The Other Side Of The World – Part II

"I’m writing this from seat 32E on the 4:15PM flight from Maui to Dallas. 

The time is either 6:30PM or 12:30AM, depending on where I wish I was, which changes by the minute. In my heart, I’m still with you. But in my head, I need to be home – undoing myself from us at a safe distance. 

I keep replaying our last conversation again and again in my head. In the moments before boarding the plane, I rolled my phone around in my hand like a hot coal until I finally dialed your number (which wasn’t saved). I’d waited until the last possible moment before I departed the island. If I told you I was leaving earlier, you would’ve tried to stop me. You would’ve tried to convince me to stay. And if I might have done it. 

But I want you to know that I meant what I said last night in La Perouse. I can still feel the cool leather on my neck as looked up at you from the backseat. The sun roof was open. Above us was the Maui night sky, littered with more stars than I’ve ever seen before. Listen to me. I sound like an asshole. Talking about night skies and stars and cool leather. You’d want me to be myself right now, wouldn’t you? You’d want me to say something honest. Something like, 'Fucking you wasn’t terrible. B+ work, champ.'" – Excerpt from my Maui Journal

Writing in my Maui Journal on the flight home.

I told my friends that I met Cullen at a luau, but that was a lie.

On my second day on Maui, I got blackout drunk and woke up in a shallow puddle of my own piss around eleven o’clock at night. I stumbled to the bathroom, peeled off my damp underwear, and sat on the toilet. When I returned to bed, I rolled onto my back and checked Grindr. In the grid of torsos, I noticed him. His name was Cullen and he lived on the other side of the island in Lahaina. We chatted for about an hour before he said that he’d be willing to meet me at my hotel in Wailea; a 45-minute drive from his house.

After showering, I ran downstairs to tell the valet that my cousin was on his way and ask if he could park his car in the unloading zone. I could tell that he knew I was full of shit, so I reached into the cargo pocket of my board shorts and pulled out a ten. He took it and I walked barefoot to the bar. My nerves were keeping my hangover at bay, but I still felt like it needed some nursing. I was halfway through my second Mai Tai when he walked into the lobby.

He was exactly my height and build and wore a familiar shade of mainlander pasty. Somewhere in the back of my mind, The xx’s “Heart Skipped A Beat” was playing. And I must have been smiling when he looked my way. "Hey, cousin!” he said with a smirk as he swung the strap on his backpack from one shoulder to the other.

He walked with me down to the beach and sat to my left on the edge of the water. He told me that he was from Rancho Cucamonga, California and he'd moved to Maui a year ago to work at the Ritz Carlton Kapalua. And like most young transplants, he was bored with Hawaii, which was unfathomable to me. We spent hours asking each other questions and trying to be the most distilled versions of ourselves, wrapped in masculinity and sex appeal. At some point, we stopped trying and everything kept spinning, so we kissed.

He held my hand on the walk back to the hotel. “I’m not tired yet,” I said. “You want to go for a ride? I can take you halfway to Hana,” he replied. “Just so you know, I’m not going to fuck you tonight,” I said in a voice loud enough for the valet to hear. “Sure you are,” he said without looking at me. “You’re already in love with me.”

When I climbed into his red BMW at 2:30AM, I didn’t even know his middle name. Just magnets and butterflies and the fact that I had five more days of Hawaii and an open road that led halfway to Hana ahead of me.

"You were wrong the first night. I wasn't 'already in love with you.' I just thought you were handsome and funny and adventurous. And I was drunk on rum and Maui. But I want to remind you that you said 'I love you' first, asshole. Somewhere between the first time you saw me in the lobby of the Grand Wailea and last night, you fell in love with me. 

The time is irrelevant because I need to be back in New Orleans. And now the flight attendant is inching closer with the beverage cart and I'm in serious need of a Mai Tai. 

Because you're not here. And that's the next best thing."

Sunrise over Maui.

A Good Ol' Fashion Cock Ring Story

In February, my exboyfriend asked me if I'd like to have drinks with him after work. We met at Marley's around sunset and drank our way through a bottle of Absolut over the course of several hours. Sometime after one a.m., Miranda Kellen, a girl from my undergrad advertising class who was still in college at the time, stumbled over, swung her arms around me, and vomited into my lap.

Outside in the street, my ex and I walked hand-in-hand and laughed about happier, less vomit-covered times, and he drove us back to his place. His apartment hadn't changed at all. On the wall near his bed, the frames that used to host pictures of us were empty. It had been one year and several new boyfriends since we broke up, but he still hadn't replace our pictures with anything.

"You should take a shower," he said. "You smell like Dina Lohan." I climbed into the shower, he followed, and then the theme music from Oz came on.

