There is always something pathetic in a man's desiring of another man. I wish this were not so, and wish it were not such an easy generalization to make, but seriously, even when a gay male likes another gay male, things can never go right, the crushee is filled with rejection (before it has occured), with guilt, and with crushing doubt. Why is it that our earlier method of desiring straight males, as erotic objects we can never have, that would never like us - why is it that we (that I, and many people I know, but mainly I), why is it that we replicate these same methods of desire when we are attracted to a homosexual, filled with frenized panic to the point where the crushee could never like you because you are a pathetic mess?

I started reading Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty today, and I cringed with how familiar the feeling was when the protaganist desired his straight male friend:

Sometimes Toby [the crushee] would have come back, and there would be loud music in the drawing room; or he was in his father's study at the back of the house making international phone calls and having a gin-and-tonic - all this done not in definace of his parents but in rightful imitation of their own freedoms in the place. He would go into the garden and pull his shirt off impatiently and sprawl in a deckchair reading the sport in the Telegraph. Nick would see him from his balcony and go down to join him, slightly breathless, knowing Toby quite liked his rower's body to be looked at. It was the easy charity of beauty. They would have a beer and Toby would say, "My sis all right? Not too mad, I hope," and Nick would say, "She's fine, she's fine," shielding his eyes from the dropping August sun, and smiling back at him with reassurance, among other unguessed emotions.

And with that passage, as spartan as it is with regards to the desire of Nick, I had horrible flashbacks to the same sort of pathetic adoration of straight males, thought to Shane Riley, to Mark F, to Keith, even thought to how I had the same sort of pathetic desire even towards fags, Ben Haber, Evan, and Christopher. Christopher, who I ran into tonight at the Metropolitan and who is the provocation of these thoughts here on desire - the provocation even though I did not exchange one word with him. And probably because of this, because we did not talk, my desire was allowed to bubble to insane proportions and I felt this pathetic feeling. I was sitting outside listening to Peter and Joe when I saw him come outside. I stared at him unseen, sighing with longing. The sight of this normal looking boy inspires the most intense longing in me, the type that makes me feel like a total pathetic loser. Tonight, the feeling of pathetic was amplified because I had written him a long gushing e-mail a while ago which he never responded to and I was embarrassed that this person, that any person, but this person especially, whom I desired so much, did not desire me also, that he never even bothered to reply to the e-mail. I don't understand, surely it must be, because he shows disinterest in me, that I want to melt into the ground at the sight of him. He is beautiful sure, but not especially so, nothing to make me be such a frenzied maniac at just the sight of him. Surely, if anything ever happened with him, the desire would vanish, my calm would be restored, and he would be just christopher, not [in the most swooning drawn-out voice possible]: C h r i s t o p h e r !

And I wanted to leave after I was done with my beer but was convinced to stay for another one, and the whole time I was drinking it, all I could think about was Christopher, and when I was done with that beer, I left the bar and Christopher was standing by the door, and I walked as slowly as I could up to the doorway, hoping he would say hello, say something, but he kept talking to his friend, and said nothing, and I made it out the door and walked home, the entire time, hoping for something cinematic to happen. But boys that don't like you don't come following you down the street, calling out your name, saying wait-up. But that could not stop me and my brain heavily influenced by too many romantic comedies, and so I kept turning back around, hoping to see him coming after me - someone that all night, did not even seem to notice I was in the same bar as him. And after one more time looking down the street before I stepped into my building, I closed the door behind me and felt so low, so pathetic, always the person desiring, always the bridesmaid and never the bride, but worse - I don't know. I know that my methods of desiring other males is skewed and I don't know if there is a way to adjust, am wondering if there is a point, if not most of the eros springs from this feeling of loserness. This is the pleasure they refer to as masochism. And I am gay, and this makes me so typical.