Knock Knock

I spent the weekend in bed for two reasons. One, I was suffering, starting to suffer, from a cold. I took a lot of cold medicine and so wasn't good for much else other than lounging in my bed, watching Netflix. Two, though, probably of equal importance, cause had I money I probably still would have gone out even though sick, probably wouldn't have even felt sick - two being that I was broke.

Sunday, yesterday, I roused myself after being in bed for way too many hours straight and watching too many eighties movies, Rambo and Top Gun among them. I went to the gym. I worked out for a while but spent an even longer while in the steamroom, trying to sweat out of my body whatever cold virus I had or imagined myself to have. I was determined to bring it to a boil, cook it to death in this steamroom. Only of one us would walk out alive, and since I don't think viruses can actually walk, it was going to be me.

In the steamroom, as happens in steamrooms, a guy next to me starting to jerk off. I joined him. He stood over me naked, apparently unworried that anyone would walk in, or perhaps thrilled, turned on, by that worry, needing that risk to get himself off, me perhaps needing it also. He shot his load all over my chest. I rubbed it all over my chest as he walked out of the steamroom, really happy in a way I hadn't been in what felt like too long.

Later that evening, I would go this guy, a mess of a guy, always too high, always too neurotic, always too awkward. We smoked weed and drank wine. We fucked in his bed. I asked him to open his blinds, said I wanted to give his neighbors a show. After both of us came, I saw the mess all over his bed, lube everywhere, cum stains, a sticky dildo, a bottle of poppers. And there was an exchange of dialogue so perfect, so bleak, so noirish, that I couldn't wait til I was out of his apartment and in the hallway so that I could write it down in my phone before forgetting it. I want to write a story with these lines in it. A gay Raymond Carver story, bleak and miserable, two people together and yet also totally alone, all the more alone in fact while they are in each other's company. The lines exchanged that I wrote in my phone once I finally left his apartment and stood in the hallway were these:

Me: We made a mess of your bed.

Him: It's okay...we made a mess of our lives.

Matt

Matt. Mardi Gras 1981. A black and white poster, very gay, very eighties. I purchased it from a used gay bookstore in New Orleans a month or so ago. Today, I finally got a frame for it. Hung it on my bedroom wall. Sat on my bed, lay on my bed, got stoned, thought about boys, about aging, wondered if I would ever, at this point in my life, still have an intense romance with another person that could be sustained for a lifetime, or something close to it.

Every now and then, I'd step out of these thoughts, take a little smoke break from that depressing bar, look up to my wall to contemplate this image of Matt, shirtless hunk, muscle guy, staring back at me, another ungraspable, another person unable or unwilling to return my affection. There seemed to be some metaphor in that. I wasn't sure that was the metaphor I wanted to look at every night, stoned in bed, thinking about boys.

Nick. New York 2015. It would be more appropriate though for this poster guy's name to be Nick. A couple nights ago, hanging out with some friends, telling them about the latest heartache from one of the Nicks of New York, they pointed out all the Nicks there have been that I have liked. So many. Three strikes for sure by this point.

And looking at this image, this attractive man, just inspired too many thoughts about attractive men, about men in general, set me too full of desire, made me want too much for affection, for love, for a boyfriend, for certain notions of happiness, made those particular notions of happiness take priority, exert dominance, over all other possible conceptions of happy, maybe just as valid, maybe even more so. Who knows though cause there's Matt and Nick and Jacob and Tanner and that Nick and that Nik and all the rest of them embodied up there in this recently framed print? It's everything ungraspable.

This, this is not what I should be looking as I drift off to sleep. This is not what dreams are made of. No, this is what nightmares are made of. This is what pathetic cuddling sessions with your pillow as you tell yourself you'll one day find someone are made of.

Needless to say, I moved the picture, decided I'd switch it out for the Smokey the Bear print from the bathroom, and bring Smokey into my bedroom. In all caps, the Smokey picture says, "ONLY YOU." Other notions of happiness. Just as valid. Perhaps more so.