Heart of Glass

If the night taught me anything, it was the confirmation that I don't know what it is I want.

It's not that I had a bad night. It just didn't feel the same as the first time I met him, the guy from the previous post. I didn't want to try to push things into a direction they weren't meant for, but I was kind of pushing it. I kept trying to brush my knee against his leg, in a way that could seem innocent enough but could be taken in another, but it was never reciprocated. At the back of my mind, I was taking everything he said and using it to justify why things wouldn't work out with him. Differences in taste or because of experiences in his past. Things I don't take such a negative view on when it comes to other people. Any silences I took as a definite negative. If he looked a little nervous or shy, that was telling me I must have had the wrong idea last time.

By the time we went our separate ways I didn't really know how to evaluate the evening. Spent the early hours walking the mostly empty streets of a neighbourhood I don't know at all, at that point of drunkenness where you're still in control but less inhibited, until I reach the city centre. I asked myself if anxiety about any possible serious relationship with this guy had lead to me trying to rationalise and conjure any reason I could find as to why it wouldn't work out, and basically ruin it for myself.

Although I've been on anti-depressant medication on and off for several years and know how they caution drinking while you're taking them, I still do it from time to time. Sometimes it's fine, but tonight might not have been one of those days. I walked past dark alleyways and wondered what the chances of getting attacked and seriously injured was, and seriously considered wandering down them to see if it would happen. If there had actually been traffic, there were some moments when I might have walk out into it.

On my way to the city centre I decided that I didn't want to go home. The buses had stopped running by that time and I didn't feel like getting a taxi. So I booked into a hotel I thought would be cheap. Turns out they're not so cheap when you saunter in at 1:44am. End up paying more than double than what I had thought I would, but I just really wanted to be somewhere I could be alone.

Until I was actually on my own, that is. This was the first time in a long time that I'd stayed in a hotel without the intention of having sex, and the first time ever that I stayed the night in one alone. Once the door was closed I took off my clothes as an almost habitual act, though previously there's been someone there taking them off.

I lied there looking up at the textured ceiling--I thought that had gone out of style a long time ago--and realised that I didn't want to be alone. But unlike the last time I'd seen him, I wasn't sure if I wanted to be there with the guy I'd just spent the evening with. I considered just about anyone. I only had my phone with me, which doesn't access the Internet well nor does it have apps like Grindr or Scruff for solving this kind of problem. There was no complimentary laptop I could use to go online and try to find someone. It was now past 2am and I didn't want to be calling up the few guys I'd seen more than once and possibly waking them in the early hours of a Monday morning. I don't know where people go cruising in the city centre. The one spot I know of is miles away and closed at this time. So I was left on my own.

It was a pretty spacious room, so I sat on the sofa by the window and started wanking. Eventually I ended up on the floor, with my legs up on the sofa so that went I came it landed on my face. Might as well mess around while I had space to myself and beer still in me. Guys don't come on my face enough. I kind of like it. There's a part of me that's resistant, that thinks it's demeaning. But I do like it, and whether it's demeaning or not would depend on the guy doing it. Some of it hit the pillow behind my head, but surely hotel staff would be used to that kind of stuff.

That was nice for a while, but after getting cleaned up that feeling quickly passed and returned to the same one I had wandering the streets an hour or two before. For a few minutes, I tried to imagine how horrifying it would have been for the cleaner to find a dead body in a blood-covered bathroom. There's been times in the past when rather then telling people there was something wrong with me, I would do something horrible instead and wait for them to find me.  Sitting alone somewhere with blood covering the floor. I wanted people to know, but couldn't bring myself to say it to them and verbally admit I had a problem. At its worst, I could do something like that a couple of times within a week. It's been almost 10 years since I did that.

I didn't have anything I could have used to do it anyway, and didn't really have it in me to start smashing one of the mirrors or something. I might leave a scene, but I'd want to go out without much noise.


A couple of hours of sleep helped clear my mood a bit, though. But when I woke up, alone and in a strange room, I started to want someone else to be there. And I didn't want to waste a hotel room I paid far too much for just using it to shower, sleep and have a wank. I woke up about 5:40am, which was still too early, so once it was about 6:30 I texted C.R. from last week to see if he'd be able to come over. I had to check out by noon, and hoped I might see him before he went to work. He couldn't, though when he seems a bit concerned about me, it was kind of nice. I know as a fact that there are people who would care and worry about me, but I can have a difficult time truly believing it sometimes.

That might have cheered me up a bit, and there was the hint of seeing him again soon. But if I was going to be spending the time in this room on my own, I wasn't going to stay all the way until noon. So by 9:30 I'd gotten myself washed (the best I could having not brought anything with me), had some coffee and checked out, getting back on with my day.