Jose

This guy came to my party a few weeks ago. I had never met him before. He came with a friend of mine. I talked to him on and off through the night. We both had bleached hair at the time. That was something we talked about. The rest I don't remember. I just remember immediately thinking he was so fucking sexy and that I wanted him.

He was at Spectrum later that same night and we danced on each other for a moment, it clear that we wanted to have sex with each other.

Last night, weeks later, I finally got to hang out with him.

It was my first "date" in I'm not sure even how long. It's so weird to meet up with someone you have never hung out with, to go to a bar and meet up with a person you don't know but who you want to know. It shouldn't be weird. It should be something I am used to at this point in my life, thirtysomething years old. But most of my romantic and sexual experiences have all been borne from some hookup, from a drunk night in a bar and going home with someone or going over to some guy's house from Scruff , and then having nice or awkward sex, either way though it soon becoming awkward because it's usually with someone I barely know, but the problem becomes that more than I wanted sex, I really wanted to know someone, and I realize, in those post-orgasmic moments, rare as they actually are in my life lately, that I confused the things, linked them so that they appeared to be the same, but I put on my clothes and head out the door because I realize I'm supposed to leave and we say let's hang out again and I am never sure if they are saying it because that's what people say or because they really want to, and I realize that I say that because I am not sure if I am supposed to say that or if I actually feel that - I go through the motions is what I am saying, and I walk back towards my house. So because of this, because most of my experiences tend toward these of-the-moment things brought forth by sexual hunger and which end the moment that hunger is sated, it's always weird to go and have a conversation with someone in a not-too-crowded bar and look at their eyes and get to know them, to try to actually connect with another human being, the thing sought unsuccessfully in all those hookups.

I was really nervous before going to this bar. But I went and he was insanely cute and I rambled about I don't know what. We sat in the corner booth at Legion against the glass windows, his back to them. A very intense thunderstorm had just ended, one of those angry summer storms, the sky unable to take all the humidity, all the heat, it just exploding, huge wallops of thunder, bright lightening streaking across the sky, fucking beautiful stuff that reminds me of so many Florida storms, those daily things I would sit through for their short duration, admiring their ability to just let things out. There were still massive flashes of lightening shooting across the sky as we sat there after the heavy rain part of the storm had passed, intense flashes, lines traced by a drunk hand at warp speed. The bar was playing nothing but Garbage for the first half hour we were there. So there all these things: this guy with his cute fucking face and adorable smile sitting across from me, every thirty seconds or so a huge flash of lightening which illuminates the sky behind him, and these songs of angst, rage, and loneliness that I used to listen to all the time in high school. There is all this stuff, this beautiful fucking stuff, and my heart is swelling with all kinds of things because I hadn't talked to a boy I liked in so long. I have chatted with them briefly at clubs shouting in each other's ears over pulsing sound, or have exchanged the briefest bits of text possible with various guys on Scruff, but there hasn't been this - this leisurely thing, to just sit and hang out and talk and see if you and another human being actually like each other.

After many more beers and many cigarettes, he came home with me. We smoked weed and I played T. Rex. We made out and didn't have sex because he didn't want to, or said he shouldn't. I just said okay and didn't question it, everyone having their reasons for things they have to do. We made out and dry humped with our shorts on. He left to go pack or something.

I have been scared to like a person. I recently realized this when I was talking to my friend Darnell on Gay Pride Day. I told him about how I literally ran away from a club a couple nights before from a guy who I liked and who had agreed to come home with me. Literally ran away from the club, back home. His reaction wasn't "You're weird" or "Why the hell would you do that?," but instead was comforting because he realized what the problem was right away: "Aw, Charlie, you're scared." And then he proceeded to tell me that I don't need to be scared to like somebody, that I am amazing and that I shouldn't be scared.

I am trying to be open, to like someone, to allow myself to feel certain things, to let down safeguards I have erected.

He is really fucking cute. It feels so good to like someone and for it to be this new thing, for it to be this awkward dance cause you're pretty sure the other person likes you as well and both of you are dancing around each other trying to see what's up, what's there.