Category: My Story

Round Two

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

Go ahead and imagine the scantily clad woman holding a giant card with a big number “2” printed on it, prancing around the border of the ring, in high heals …

I mean, if that’s what you’re into…

 

“What are you still doing here?” I asked him as evenly as I could manage.  I wasn’t exactly happy to see him, under the circumstances, but I didn’t want to be uncivil to him, as I promised I would not be.  Besides, if we have any chance at all of being “friends” it’s got to start somewhere, right?

That’s the same argument I made to myself when I questioned whether or not I really wanted to go to lunch with him the other day.  That turned out well, right…

He stood there, hands on the edge of the counter with his head hanging down and looking at me sullenly.  I repeated the question, and after heaving a heavy sigh, he said, “I’m going in a minute.”

“Okay,” I answered, continuing to sort through the papers on the counter in front of me.  He asked me what I was doing with them.  They were related to a small, but important task that I had needed to accomplish for the three days, but hadn’t had the time to get to.

 

The Bay Area Rapid Transit system or “BART” is having issues.  Some union that they’re involved with has decided to go on Strike, starting Monday, and there will be no service for an indefinite period of time.  They went out a month or so ago for four days, and my 8 mile, usually 15-20 minutes commute was taking closer to 45 stressful, fuel guzzling minutes.  Some days longer.  I told my boss on the fourth day of that event that I was going to start taking my company issued laptop home with me so I could work for a couple of hours in the morning and then come in when traffic had died down.  She was fine with it, but as it turned out to be the last day of that strike, it didn’t even matter.  I spoke to her yesterday afternoon and proposed the same arrangement, to which she agreed, as long as I had things to work on, which I do.  Plenty!

As I was preparing to go home last night, I looked at the stack of papers in their folder, frustrated that another day had gone by and I couldn’t get this simple task accomplished, when it suddenly dawned on me; I’ve got lots of tasks that I have to struggle to get to because of all the distractions and interruptions I deal with on a daily basis.  There will be no distractions and interruptions while I’m working at home next week.  I can get the nagging stuff done then, as long as I plan ahead for it!  I took the stack of papers that I needed to sort and scan and walked to the counter in the open Kitchen, near the scanner.

 

Without looking up from my work, I answered, “I’m sorting them so I can scan them into a couple of emails and deal with them on Monday morning.  What’s happening right now?”  I asked the question so quickly after answering his it was almost a part of the same sentence.  I put the papers down and looked up at him waiting for an answer.  He just continued to stand there with that dopey look on his face.  “What?!” I asked again, slightly bothered.

“I don’t know,” he said, “you just seem so unhappy.”

Actually, I felt quite a bit better than I had the day before, but that’s not really saying much.  There are a number of factors about work that have had me really stressed out and this emotional turmoil with The Guy has only added to the stress and tension.  It feels like there’s been a lot of tension in the air in general and I don’t know if I’m imagining it because I’m so tense, or, as I’m afraid might be the case, it’s just wafting off of me and affecting everyone around me.  I just looked at him.  I didn’t know what to say.

“I feel like it’s my fault,” he said.  Fucking genius, that one!

“I don’t think it’s unrealistic or unreasonable that I would be hurt and angry, six hours after being told what you told me,” I said, referring to our text argument on Wednesday night.  “The fact that you think I shouldn’t be, just pisses me off more.”

“No, I guess it’s not,” he said.

We ended up talking for over an hour.  It was one of the most emotionally open conversations he has had with me.  I suppose, in some ways it was for me as well.  I’ve always been honest and sincere with him, but I’ve also not said a lot of things that I knew he would have a hard time hearing.  There was no reason to hold back any longer.

He changed his story, not for the first time.  He claims he didn’t say, “not ever”.  To be fair, I don’t remember word for word what he said, I just know the gist of what he said and the tone of his voice.  The “ever” was implied, if not actually spoken.  He said that he thought about me the entire time he was in the UK.  He and his friend were “running around at all these different sites,” and all sorts of events and the entire time, I was on his mind.  He couldn’t understand why that would be.

“I have thought about you, every minute of every day, since I met you,” I told him.  “The difference is, you think it’s a bad thing.”  The look on his face caught me off guard.  He seemed genuinely surprised by that.  “Do you even understand what I meant when I told you I ‘completely fell for you’?” I asked him.  “I haven’t said it because first of all the word terrifies me, and secondly, I knew you couldn’t handle hearing it.  The Guy,” (obviously, I used his real name here), “I fell in love with you!  It’s stupid, really.  It shouldn’t have happened.  There’s no logical, explicable reason for it.  But here we are.  This doesn’t happen to me.  But I thought you were worth taking the chance.”

