Tag: Human

Categories
Health

Inside Out

Breakfast with the beautiful Dane.

We stepped out of the restaurant for a moment to smoke and a young woman approached me.

She said, “I saw you on the show.  You’re very brave.”

I felt like a total fraud.

I wanted to tell her that since the show I have broken every rule, every principal I had ever committed or adhered to.   These past few moths I have run roughshod over all the progress of the past 13 years.

I feel like I am at square one.

Sure I didn’t drug or drink.  Sure it was brave of me to reveal myself on TV…but look at the trouble it has caused.  I let myself succumb to the vagaries of love.  With a chimp.

The beautiful Dane wanted to know what she was talking about.  I told him.  I suppose now he’ll see everything.  I wonder how he’ll feel about it?   Time will tell.

I love talking with him.  We talk and talk, his stories are riveting and compelling.  This is more like it.  He’s only 33.  Suddenly we are surrounded by people we know.  Friends we know rather than he or I.

Feel comfortable, relaxed and happy.

So happy I begin to cry, my nose stings, my eyes fill with tears.  I think about what Jon said when I first got sober in SAA.  He asked me to imagine what a relationship ‘looks like’ I cried then too.  I just didn’t think it was possible.  A healthy relationship with a healthy, kind man.  Then, by way of alcoholic sabotage, I proved to myself and the whole world that I was incapable of making good choices.

Enter The Penguin.  Exit The Penguin.

I am so happy to be in the bosom of AA.  Surrounded by men and women whose language I respect, whose journey I relate to.  Listen, there could be an argument made that every relationship I have ever had (except Matt) has been with active alcoholics/addicts.

Last night, after the poetry reading, I walked the dog…wrote this blog and went to bed.  I woke at 6am to arrange the apartment for the return of the decorators.   After our rather wonderful breakfast I caught a cab to JFK and am now on a plane to an undisclosed location for a couple of weeks in the sun.

I may have been brave (I was brave) when I told you all the truth about my childhood suffering but the consequences of being on that show have been very severe.  I would never in a million years have met or absconded with, danced with, dillied or dallied with that terrible man.  I would have remained ignorant of his ugly face, his dishonest world.  I would never have worshiped his stinking hole or kissed his lying mouth.

I would certainly never have risked losing my sobriety.  I came THIS close!

I would rather be single than take those risks again.

What does a relationship look like?  I don’t know if it exists.   Not because I am unworthy but because the damage has been done.   If only you could see it on my face like a burns victim.  If only you could see the ravages of child abuse on my face.

A relationship?  The damage maybe too severe.  I have to look at it like that.  The war is over but I am limbless, traumatized, impotent, angry.  There is nothing I can do other than STAY AWAY from normal human beings who say they love me.

They just can’t see.

They think I am healthy, able bodied, sane.  Until they uncover the truth.

For the time being I will stick to my own kind.  I am never lonely with my own kind.  I never have to kid myself when I am with my own kind.   My own kind never try and kid me.  They treat me carefully.

What does a relationship look like?  Well, it’s me, myself and I.   That’s all I can hope for.

That’s all I will ever need or be able to depend upon.

Remember, if you meet me, that I am covered in the most terrible scars inside and out.   You should think twice about getting involved.  Alcoholics seem to see the scars and hold out their hands so I can walk proudly amongst you…but don’t be deceived.

I am not what I am.

Categories
Gay Love

It’s Over..

I had a great day today.  Started writing my script, the one that I intend to shoot this winter.  I am working with my deliciously talented co-writer GT.  This afternoon we sat for four hours  hammering out the big idea.  She is  wonderful, inspired and inspiring who generously and perfectly compliments the way I work.

It’s odd to be feeling so upbeat because this afternoon whilst I was out shopping with Jennie I ended my relationship with my NYC boy.

My relationship is over.   The past four months have been very emotional but actually so well worth the risk.  To fall in love and be loved.   To make love.  To risk saying I love you to another man..these are the gifts of sobriety.  We had, against the odds, a great deal of fun.  Not enough really but fun wasn’t the point.

He was so fragile and distraught when I met him.  In the short time I knew him he experienced momentous changes.  I was so blessed to have been given the time we spent together, to witness his bravery.   To see him tear down his old life and build another in the ruins.

It was wonderful, when we had the few chances we had, to lay in each other’s arms.  I loved every inch of his perfect body.  Even as he wept-and we did a great deal of crying-he was beautiful.  It was a beautiful and tender time.

I can tell you with my usual disarming candor-the best sex I ever had.

What, you may be asking did you end it for?  If I didn’t let him go I would have stolen something that he needed more than me-the chance to form a relationship with a man more his own age, a man who could fully give him what he needed and that man wasn’t going to be me.

To exit a relationship with grace and dignity is perhaps the hardest thing of all.  I needed with love to let this man go on his way.  Everything I ever let go of had cl;aw marks all over it..

In spite of the external problems we had a perfect chemistry.   Intellectually we were perfectly well matched, when we weren’t crying we laughed a great deal.  So, why the hell end this?  Why?  Couldn’t I have moved to NYC?  Couldn’t he have moved to LA?

I’m afraid that it all boiled down to one thing, and one thing only: my being sober.

When I met him I set aside my doubts.  I may not have trusted him to stay monogamous, something I’m afraid that the gays don’t do very well (please, dear readers, don’t give me a hard time for this accurate generalization) I forgave his constant references to his past relationship, his crippling guilt, his disapproving mother.  I chose to rationalize that I was in a relationship with a man who insisted that I was not allowed to call our relationship a RELATIONSHIP.   I loved a man who loved me but we were not allowed to call each other lovers.  We lived in the shadow of the wreckage of his past and it was slowly suffocating me.

I feel as if I have been living in somebody else’s closet.

To keep him I needed to change.  I became genius at having no expectations.  I was not genius at being patient so my patience very quickly ran out.  I overlooked the drinking and the pornography, the flirtations and half stories undermining my confidence in him.  I ignored that he kept me secret.  I could even overlook his occasional weed smoking. But late last night, after a hard time in the city. He drove home drunk.

He drove for one hour out of NYC DRUNK.

I was forced to admit the most profound difference between us: he continues to pickle his feelings with alcohol, drugs and sex.

When he drinks his personality changes and he makes appalling choices.

That, my friends, is the curse of every addict.

Driving home drunk is simply unforgivable to me, a recovering alcoholic.  Even if it were ‘just once’ it was once too often and by doing so he recklessly risked his own life and the lives of others. Within a matter of moments my desire for him crumbled.  Let’s face it, for the past few nights when we chatted on Skype he had been drunk, drunk or high or both.   It just made me feel very uncomfortable.

I really  loved my beautiful boy but I didn’t love his drinking.  I let this man into my life and by so doing put myself at risk of relapse.

Dinner with a stranger then driving home drunk.

Does this sound like a man who has any respect for himself?  How am I expected to respect a man who risks his own life by drinking and driving?   I can’t do this.  I didn’t get sober for this.

The neighbors are fighting again.  They may fight but they are in the same room.  They have a chance of making it work.  The cowardly end to this was to wait for time to pass, wait for our relationship to die of natural causes.

Tonight I am free to write my blog without censorship-without having to be obtuse.  I know that he is relieved, that tonight he will sleep better in his own skin.   I fear for him, I really do.  That he will sink into a world of gym hook ups, drinking and drugs and by doing so he will become just like every despicable gay we used to laugh about.

We are no longer lovers but we remain friends and I will help him as much as I can.

I even secretly entertain the idea of going to Europe with him one day.  If he pays for his own ticket.