At some point, he slipped on a cock ring. I didn't even notice until I saw something shiny around his balls. I jumped out of bed, flicked on the lamp, and stood there staring at it, naked and panting. This was not your normal, run-of-the-mill cock ring. It was metal, and thick, and heavy, and looked like it could've been engraved with a Latin prayer. In all seriousness, one could seriously injure a person by throwing it at them.

Me: "THE FUCK IS THAT?!"
Him: "This? What does it look like?"
Me: "When did you start...using those?"
Him: "Stop freaking out. It's no big deal."
Me: "Why? Why do you need that?"
Him: "Fucking chill. It just helps me go longer."
Me: "You're 22! Why do you need help going longer?!"
Him: "Do you want to wear it?"
Me: "You've lost your fucking marbles. Is sex not enough for you anymore? I saw this coming when you left for study abroad in Paris. You're desensitized to normal sex!"
Him: "You're crazy."
Me: "I feel sorry for you. Toss me my underwear, please."

We fell asleep shortly after. And in the morning, we barely spoke on the ride home. I couldn't look at him. He used to be my boyfriend. Now he's a guy who wears cock rings.

A few months later, I dated a guy who aggressively liked for his nuts to be pulled. The first couple of times, it wasn't that weird. Then he started breaking out the toys – something that looked like a Koosh ball on a stick and an aluminum lobster cracker. The last thing I said to him was, "I'm just having a hard time accepting you as a person. It has everything to do with the ball-yanking thing."

Part of me feels like my role as a gay man should include advocating tolerance if not acceptance of personal sexual practices. But I still get skittish and uneasy when I discover that someone I like is into device-assisted sex. It's not for me. And looking back on my ex and his cock ring, I feel like I unfairly wigged out on him. He wasn't hurting anyone if you don't count his poor scrotum. Maybe I didn't like the cock ring because of what it stood for; discomfort and defiance. Or maybe it's something more metaphoric like the dichotomy of release by constriction.

Or maybe I'm a judgmental bitch who thinks rings and vices and butt plugs and Koosh balls are silly. And that my whore exboyfriend and the guy who likes his nuts crushed are craving something that clearly no human alone can fulfill and they're just begging for an ER visit.

Perhaps one day, I'll be walking down the utensil aisle at Target and come upon a lobster cracker. I might smile and think to myself, "Well hello, mister. You'd look good around my scrote."

No! Pick me! I tickle!

But for now, I'll stick with my child-size underwear and skinny jeans. My sperm aren't going to kill themselves. 

The Rash In Irrational

Most things give me anxiety, but fewer things actually scare me.

I've never had a fear of danger, or failure, or dying alone. Instead, most of my fears are completely irrational and involve dudes screwing with me.

For starters, I'm afraid that my date isn't going to return from the restroom. Whoever he is, wherever we are, when he wipes his mouth and excuses himself, I distract myself with texting and nail biting until he sits back down. Being abandoned in the middle of somewhere miserable like Texas Roadhouse is the most mortifying thing I can think of.

I'm afraid that someone I banged might try to frame me. Even in the movies, clearing your name after someone sets you up for a crime seems really difficult. I wouldn't have the wherewithal to turn the tables and I certainly don't have the moxie of Harrison Ford or Ashley Judd. Plus, I'm an aggressive arguer and I feel like the SVU cops would bash my head against the two-way mirror after five seconds of my screeching "this is a fucking crucifixion!" And like everyone, I'm petrified of jail. Not just the obvious rape angst, but the isolation. I was on house arrest for nearly two weeks after my DUI, and being tethered by law begets overwhelming hopelessness. I don't want that again on any scale, please.

Extortion also scares me. I have this vision of a guy tossing an envelope full of naked pictures of me across a table and demanding good or favors in exchange for their destruction. That scenario wigs me out mostly because I think I'd tell him to get bent. My impulses tend to get me into long-term problems, and hastily denying negations in a blackmailing situation seems like something I'd do.

One of my biggest fears is seeing someone I've dated doing porn. I think it's okay for everyone to be paranoid about this one. If I date or sleep with you, please don't let someone film you fucking. Because once I see the video, I will struggle of what to do next. Do I finish? Do I post it on Facebook? Do I finish and then posit it on Facebook? I just feel like it would present a moral dilemma that I'm not sure I could handle. Given my dating history, this scenario is by far the most likely. It hasn’t happened yet, but it probably will. But at the end of the day, I just want to go about my business and watch a bunch of people doing it without having to worry about seeing my ex getting plowed by a guy in a harness. Is that so much to ask?

So if you're thinking about framing me, or blackmailing me, or taking that nice gentleman from CockyBoys.com up on his offer, or ditching me at Texas Roadhouse with all those potato skins that I will finish in your absence, please don't.

I know I'm an asshole. But I'm an asshole to everyone. You weren't treated any differently.

A One-Way Conversation With My Ex's Facebook

Hey, stud. 