I think if I had exhaled a little more forcefully, he would have fallen over.

One of the most tragic things about this situation for me, is that something new happened in me and I thought he was worth taking a chance.  Something new happened in him and he didn’t think I was worth taking the chance.  The fact that he doesn’t think I’m worth taking the chance, is probably why I was wrong about him.

There are a lot of things I need to sort through, now, things he’s said to me over the months that I have to figure out.  It would be better, of course, to not rehash any of it and just let go, but that’s not really how I function, especially not with him right in front of me every day.  Even if I made the “decision” to do just that, it wouldn’t actually happen anyway.

He opened up a lot last night and a lot of the aspects of his damaged psyche that makes him who he is came to light.  The recovery he’s claimed to be in for the last seven years, is really just an explanation to use to when offering up excuses for his lustful behavior.  He admitted that his efforts in that arena have been minimal at best.  Which lead to the revelation that he lied to me right at the start, when I asked him what his intentions toward me were in acting the way he did.  “So you really were just trying to get in my pants.” I said.  “You really just wanted to fuck me.”  When he nodded, I climbed down off the counter, picked up my papers and walked away.

I finished at the scanner and walked back to the kitchen.  I was silent for a long time.

“The bottom line,” I told him, “is that I have never lied to you.  Everything I have ever said and done has been completely sincere.  But I’m no magician.  If you think about me as much as you say you do, that’s because at some point along the way, something happened inside of you and I started to mean more to you.  And that scares the shit out of you!  But it’s all! Inside! Of you!!

 

We went back to our desks to pack up and go home.  It took me longer, but that’s not a surprise.  When he walked past my desk on his way to the door, he stopped.  He just looked at me for a minute and then without a word, he walked into my cubicle, put his arms around me and pulled me to him.  With my head against his chest, I listened to his heart beat while I put my one free hand on his back and squeezed lightly before giving him the thanks-for-the-hug double tap, but he didn’t let go and neither did I.  It felt amazing to have his body pressed against mine, again.  It’s a feeling I’ve missed and longed for.  It’s been three long weeks since the last time I felt that.

When he finally let go, he just whispered, “Good bye” and walked away.

Sucker Punch

~ riggledo ~ Leave a comment

“I have no intention of ever getting into a relationship with a man.”

Those were the first words out of his mouth, the first thing he said to me in ten days.  Longer really, but I’m not counting the ten days he was on a different continent.

“I still think you’re really hot.  And I still have really strong feelings for you.  But I have the option to go the other way; why would I voluntarily put myself into a second marginalized social group?”

Apparently, “for love” is not an answer that would occur to him.  And so, that’s it.  Things with The Guy really are over, and I’m left completely alone to deal with the aftermath, the heart ache and anguish that comes from falling hopelessly in love (even though I knew better) with someone who doesn’t love himself enough to let anyone else love him.  Someone who I still have to see every.  Single.  Day.

I have been such a fool.

But he has been, and continues to be, a cruel idiot.

As a person who has lived an entirely too long already life, devoid of love, it is inconceivable to me how anyone could sit face to face with someone who wants them, admit to having feelings for that person, and then shove them away, determined never to consider giving that connection a chance.  I was dumbfounded and didn’t quite know what to say.

Hours later, I was finally leaving work, well after everyone else had gone home.  If the parking lot was any indication, I was the only person in the building, something which I’m determined not to repeat, work load be damned.  (If you don’t provide me the right resources to complete the work you give me, in eight hours or less, it’s not my fault it didn’t get done.  It’s yours!)  I finally had a little clarity and I pulled out my phone to send him a text message I knew would be ignored for hours, if not forever:

“I want you to know that I really do respect your right to decide what you want, even if I don’t like what you decided…

But, telling me that you think I’m really hot AND that you have feelings for me, but that your making a choice not to be with me because of what other people will think…  You’re telling me that other people’s opinion of you is more important to you than I am…  I’m hard pressed to see that as anything other than rejection and hurtful…”

I entered into this, certain that I knew what I was getting myself into.  I knew the chances of success were minuscule at best, and I believed I was prepared for the inevitable end.  I knew that when that end came about, we would be mature and handle it like civilized adults, which we have, but which he somehow interpreted as “We’ll stay friends.”  That would’ve been nice, but I never imagined his reasons would be so hurtful and demeaning.  Being friends might be an option down the road, but right now, I don’t know how to do that, and I can’t just decide not to be hurt by his reasoning, despite his assertions that I should be doing just that.

