since you asked--the sober version

[and the navel-gazing continues . . .]


not satisfied with my answer, huh?  well, i'm not really, either, so lemme try again.

as you know, back when i first hit town i began my gay career by attending the wednesday-night group rap sessions at the LA gay & lesbian center.  in retrospect, probably a mistake--mostly a buncha lonely misfit-types sitting around talking about their misfit loneliness, interspersed with a few clueless newbies like myself.  not exactly the best introduction to the life, but what the hell did i know?  i had no steve kuzi to guide me this time.

anyway, that very first night, in response to my introduction, one of the guys--a fat, loud, outspoken mid-fifties new-yorker named art, cut through all the murmured greetings and socializing suggestions by saying, "screw these guys--if i were your age and looked like you, i'd be out sucking and fucking every goddam night."  i tucked this little pearl of wisdom away for future examination.

a couple weeks later, i hooked up for the very first time with one of the guys in the group, a shy, sweet latin boy who told me afterwards, "i'm so glad i caught you now."  when i asked what he meant, he said, "you know--you're all new, at the height of your studliness (i never forgot that phrase).  you've got your whole gay life in front of you.  you're gonna play around for a little while with a lotta cute guys, and then you're gonna meet the one, settle down and make some lucky guy a great husband."

didn't quite turn out that way, did it?

i spend a lot of time second-guessing the choices i've made in my life--for instance, i wonder sometimes how differently things mighta turned out for me if my first gay housemates had been a couple high-minded ph.d's instead of royce and paul--but for the most part, and in the end, i think destiny wins out, and we end up who we were meant to be.

the kid was half-right; i possessed one of the components for gay success--i was new, cute and studly--but i was sorely lacking in the other.  to put it bluntly, i was not, and am not, much fun to be around.  i don't care for most people, nor they for me.  crowds make me nervous, and i really don't enjoy going out and doing things.  i'm depressive and negative and overly-critical, i don't think like the herd, and most guys i meet aren't willing put up with me for more than about five minutes unless my dick is up their ass.

and don't tell me i'm wrong, rob--hell, even you, my best and oldest friend in LA, can only take me in small doses up-close-and-personal these days.  before guttermorality came along and revived our relationship, i saw you once a year for maybe an hour, tops--and that's if i was lucky.  now, thanks to the blog and email, we spend long stretches together like we did when we first met, if only at digital arms-length.  i've always appreciated the irony in that; i wonder if you ever do.

and speaking of this goddam blog, that's another thing.  what started out as a drunken lark very quickly became a personal daily referendum--a self-worth test, as it were.  if i couldn't suck people in with my personal magnetism, could i maybe do it with my words?  even as my writing has exponentially improved, the answer to that question, as has been clearly demonstrated by my stats and comment count over lo these past four-plus years, has remained a resounding and unmistakeable "fuck no."  i'm becoming bitter about this, it ain't a good look on me, it's starting to bleed into my writing, and if i don't get some interaction going here pretty soon, i'm taking this sucker private, extending invitations to the chosen few, and all the lurkers--and yeah, you know who you are--can go fuck themselves and feast on their trainwrecks elsewhere.

they say there's a lid out there for every pot, and for awhile i thought i'd found mine in v--he loved everything about me everybody else doesn't, he put up with my shit, he could keep up with me, and he stuck around through thick and thin.  and i loved him back as best i could, and i really tried (or so i tell myself), but in the end, i could never give my heart to an overgrown kid who'd joyously spend $200 on an authentic, george lucas-authorized light saber when he could barely make his rent.  he's gone now, who knows where--finally gave up on the lost cause, i guess.  the good half of me hopes he's found someone fun who deserves his sweet, sexy, eternally irresponsible ass--when the bad half isn't damning him to hell for abandoning me, that is.

so here i sit--crabby, middle-aged and alone.  is that the worst thing in the world?  i dunno; for me, probably not.

i had my shot, rob--i was a hot commodity there for a precious little while, and you would probably say that instead of investing my limited capital wisely for long-term growth, i blew it all on short-term, rapidly-depreciating assets.  and while that's probably true, even back in my glory days--when cute, hot, desirable guys were asking me for dates instead of just dick--i couldn't in my wildest dreams imagine myself being shackled to even the best of 'em.

i really don't know how to end this post except to fall back on those words my widowed, one-man-woman mother--and now i--live by:  the only thing worse than being alone is wishing you were.

as v would say if he were here, "true dat."