After about 10 days of being ill and housebound, I got back to getting back to my normal schedule. On Wednesdays and Thursdays, I pass one of the few gay bars in town on my way back home. This Wednesday, I decided I'd go in on my own.
Just for a drink before I go home, I said to myself. Really, though, I was kind of hoping for something more. Maybe not a lot more. Lately I have alternated between wanting to just get laid yet not being comfortable with the idea, wanting to and being comfortable enough with myself, and just plain not wanting to be touched at all. I would have been satisfied making out with a stranger now that I wasn't constantly coughing (progressed to 'only every now and then').
That didn't happen. There was only one other guy in this basically dead bar. I made the effort to sit near him, but that was it. He looked my way a couple of times, I looked his. He was dressed for the winter that's not quite here yet, but looked alright from what you could see. And then I just sat there and realised I had no idea what to do in this situation. In the past I've always relied on someone else taking the lead. I might have showed a bit of interest, but it was up to the other guy to decide where it was heading. Actually, no. I do know what to do. I just don't have the confidence or the guts to do it yet. Hopefully someday soon I will, but this was not that day. I finished my drink, went to the toilet to scream internally at how useless I felt, and walked out to get my bus. The guy looked at me on the way out. (Trying not to really read much into this. Maybe he was interested but also couldn't do anything about it. Maybe he was just looking at the only other male in the bar.)
***
Listened to a little talk on gay stereotypes yesterday. It's something I needlessly worry myself about at times. I don't really dislike myself if I conform to certain stereotypes or anything like that. There can seem to be a certain pride in not 'being too gay', the whole straight-acting/no-femmes thing. That's not really anything I concern myself too much with. I suppose I worry about it because it would have caused a lot more friction between me and my brother to do anything he saw as a 'gay' thing. I might check my behaviour around him to avoid any unnecessary grief, but I don't care about his opinion on how I live.
Of a more preoccupying note would be how other gay guys expect me to be. One of the things that got mentioned was how people can start to think they have to be out there having sex as much as possible and with as many people as possible. I was already giving myself that pressure before I even understood what sleeping around really meant (I assumed I would have to date a certain number of women and then get married; I really have no idea where my preadolencent ideas about relationship came from). When I finally got exposure to gay life, it didn't really help matters.
Maybe the reason for that is when gay lifestyles are focused on, it's going to be the stuff that's different from 'normal straight' life that's going to get all the attention. You're not going to hear about the mundane and common, you're going to hear about stuff like saunas and cruising and all that. Most gay magazines seem to have a lot of focus on sex, or sexualised content. I don't really know if I am that kind of person, or what kind of person I am at all.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I suppose I've just been in an increasing apathetic mood lately. I'd like to have sex, but I kind of want more than just that. I could go to the sauna in town and have sex. Could go online and find someone to have sex with. I can get Grindr on my phone now. But things like living situations and life in general kind of take the motivation to do anything about that out of me. (And I'm still not sure on Grindr yet.)
In the midst of getting my life sorted out, I'm apparently having something of an identity crisis.
I have been thinking about travelling a bit. Just to get away for at least a week or do and do something different, be somewhere different. I've never left the UK before, so I wanted to go overseas for the first time. Not had a proper holiday since I was a child. At the moment I am thinking America or Canada, hopefully visit some friends.
Originally, I had other ideas. I wanted to go to France for a weekend with T.S. at one point. He wanted to learn French, and I wanted to go away somewhere with a partner. That was really getting ahead of myself, since it was still early days when that ended. But I've been thinking more and more I want that more than sex ('course, having both would be the best of both worlds but what are you going to do).
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