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."

since you asked

the following is a long, rambling answer to a short, pointed question.  i'm posting it here because this is where i keep such things now, secure in the knowledge that nobody'll ever find 'em.

as for the old drivers license above, i found it when i was packing to move, remembered how much i hated that photo--the ugly boy with the w.c. fields nose.  god, we can be so dumb when we're young.



did i ever tell you about st. patrick's day 1985, rob?  i spent that evening at hall's in austin, steve kuzi by my side; by that time we were a fixture in the place--the buff, burly protector and the scared-wabbit newbie.  that night would be different, though; towards midnight, drunk off my ass, i broke away from kuzi for the first time ever, wandered off on my own, found a cute boy who had tried unsuccessfully for weeks to catch my eye, walked up to him and asked his disbelieving ass if he wanted to give me my first gay kiss.

the next two hours were a happy blur; word spread quickly that the new guy was off his leash--i must've gotten two or three dozen first gay kisses that night.  it was probably the most fun i've ever had in a gay crowd (with the possible exception of that time at sunset street fair when your friend jonathan and i drunkenly three-way made out with that really hot guy at detour that i ended up going home with--you remember that, right?).

next time i walked into halls, i was back to my usual sober, shut-down self, welded at the hip to kuzi, not looking left or right.  people eventually got the message, left me alone.

paulo murillo, that perennial weho man-about-town (check out his blog--it's a hoot), opines that there are basically two kindsa fags:  those who are invited to the party and those who aren't, and that most fag-bitchy bitterness originates from those who are wrecked to find themselves in the latter group.

while i think there is much truth there, being the social type that he is, ol' paulo could never understand someone who would trash his invitation unopened.

*     *     *     *     *

i've always been that way;  while there are many things i would change about my high-school years if i could, joining a clique would not be one of 'em.  while in college, my idle fantasies about hanging with those intoxicatingly-cute fraternity boys in their polo shirts and tony lamas evaporated the first time i attended one of their parties.

and you remember my first and only circuit event--white party 1993, right?  i enjoyed the drive to palm springs with you, and throwing back a few with your friends in our suite, but as for the actual party itself, lemme just say that as soon as that godawful music started pounding and those shirtless, manicured, meth-addled faggots started writhing, i couldn't cut one outta the herd and drag his tweaking ass back to his room fast enough.

my heart has always been a lonely hunter, rob, and now here i find myself, having put in twenty-three boy-chasing years in a city that's never been home, sitting here by myself.

your question--why, at my age, i'm still "fetishizing youth"--misses the point; i could never fall in love with any of the boys i sleep with, nor most of 'em with me. my heart, if it ever falls, will fall for an equal.  i don't seek out the young; i seek out the unruined--which, in this town, anyway, seem to be one and the same.  i'd love to find a man who could challenge me to give it up for him, but i've never let myself learn how; in the solitary circles in which i run, most of the guys anywhere near my age are far more fucked up than i am.

i've often wondered how differently things might've turned out for the boy in that picture up there if the coin had landed tails instead of heads, and he had ended up on the east coast instead--maybe he'd have found that fabled faggot algonquin round table, which is the only clique to which he's ever wanted to belong.

or maybe that's just a cop-out--whatever; i gotta take my vitamins, catch some zzzzz's.  

it's gonna be a busy week.

luv, 

me