Ready, Reset, Go! (2006-2008)

I'm not kidding. This is long-assed. But it WAS 10 years.

Do NOT read this if you don't want to. I put a fun little post above which is, I hope where my brain is moving to - enjoying things and laughing, you know.
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Anniversaries of good things are memories of joy.
Anniversaries of bad things are memories of pain.

And the first one is always the strongest.

This is, essentially, the anniversary of the end of what I thought was the rest of my life.

So, please, please, please, understand: As a build-up to this moment, these past few months (not to mention the year) have been a difficult time.

I'm going to post something more light-hearted after this (ie, above this) because I am well aware no one wants to read this shit.

But I realized I had never covered – in a sequential way – what actually happened.

So, for the sake of formality - and just another step in getting it out of my system - here goes.

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Two years before the time John (ex) and I met, I had a year-long relationship collapse when my first boyfriend tells me he's found another guy and they've been dating for a month.

To be fair, he sensed an end that was probably real. I had somehow found myself in a relationship I wasn't planning on and that was not, in the end, what I wanted. I think I was moving to the same end – that is, ending the relationship.

Though not with the taunt of a new boy in the wings.

Probably because of this reality, within a few months I wasn't upset with him.

We even hung out again, a good year later. Though the night was crazy – a long story involving the only knock-down drag-out fistfight I've ever seen in a gay bar – it was nice to part as friends.

With John, my second and last partner, it was different.
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First Years

Ten years ago I met John. I summarize some of the early days here.

His previous "long-term" partner dies. I'm still not convinced Phil had known that they were separated.

Bad things come of this death. I storytell about this here.

We're bumpier at this point (say two years into the relationship). But I expect, with work borne of love, we will overcome.

Four years into it, my father dies. I'm in a bad way. Months later, my grandmother dies. I'm worse. Months after that, my grandfather dies. I'm worn down.

Whatever friends I had in Boston have mainly left.

John's friends generally view me as an intruder, a loser, or both.

This is actually solidified when they were all visiting the AIDS quilt to honor John's ex.

While I am nervous about this, because of the old incidents, I assume I would go.

But then, that very week, my father dies of lymphoma.

Can't make the quilt, not surprisingly.

Later I find he neglects to mention the death of my father as the reason I didn't attend.

He also didn't come to my father's funeral. Or my grandmother's. Or my grandfather's.
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Middle Years

A child enters our life. At first I am blindsided, but over time, I accept and even cherish the unexpected joy – who also happens to be a royal hyperactive pain in the butt. But what kid isn't?

As an aside, his laugh makes me laugh and dance with life, his cries make me weep in deepest empathy. It's what children do, you know. I regret I will not be there to see his future unfold.

Five years in, he begrudgingly allows me to rent a roomAnyway, five years into it, John buys a new house. He wants a new life with none of the roomies and tenants he had to deal with before. He once even says maybe I'll live with him. That'd be nice.

But, suddenly he's filling the new house with all his old roomies and tenants. And not me.

It comes to a head and I confront him on it.

He, very very grudgingly decides to allow me to rent a room.
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First wave attack

A few years later, he's often laden with rubbers, lube, and poppers which, of course, I have not seen. With me he assumed it was ok to not use rubbers. And the poppers – well, I don't need them at all, and he never used them around me. So the math way easy, in this case.

He's not using the rubbers, lube, or poppers for anything, of course.He says people at the bars just keep throwing the rubbers – and the lube and the poppers – at him. He's not using them for anything, of course.

Jebus! What a fucking moron.

But, whatever. I'm insecure. I'm trusting. I give people second chances.

Sigh… Whatever…
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Second wave attack

A year later, I'm in a tense time in my life, as I'm about to defend my doctoral thesis in two days. I'm nervous, of course.

Being technically inept, he uses my computer to do his AOL email. At the time, even I have an AOL account. In a fit of procrastination-induced housekeeping, I decide to purge my email inbox.

Two days before my thesis defense, he's making a date to fuck.As I begin to read my most recent email, I realize it's not my email at all. It's his. He was just using it and was still logged in. He's making a date to fuck – and whatever.

Two days before my thesis defense.

We talk. He's defensive at first.

"Why were you reading my email?"
"Dude, that's your fault – It's my computer and you don't even close your email out? Don't argue with how I found out, it was innocent on my part, which is more than I can say for you. And plus, it serves you right, you fucking moron."

(Course, I didn't say that last part).

Anyway, I absorb it. And time goes on.

We're growing more separate.

See, somewhere, I assumed he was doing all this to me because I was an ugly non-erection inducing loser.

