Walt's Song

I went over to Diego's new apartment yesterday, not having seen it yet and wanting to continue to hang out with this person, unsure a bit about how to continue to be friends with this person who has become a big presence in my life, a good friend, now that I am no longer romantically involved with them, how to keep those boundaries there, whether I even should. His phone wasn't working and so I called out, yelled up, yelled his name. He came to his window, poked his head out, smiled.

In his room, we talked about this t-shirt project he is doing using semen patterns he had been collecting from friends. I asked him if he still wanted me to jack off for his project. He did. I started to do so, he started to kiss me, and soon enough he joined me in the jacking off, which led into dick sucking, which led into humping. It was really hot, had me so turned on in a way I had not been with him in so long. I came on a piece of poster board, he did also, and it formed two very different patterns.

I saw the difference and felt weird about what I did, wondered if it was appropriate to have sex with Diego, if it meant anything, and wondered why I wanted it to. We laid on the thin futon mattress he is using as a bed, a bright blue sky and cool air warning of fall coming through the open windows. We talked about our lives. I had to leave to go shower before going to the Whitman performances. I wanted to continue to lie next to him and talk, but I couldn't. There were time constraints and there were other ones I was trying to bring into existence.

I showered at the gym because it was right by the theater and there ended up getting head from some man in the steam room. That sex, meaningless as it may have been (a sorry word choice that I don't like but which I am struggling to replace with something conjuring the same feeling) - that sex was less confusing to me, less troubling, than the sex I had with Diego earlier in the day, that that felt so good during the act but afterwards I realized that it was no way to end things with someone, that it was where we were before, sex and little intimacy - and that is fine for some reason for me in the steam room with a stranger, but with the same person for some ten months or so just feels weird to me, is not what I want.

And the two performances we did last night of "Song of Myself" went amazingly well considering that there were only two rehearsals. It is such a treat to hear this poem so many times. New things are revealing themselves to me each time, lines I had never been struck by before are hitting me hard. It is only a little weird to be performing naked in front of an audience, that there is this large cast naked with you makes it seem natural, normal. This older guy read Section 8 last night in such an amazing way, this almost crazed reading, manic and a bit creepy, in the barbaric yelp that Whitman at some point mentions, and it really brought that section alive and the lines I had always loved seemed even more exciting: "What living and buried speed is always vibrating here, what howls restrain'd by decorum."

There are some more performances tonight and the weather is chilly and sunny and so, so lovely. I am alive!