Over the last three weeks of radio silence, I’ve had a lot of time to reflect on his behavior, which I probably shouldn’t do a lot of.  When a person of already questionable and precarious emotion health begins to psychoanalyze the behavior of an addict, that very quickly leads to an ugly little thing called Co-Dependance.  But while I was, I realized that there’s been a long history (or at least as long as a history between two people who’ve only known each other for three months can be) of The Guy utterly and completely avoiding emotions.  I’ve known that for quite a while, but I thought it was just my emotions, and I convinced myself that those avoidance behaviors would end, as soon as he stopped hiding from what he was feeling.  I realize now, that he avoids all emotions, especially his own (other than lust and desire, apparently) and refuses to face those feelings and what they mean for him.

I drove home with the top down, assertively pressing the “next” button on the steering wheel, unable to listen to the sappy, I’m-so-excited-to-be-in-love songs that seem to permeate my iTunes (go figure – is that all anybody sings about?), in search of some “angry and hurt” music to soothe me.

(Sidebar:  Apple needs to add a “mood” function to iTunes, kind of like the Genius feature that creates a list of 25 songs that have some, often indiscernible thing in common.  The Mood playlist, would pick 25 (or all) of the songs in your devices library that fit the mood you’re in; sappy, madly in love, depressed, hurt, angry, heartbroken, murderous rage while stuck in traffic…  On second thought, that one might not be such a wise addition.)

As I drove, and jabbed, I thought about the days ahead, in which I get to sit at my desk at work – a position that is already fraught with stressful emotions, without adding this complication – and watch and listen as The Guy puts on his usual jovial, everybody-loves-me, all’s-right-with-the-world, show as if nothing was bothering him, and nothing in the world could touch him – and think about how hurt and disappointed I am that things turned out this way; how unfair it is.  I thought about how he gets to see me everyday, and experience the attraction and affection that he claims to feel for me, before the shame and self-judgement takes over and reminds him just how horrible his life would be if people thought of him as black and gay, and the inner-conflict kicks in (because apparently closeted bisexual is not a problem).  And then I thought, “How can we possibly be friends?!”  If we’re both walking around the office everyday seeing each other, and seeing each other is hard on each of us for different reasons, how can we be friends?

Less than an hour after I sent my text to him, he responded, much to my shock, saying “I hear you completely.”  I replied, posing my “How can we be friends?” question.

“Well, I think you can see a person, like a person, and not be with that person.  And yet still have positive feelings for that person.”

Right.  What was I thinking, asking the person who chooses to ignore his feelings a question like that.

The Guy made the first move… Several first moves, in fact…  Several very aggressive first moves even.  I’m not blaming him there, I have free will and I played my part cheerfully, but I would never have initiated things.

He went on to say, “I mean, I don’t expect us to be best buds, but I don’t want negative energy with you.”

So in other words, not only am I not worth the investment of attempting a relationship  with, but I’m not really even worth valuing true friendship with.  From the moment he saw me for the first time, I’ve been nothing more than a play thing.

Sh*tting Where I Eat; or Why I Am an Idiot

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

For years I have used the idea that it is a bad idea to date within the workplace as an explanation for why I am not involved with anyone.  I am sure that sounds like a leap in logic to many, but the fact is, I don’t meet many new people other than at work.  If I expected to develop relationships of any kind, be they friendships, professional networking, or romantic, where else am I going to find these people besides at work?  Not dating within the workplace is a viable explanation, indeed many will say it’s a good idea…  I think I will count myself among those people.  Many people also see not dating within the work place as an excuse for why I don’t have many relationships.

I broke the rule.

I didn’t even think twice about it.  He caught my eye on the first day.  More importantly, I caught his eye on the first day.  He’s sexy!  He’s funny!  He’s very outgoing and personable!  He was very affectionate, at first at least.  We talked almost every day.  Over the first few weeks we had many, many conversations in which as he continued to reveal things about himself, I continued to check things off my imaginary list of preferred attributes, things I would like to find in a potential mate.  We don’t work together, just in close proximity to each other.  I’m in Facilities and as such, technically, he is my client, but so is every other living, breathing soul in the building.  He hardly ever asks for anything from Facilities and when he does, our relationship holds no baring in the service I provide.  He was reticent, he said, because of the risk of dating in the work place.  I assured him that we were both mature adults and had the capacity to behave maturely and civilly, that there was no law that said that things had to end badly…  if they ended at all.

He continued to hesitate and eventually, I found out the real reason why.  His reasons, I’m afraid, are not something I can share here.  But in all that time, all the things he told me about himself, things he was insecure about, things he thought were negative attributes, things he was sure I would not like about him, in all that time, he told me exactly one thing that I could not live with.  But I was hooked and I was convinced that the one thing I could not live with, would change.  No that I could fix him, or that I could make him change this one thing, but that the one thing would change, organically, because it would be worthwhile to him… because I would be worthwhile to him.