It's been a few months since we've talked; the last time being on your birthday when I sent you that special birthday text that said "Hope you're dead. See you in hell."

But that wasn't really talking. That was more like me texting bitchy things from a safe distance. Talking would require an exchange. You were absent. Or better yet — dead.

I just wanted to drop by and tell you some good news. Turns out, I can creep your Facebook and not feel anything for you. I can see that you've been around the world, and that you've gotten your teeth fixed, and that you look happy. And I feel nothing for you. Truly. You look good. Your new boyfriend looks normal. He's got a super cute hunchback. Apparently, ringing those bells is doing wonders for his traps.

It's been a while since I could look at you and not see all those guys from London and San Francisco and Dallas taking turns on you in an imaginary bathhouse. A hellish host of the men you slept with before, during, and after me just hammering you into submission while the smaller guys watched from darker corners, waiting their turns. It's all I could see when I looked at you after we broke up — an orgy of not me.

But that's in the past. 

Now, I scan your Facebook likes and see that you're a fan of Jason Mraz and Modern Family and you almost seem, well, vanilla. Gone are your days as the horny frat boy who posts shirtless pictures of himself with captions like, "Dinosaur go RAWR ;-}." Today, your most recent pictures show you cuddled between a curtain of nicely processed gays in sensible, work appropriate polos. You look...elevated. I picture you at home with the Hunchback; him nestled on the couch and you peering through the kitchen's serving hatch into the living room. You're chopping something (probably celery because you're trying to take care of those new bitchtits), and you both chuckle at how hysterical Cam and Mitchell are. "Uh-oh! Those two have NO IDEA how to boogie board, do they?!"

Your status updates are still riddled with misspellings and grammatical errors. You never could form a sentence in person or on the page. It was endearing at first, but after months of this, I wanted to hit you with my car. I thought you were stupider than Dina Lohan. But right now, at this juncture, it doesn't bother me at all. That's who you are. Less educated homos might even think it's cute. But sweetie, please stop using conversate for fuck's sake.

The point is, I'm proud of both of us.

I won't say that I'm happy for you, but I will say that your perceived success doesn't annoy me. Scratch that. I am happy for you. If I were to run into you on the street, I'd hug you and I'd mean it. And I'm confident that I wouldn't hit you in the face. 

Because I've matured.

I can't promise that I wouldn't get semi, though.

Good talk, champ.

Just A Little Kiss

It’s somewhere between eight o'clock and eight-thirty on a Sunday morning and I’m driving a trick back across town to his friend’s apartment.

And I’d prefer if he didn’t try to kiss me before exiting the car.

It’s not because he isn’t cute. He’s very cute. A little too skinny for my taste, but universally, people would call him handsome. And the sex wasn’t terrible. A solid B+, actually. He even surprised me with a little over-the-shoulder action, which didn’t piss me off. But given the choice between kissing him and not kissing him right now, I’d prefer not. It’s just not a good time for me.

I didn’t brush my teeth this morning and my lips are cracked and parched. The area around my mouth is burned from stubble abuse and I’m splotchy because I think he had cat hair on his shorts and I’m deathly allergic to cats.

Cats are usually a deal breaker for me. Not just because cat dander can kill me, but because men who own cats give me the willies. I feel the same way about male cat-owners as I do about men who take baths. It just doesn’t sit right with me. There’s something about the image of guy and his cat that makes me the opposite of horny. Just get a fucking dog, bruh. You and I both know that it’s God’s will.

But even if the rogue cat hair on his clothes didn’t send me into an asthmatic’s waking nightmare, I’d prefer if he didn’t try to kiss me right now.

You see, I’m not a cuddler. I don’t have the need to be held after sex – or ever, really. My parents were very affectionate and no one’s ever beat me with a switch. But still, I don’t think I crave physical contact in the way that some of my friends confess to pining for – at least not post-fornication, anyway. Plus, I give off a lot of body heat and I don’t want to incubate with someone pressed up against me. I only cuddle in extreme cases. And If I kiss this guy right now, it’ll be like cuddling under false pretenses. Sorry, sport. I think I'm done.

But he is a nice guy. And his flight back to Minnesota departs in six hours. He might want one more kiss before he’s subjected to TSA manhandling and wine nap interruptions from Curtis the Flight Attendant.

Just a quick peck. We’ll meet in the middle, over the armrest, and we’ll barely touch lips. Boom. Done.

But that wouldn't be real. It would be frivolous. That's the word. For him to kiss me would be frivolous. And by the nature of frivolous things, I wouldn't need it. Much like cats and cuddling and Curtis the Flight Attendant.

And now we're nearing his friend's apartment on the other side of town and he's pointing me around curves and painted lines on the pavement. And now I'm stopped. And now he's looking at me. And now the radio's singing "Consolation Prizes" because the music of Phoenix is palatable at best, but at least he won't think I'm trying too hard.