And, over so many years, I've become scared of being any more imperfect than I already am. I'm worried I won't perform well in bed. I'm having health problems. I'm not the brainless unquestioning fuckbag he was looking for.

And I guess I was afraid of losing a relationship because of that. So I figured if we don't have sex and somehow still stay together, it'll be kinda ok.

In other words, it was warped.


I also figure at this point I can fuck around, also.

Random guys, "friends" of his, whatever.
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More sadness

One of our roommates dies (Karposi's Sarcoma).

The next month, John's mother dies.

The next month, John's brother (the father of the child in our life) dies of an overdose.

If there was any question of who has custody of this poor, loving child, it is gone now.

(And, for what it's worth, I was at John's side for all these funerals, and for the struggles of being a parent)
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Third wave attack

A few years later – let's say 8 years into it – I'm having a career crisis. I want to quit the sciences. I want to make a more immediate difference in the world. I want to help in politics, advocacy, something.

I know I'm going to quit my job.

A friend arranges an interview with a US Congressman.

Always says he slept in his car.Meanwhile, he's been working a night or two a week at the Ramrod. Almost without fail, he never returns before late morning. Always says he's slept in his car.

Yeah - cause he thinks I'm a complete moron.

And I am, but only cause I didn't beat the shit out of him.

But at least he never brought a trick home - into our house - with me in it... right?

Anyway, I'm nervous as fuck about this interview.

Normally, I slept so soundly, I never knew.I'm sleeping in my room - a place I've come to end up more often than not - and I wake up way too early, I'm so nervous.

I hear sex upstairs.

In a web of disbelief, I walk up to John's room and walk in.

"Uh oh," the other guy says.

And I walk out.


We talk.

He apologizes, partly.

He says, "Usually, you sleep so soundly, you would never have known".


Maybe that's when I stopped sleeping well.


But I'm still there.

Because I'm a moron.
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Final assault

Two years later – or 10 years into it – well, that's when I'm in the early months of blogging.

I know something's jumped the shark. Too many things to overlook, even for me.

We talk.

It's a new day for him!He's had a new boyfriend for a few months. It's a new day for him! And, you know, he decided that I would have no problem with this.

But, boy he'd like me to stick around.

This is, I assume for two reasons.

1) I'll continue to hang around and watch the child while he cements his new relationship.
2) He'd like me to watch as his new love moves in.

And he assumes I'll have no problem with this.

And why shouldn't he.

I've let him fuck me over so badly for so long.

He figures he can still enjoy some more fucking me over, I figure.


I guess that's when I realized I'd been played for a fool for a fucking long time.


If I was a violent person, I promise you, he would have become permanently maimed.

But I'm not, so I simply leave.


The end.
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I loved him and he didn't love me.

He found a convenient loser (ie, me) to fuck over without even having to actually fuck me. And I'm sure that relieved him - god forbid he'd want me to horrify him with sex.

Ok – that's partly the self-revulsion I'm still fighting.
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Now the parallels between my first relationship and my second, aside from the latter being 10 times longer than the former, do not escape me.

However, in the former, there was little question that he regretted to circumstances.

In the later, it was clear that he couldn't conceive of why I would be bothered by this circumstance.

That's when I realized I had been living with a man with no soul.

(OK, that's just an assumption based on mountains of evidence)

The whole experience was rather brain-fracturing.

Humiliated (all his friends knew) and tormented (he kept going out with this other asswipe before I could move out of the house).

You know, I never met the disgusting little man that John replaced me with. I caught glimpse of him, once – Oh and how fucking nasty was that moment – but I was so blind with rage, I didn't focus on him. All I saw was violence.

And, as I've said, I'm not a violent man, so I tend to blot out such thoughts and sights.
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If I could have magically started a whole new set of romances – fuckbuddies, boyfriends, bff's, whatever – I might have let the whole decade fade away more easily. But I haven't had any such luck.

I still hold with me the assumptions that I am ugly, freakish, unfuckable, unlovable – a feeling that was solidified by my relationship with John.

So you can imagine that, unlike after the first relationship, I'm not so willing to be "friends".

And perhaps you can understand the difficulty in "letting it go".
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Anniversaries of good things are memories of joy.
Anniversaries of bad things are memories of pain.

And the first one is always the strongest.
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I still hold with me the assumptions that I am a joke – that I am not worthy of love and lust.

I want to have those assumptions destroyed.

I am tired of them.

I'm so fucking much better than that.

With all my quirks and problems, any guy out there would be the luckiest guy in the world if they had me.

They would only have to learn, just as I would learn, that we have to grow and adapt – together.