He said he couldn’t do it; a relationship was not in the cards.  He acted like a relationship was all he wanted.  And being a sucker, I paid attention to his actions and not his words…

Actually, I paid attention to the actions I liked and explained away the ones I didn’t.  “He’s struggling with the idea.”  “It’s just his background.”  “He’ll work it out.  I did!”  “I just have to be patient.”  In many ways, we have very similar backgrounds and I really do understand a lot of what he is going through.  And then there’s the ways in which our backgrounds are completely different and I have no way of understanding what he’s going through, and the more I look at it the more I realize, he is not trying to get through anything, he is just coasting along on auto pilot.

But I didn’t want to see those things.  I didn’t want to admit that I was the one with the problem.  I convinced myself that I was not allowing the mitigating factors to impact my behavior…  And I’m still pretty sure of that.  But I have to consider the possibility.

You see, I have always known that I was going to be alone.  For the rest of my life, I will be alone.  I don’t like it, but I’ve come to terms with it.  I’m not the dating kind.  And I’m not someone with whom people make the first move.  I never have been.  And honestly?  I don’t even want to be.  Dating is awful.  It sucks and it’s a huge hassle, and it’s full of pitfalls and heart ache and I don’t want to have anything to do with it.  I do want to be in love and I do want to get married (now that it’s finally legal), but I don’t want to go through all the bull shit it takes to get there.  Can’t have one with out the other.  I know that.

No, I’ve always known I would be alone and yet, when this guy came along (it only took 38 years for pity’s sake!), I disregarded that knowledge and dove in head first.  I knew it was a fluke.  I even knew it was very unlikely to be forever, but I allowed myself to believe that it would last for a while; that we’d have some fun together; that I’d have my share of experiences with another person that I can’t have on my own…  And then eventually he would leave me, because, really!  Knowing all that, I went for it anyway.

I am an idiot.

Things were fine for a while, except I’m certain I was in a different place than he was.  I believed he would come around.  I even convinced myself that he was making strides in the “right direction”.  And then I pushed a little too hard and it all came crashing down.

I should never have allowed this to happen.  I should never have allowed myself to take the chance, especially knowing it couldn’t end well.  for once in my life I set my historical wisdom aside and allowed myself to hope for something better than I had a prayer of getting; better than I deserved.  And I got burned.

Metal Mouth (No More)

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

It’s a pretty momentous day here in the Riggledome.  And by “momentous”, I mean something that matters a whole helluva lot more to me, than it does to you…

In a conversation last night with “The guy” (and yes, there’s a “the guy”… after a fashion at least – there’ll be more on that later…  sometime… probably) we were talking about fitness and exercise.  When he’s not learning and developing people (there’s a cryptic detail about him), he works part-time at a local gym teaching boot camp and spin classes.  We were discussing my personal ideal fitness goals and he said, “If you want a different body, think about WHY should your body change.  If you never run up and down stadium stairs, why should it not look like an office worker’s?”  My response was “Because I’m a shallow gay man in the Bay Area and I want to look like it?”

All of that is to say that, like most everyone, I have a fair amount of vanity, and insecurities about my appearance.  I know!  It’s hard to believe!  I had always hated my smile, and didn’t like the way my teeth looked.  For whatever reason I have a slight and barely perceptible misalignment of my jaw which resulted in some crooked and prominent canine teeth.  I always felt like I had fangs and didn’t want people to see them.  I never smiled with showing teeth in pictures…  When I allowed pictures to be taken… at all.  Once I got a job that paid decently and some good health insurance options, I subjected myself to the process and began Invisalign treatment.  It seemed like a great thing, especially for a vain person.  No bulky, ugly, metal teeth.  Straightening what’s crooked.  What could be wrong?!?

It didn’t work out so well.  It requires a lot of commitment and dedication and in the end (3 years later) I had run through the whole process, hadn’t achieved what I wanted to and couldn’t go any further with Invisalign.  I had the choice to either be happy with what had been achieved, or go to an orthodontist and get real braces…  I bet you can guess which one I chose.

I got my braces off nearly a year ago and have, for the last year, been wearing retainers the vast majority of the day.  That, in itself was pretty momentous, but now, after so many years of this process, I am officially free!

Sure, I’ll have to continue to wear my retainers at night.  Everybody who has ever had braces has had that instruction (a lot of people don’t do it), but wearing them at night is a far cry from wearing them all day every day!

