BAD HABITS
We all have them.
Bad habits.
The things that we know are bad. Still, we do them anyway. They may be bad things, but they feel so good.
Among my Jonesboro friends, I think I can think of mine in the following order: 1)sex, 2)brooding, 3)smoking, and 4)well...sex.
So why have them? Why not change them?
Is there a point to them at all?
THANK YOU FOR SMOKING
It was like an urge. I would go to work and feel it in my skins. I would sit around at The Other Side with couples hanging around and need it. I would have to listen to my sister yell at my nieces and nephew over some ridiculous thing and crave it.
So one night as I was leaving Vons with a new set of pens. My eyes fell on the cheap store. I wondered and went in.
Five minutes later, there it was: a pack of cigarettes (a 2-for-1, in fact).
It was a bad habit of mine for a while. The need to protect my body as well as having a boyfriend who loved me (and hated the habit) broke it. With no reason (or man) to stop me, the habit grew back like weeds in a garden.
Of course I said I would stop. It was just to get me through work. It was just to endure my sister's immature rantings. Once I moved I would stop.
In the back of my mind I worried. Like liquor or drugs, gay men are not known for not smoking. They constantly have to smoke, using the habit like a mask at a masquerade ball.
Was I any different? No. So...would I stop?
THE BROODER WITH A SOUL
I brood.
Most actors who play a gay character on television always have a character whom uality made them full of angst. They...brood. I am not on a television show...yet I brood.
When I was in Pine Bluff, I brood about being this way that God felt was wrong...but it felt right. When I was in Jonesboro, I brood over the fact I was gay, but I was more alone in a town of gays. When I was in Little Rock, I brood because gay men wanted to label me over things they did themselves, but I was happy about it.
Now I was in San Diego. A typical thing for me...no matter where I go...was the gay couple. In Arkansas, they were non-existent. I cannot seem to walk down a street without seeing one. Looking like either an odd couple, s from an A+F catalog, or gym bunnies, the gay couple walked past me, chatting about something like dinner...how a shirt looked...their hair...you know...something trivial.
I stared after the couple de jour. For the first few seconds, my eyes rolled. I wondered why is it that gay men act like they cannot stand on their own without a man.
Then minutes passed. I think about Kos alone in Russia with no one or way to get to another gay man. I think about how I have so many outlets for gay men interaction, yet I am not with anyone and cannot seem to find anyone. I have to envy this vain, together couple.
I brood over the fact that it looked like I will always be alone.
Brooding breeded negative thoughts. Negative thoughts will keep a person back. It was best not to dwell and move on. Brooding had always made me a dweller. From Pine Bluff to Jonesboro to Arkansas, it was the bad habit I could not seem to kick.
With a whole world reinforcing it, what am I to do?
THE THING
When I was in Jonesboro (or Little Rock for that matter), once in a while I came across a gay man. He would observe me out and about. He would love my lips, worship my ass, and grin at my wit.
Then he would ask one of two things:
1)have I ever had a boyfriend
OR
2)why am I single
I usually said
1)no
AND
2)I only have interesting stories to tell
for Question 1.
And for Question 2 I thought it would be rude to say that the gay community won't approve of the boyfriend I would like so rarely does the person interested in me even talk to me...too afraid of being excommunicated for his love of a black man.
Never stopped me from having though. It's funny how my list of ual partners could hit double digits to the point of me forgetting some. Meanwhile I can count my list of boyfriends on one hand.
I will not lie. I love . The physical connecting of the body excited me. The sweat on you as your lips kiss in animalistic passion someone else's lips as if you are (and do) explode got me off. The fact that at that moment you as a person were linked to only one person in the whole world who had this power to...well...give you a complete release stimulated me in so many ways in a world where I rarely got .
I use for fun. I use it for a release from the daily grind of stress at work. I sue because I could. The more new people I did, the more I felt clever for getting a new nock on my belt. I had some control.
By the time I left Little Rock, the only people who wanted to have with me...were my exes. That used to bother me pre-Kos. Thousands of gay men running around Little Rock yet only 3 wanted to bed me (in my own apartment...something most gay men don't have) and they were exes.
Now I am in a city where I could walk out my door and bump into a gay man. No one appeared to be interested in doing anything with me...sex or otherwise.
Enter: the shop.
There was a shop next door to The Other Side. It has booths in the back that showed . However most people go there to cruise, sitting against walls for hours looking to have oral (or anal) with some stranger in a booth.
I will not lie. My mind got a thrill from the idea of getting some action in a place that was public to me. However, I preferred getting action in my own room...something I don't have. What are these people’s excuses?
Post-Kos, I cannot see myself ing it up like I used to either. It felt empty to me after actually connecting to someone.
The saying went...the flesh is weak. And my body missed being touched. It wanted and being in a city full of available gay men drove me crazy: how long before causal got to me?
CREATURE OF HABIT
People are all creatures of habit. Once habits are developed, they can be hard to get rid of. The badder the habit, the harder it is to kick. The has always been more enticing.
Like other men, I was a creature of habit. While some of the habits are bad and can be stopped, others were much harder.
I moved. While I was on a ten minute break, I smoked the last Parliament Light I had. As I cleaned my room, I threw the box away.
My brooding led me to a dark place. So I forced myself to be perky. Smiles do make all the difference in the world. I know I will have other days where I brood. It is up to me to make sure the bad habit does not drown me. With the new Taoist view I sport, it might be an exercise in balance. The brooding habit became the first bed habit to have a purpose.
And ? Still working on what to do about that...
Diego
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