- Duncan and Jake Bauman
Well, that’s that. I ended it. My relationship with lying Jake is over. That would be Mr Darling NYC and the mysterious travelling companion. That would be the man I paid to take to France. My literary agent.
He is gone and I am relieved. As relieved as they say you feel when you file for bankruptcy. The tension and holding on and making good is over. The plans, the desire, the moments of hope that things will turn out better are turned to dust.
The very fact that I want to call it a relationship is somehow absurd. He didn’t want a ‘relationship’ because he is ‘protective of his independence’ one can read that as: wants to do whatever he pleases, just like he always has. Before by deception, now by finding an idiot who’ll put up with his shit.
It seems to be true that sometimes you can’t be friends with those you have loved. There is simply too much baggage.
I really loved him and I loved making love to him. I loved holding him in my arms but I often wondered who he was really thinking about when we made love. After all, you were so often drunk or stoned or, on that one ghastly occasion, high on nitrate.
As the days passed since we returned from France my serenity began to slip away. I was less happy with our arrangement, with our situation, with our open relationship, with the just enough rope he let me have that tightened exponentially around my neck.
What I didn’t want, upon our return, was how things were before we left: a chasm that could only be filled with jerk off sessions on Skype, even though he was without doubt a genius at performing on his web cam. That was our staple until we got to France. Sex webcasting, firstly in his old place when he was with her then in his parents kitchen whilst they were out at work. Hygienic eh?
I realised that John was right..his ‘smidgen of compassion’ remark hit me hard. He saw that I was prepared to put up with not a great deal and be happy when actually I wanted and deserved a whole heap more.
You know, when the axe falls it falls swiftly and all communication must be cut. No more texts, no more Facebook, no more telephone call or emails. It is the only way I know how. I don’t hate the guy. Of course I feel used. I feel let down. The absence of reassuring emails before I went to have my testicular scan was evidence, irrefutable proof that he really didn’t give a fuck. Complete strangers seemed more interested in my health than he did.
More importantly I had enough. His final email summed it up:
I realize a large part of your life is devoted to confession and full disclosure but though honesty and directness are important to me, I deal with things differently than you do–not by speaking in front of large groups or blogging about my life…
He had seen me on TV then met me through my blog, deceived me into believing that it was my blog and not me that he was interested in then moaned when I wrote about what was going on between us. Suddenly privacy was paramount. You might be wondering why he went to France with me? Well, who in their right mind wouldn’t want a free trip to France with a doting fool?
As for honesty being important to you? I think others might think differently. When I challenged you in London during our street fight that you had lied to a woman for seven and a half years you kept on telling me that I was wrong, ‘I didn’t lie to her’ you cried, so deep was your denial. Every time he fucked a man behind her back he lied to her. A woman who expected to marry him.
He told me once that he was ‘addicted to lying’. He certainly seemed addicted to drugs. Using weed daily. Crystal meth during sex.
He said that he didn’t want a hyper-emotional relationship yet the first five months were spent listening to him, willingly listening to him, divulge every detail..often in tears..of his coming out. He was always crying.
I lost my usefulness to him. he seemed to forget that I was there for him in his darkest hour yet he could not be here for me as I embark on what could be mine.
This morning was the final straw. “Why are we talking about me?” he whined when I asked about him. Suddenly he was off-limits. From the incredibly intense weeks of his ‘coming out’ where I made myself available to him 24/7 his story was suddenly secret.
Oh Jake, what a silly billy you are. You think ‘freedom’ means meeting endless fuck buddies on Manhunt. You thought that I would put up with that because just a smidgen of compassion would do. You thought that you wouldn’t bring two very different people to the same conclusion about you.
You were wrong.
I totally get why she doesn’t want anything more to do with you.
There was a moment in an airport somewhere in the world when I was irritable with you about something or other and you looked sad, sad that you had treated her like I was treating you.
My friend saw the pictures on Facebook that I posted of us and he said, ‘He doesn’t even like you.’ I felt sick because often I felt that, that I was doing the loving for both of us. That at the end of the day you would and did tell me I was too old and difficult and all the other reasons you gave me for not letting me have a hope in hell..then you’d come crawling back when things weren’t working out for you. A drunken text on the train home. I knew that when you were with the other Manhunt men I just became an irritation. Like she was when you met me. She was just getting in the way.
It is vaguely irritating that I let him so close to everyone I hold dear in my life. It is even more irritating that he has made friends with my friends yet I know not one of his. Telling isn’t it?
You met me here, we’ll say goodbye here.
For more information on JB please see Adam_Patch on Manhunt. He is looking, so he says, for good people. Oh yeah, and don’t be a cliché.
Avoid this man. He will lie to you. He’s cute but he’ll only be interested in you if you have money and let him get away with doing exactly what he pleases.