted with him, which always made him giggle, but I didn’t expect anything to happen that night. Well, Jordy decided that his farewell gift to me would be, um, his dick. At about 4 am he woke me up by placing my hands on a most-sizeable bulge tenting out his undies. Let’s just say I woke right up. He lay there and let me blow him, cumming in about 20 seconds. (I’m good, eh?) Jordy didn’t touch me at all, turning to face the wall while I jerked my surprised, excited self off.

I felt a tad strange about the experience, but got a chance to have a fabulous chat with Jordy about it a couple years later when I visited “back home”. Then he moved away, and we lost touch.

So I was overjoyed to run into him on the street Friday morning; we hung out a lot this weekend; the creative, affectionate vibe is still strong between us.

Jeff: I wrote the whole story here. It didn’t work out for Jeff and I to get together in May when I visited, and I only saw him and his lover for about a half hour this weekend, stopped in to see him at work. Wow, he’s put on a lot of weight; I’m not sexually attracted to him anymore, but that was almost beside the point. It was just great to see him, to meet his new lover. Looking forward to spending more time with him once I get moved. The impish energy still zings back and forth between us. Memories…

Sex does not usually remain part of the ongoingness I enjoy with most gay men I adore, but eros has indeed woven itself through all these relationships. As I continue to puzzle over my dick-heart dichotomy, I am grateful for the sustenance their friendship provides.

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