I’m free!  I’m free!  I’m free!  (Can you tell I’m happy?)

Freedom from metal mouth (during the day at least)!
Freedom from metal mouth (during the day at least)!

Reclamation

~ riggledo ~ 1 Comment

It’s been almost a year and a half since I have written anything on these pages.  I have missed it greatly, but I have stayed away because of the things that drove me away to begin with.

For a long time, I wrote about myself and about my life in the various and sundry essays I posted here.  I exposed myself and bore my soul to the readers who graced me with their presence, and I experienced a fair amount of healing in the process.  There are those in my life who do not understand how that can be possible; people who do not write to begin with, let alone express their very being in their words.  Anyway, I engaged in this soul baring, self exposing exercise in vulnerability naively, with the hope, and even the belief, that certain people, people who were specifically not welcome to this exposure would never stumble across the information contained here-in.  I developed a false sense of security the more time that passed without incident, without revelation.  I developed a small but great circle of people who read my words and offered their own words of encouragement and support, and the longer this went on, the more I allowed myself to believe that was how it would always be.

I was wrong.

One day something happened, an honest and true thing was said, which does not bear delving into now, but which instigated a conflict with someone, mostly, I suspect, out of that individuals defensiveness.  Then a day or two later, something much worse happened, and one of those not welcome individuals found their way here and invaded the near Utopic space I had created for myself and blew it to smithereens, in part because that’s what this individual does and in part because I allowed it to happen

My life has changed a lot since the last time I wrote anything here; for the better ,I might add.  And I’ve learned some important lessons in the process.  I’ve tried to write about them in other places.  I’ve tried to recreate some semblance of what I had here before, but nothing ever fit.  Nothing felt right.  Nothing else was “home”…  Because this! is home.  And so, after much consideration, and some mental struggle against myself, I have decided to return to the only place that felt like home and reclaim what was always mine in the first place.  A few people may have driven me away for a time, but they could never take what was rightfully my own.

So here’s the biggest lesson I learned over the past fifteen months:  Not everyone is going to like me, or what I have to say, 100% of the time.  But that?  That is not my problem!  I don’t like everyone else 100% of the time.  When I voluntarily expose myself to someone who I  turn out not to like?  I stop!  Maybe some people aren’t as smart as I am.  But I have learned that if I’m going to maintain a public website, I’m going to encounter people who don’t fit into my sweet little Utopia.  Those people are not my problem.  I can’t stop them from coming around, but I don’t have to engage with them, or in fact, even acknowledge them, either.

I also learned that I can’t let my displeasure for what I consider an unjust and inappropriate business practice stop me from doing what I love, and what I so desperately need to do.  This is still my little world and I’m not walking away again.

So let’s just be plain for a moment.  There are people who will read these words – people I can’t stop from reading these words, though I would like to – those people do not belong here and they know it.  If they continue to come, that’s on them.  They are not part of my Utopia.  I’ll not engage with those people.  If, over time, their ranks are increased, I’ll not engage with those new members of their club.  But as the sole author and proprietor of this space, I have the right to say what I want (as long as I believe it to be truth) and manage the site as I want.  These means I’ll continue to tell my stories as they come up and my stories will include the truth of who I am and what my experiences are or have been.  It’s impossible to tell ones’s stories of themselves, without sharing details about the people who are, or were, around them.  I never have, and never will, lie.  I might misremember, but if I do, that’s not a lie, because I don’t know it’s not the truth.  I will talk about my experiences and the people involved in them with truth and honor.

I’ll continue to moderate my comments, because I firmly and completely believe that is my right, just as I firmly and completely believe I have the right to refuse to publish any comment I think is offensive, or vitriolic.  If someone has a differing opinion from mine and knows how to present it in a respectful and non-confrontational manner, I’ll gladly entertain a dialog with the community, within the comments.  I won’t allow hatred or harshness and I won’t think twice of deleting a comment or banning a commenter (and that technology does exist), if their tone turns or they begin to abuse.

This is my space and I’ll manage it as I see fit.  I won’t allow those who do not belong to drive me away again.  The platform and the technology may not permit me to block anyone from stopping in, but that doesn’t mean I have to engage with, or cater to them.  Anyone who is viewing these pages and doesn’t belong should stop.  I can’t block them from the site, but they can certainly take measures into their own hands to end the cycle.  Unsubscribe from the e-mails, delete the RSS feeds, stop their dirty little fingers from keying up the URL, whatever.

As for me, I’ll be living my life, and behaving as if those individuals don’t really exist, which means, no censoring, no coddling, and no responding.  Anyone who doesn’t like it can fuck off.

I’m back!  And I’m better than ever!