And then he says "Later," and he leaves.

It’s somewhere between eight-thirty and nine o'clock on a Sunday morning and I’m driving back home. And I'm thinking that an ice cream sandwich would be delicious right now.

Ice cream sandwiches don't make things weird. They don't leave. You just eat them.

The Other Side Of The World – Part I

Last summer, on an Alaskan cruise, I slept with Dalton and Cade – but not at the same time.

Dalton was a member of the travel staff for the corporate group I traveled with. We stumbled back to his cabin on our first night on the ship, and I woke up the next morning so disoriented that I had to ask a Filipino lady on the Lido Deck where I was. She said, “I think we near Ketchikan. On the other side of the world. You okay, son? You lost?”

“I’m very lost.”

Cade was a dancer on the ms Zuiderdam (pronounced with a long "I" sound, as in “cider”). He was one of seven male dancers on the ship, and although he didn’t walk and talk as gay as someone like me, his behavior on stage was gayer than anything I’ve ever seen in my life – and I’ve been to a one-woman Amy Winehouse–themed drag show at a Mexican gay bar. I’m not joking. I watched a fat Mexican drag queen in a beehive prance around and lip-sync “Tears Dry On Their Own” and it was fathoms less gay than what Cade did on a nightly basis. The first time I watched him hump the air and flap around jazz hands in his glittery, hot pink bowler hat and suspenders to “The Pink Panther,” I laughed so hard that I literally pissed my pants and was late for dinner in the Upper Vista Dining Room.

From our second day at sea, Cade and I hung out nearly every day. We went on four dates, kissed in three different cities, and managed to hook up in just about every major local on the ship ­– my favorite being the stage on which Cade “performed.”

The actual stage.

Our romance was hasty and reckless and sloppy and I loved it. The electricity between us was tangible, and I felt like at any point, we could reach out and grab this thing that was materializing between us. I would look at him and feel starved and full at the same time. I wasn't sure if this was love, but I wanted to live in it.

On the last day before making port in Vancouver, I called Cade to confirm that we were still meeting in the Crow’s Nest for drinks, but he didn’t answer. Nor did he that night. Nor the following morning. And then I departed the Zuiderdam without having said goodbye. I teamed with the staggering herd of geriatrics and overweight children and Dalton who was poorly feigning interest in whatever was going on in his man purse and silently whispered to myself, “Don’t turn around. He’s not coming.”

The last time I saw Cade in person, he was stretched across my lap in dark recesses of the Vista Lounge Balcony.

“I’ve never felt this way about someone I just met,” he said to me.

Looking down, I smiled and pushed the collar of his shirt back to reveal the smoldering, spider web tattoo that sprawled around his shoulder like axis lines on a globe.

“Me neither. Let’s keep us this way.” I said.

The only picture of Cade and I, taken by my dad from our balcony.

By the time I touched down in Atlanta, I had one text and one voicemail from him. I didn’t bother to read the text, but his voicemail said that he was spending his second day in bed with the flu. And since the phone service was so erratic in open water, he wasn’t able to get through to me until it was too late. I deleted the message and shoved my phone into my backpack. Because fuck him.

Today, he’s my Facebook friend and that’s about it. We Skyped a few times after I returned home and after I forgave him – not just for standing me up on an epic scale, but for being irresponsible about letting me fall for him. But he had to stay. And I had to leave. And now, we like one another’s statuses, and I write smartass comments under his photos of whatever fruity dance costume he’s wearing this week.

Looking back, I think the Filipino lady on the Zuiderdam was right. We were on the other side of the world – somewhere between my normal life and a dreamscape. A place where I could marvel at my surroundings and feel things I’ve never felt before. I went away, I fell in love, I came back, and that was the end of it. 

Until it happened again.

Don’t Tell Me About What My Ex Is Doing

If you see my ex out somewhere, I don’t want to know about it. Because I’m the one that’s supposed to be out somewhere. He’s not allowed. He’s supposed to be alone in his apartment, alternating between emotional breakdowns and reorganizing the mounting stacks of Chili’s to-go boxes. If you tell me that you witnessed him in public, it only confirms that he’s still alive. And I just don’t need to know all that. I take comfort in the idea that he might be face down in a puddle of ranch dressing. Let me have that.

If you notice that my ex updated his status, or tweeted, or Instagrammed, keep it to yourself. He stopped being a sweet person with rational thoughts and ambition the moment that we broke up. Now, to me, he’s an asshole, and he doesn’t have anything to say, and he doesn’t do anything fun. So that picture that you saw of him skydiving in Interlaken was fucking doctored. And his hysterical tweet about Delcambre and its “shrimp wind” wasn’t even that funny. His whole image is smoke and mirrors, and like I said, he’s an asshole. He’s just doing it to get a rise out of me. So don’t help him.

If my ex decides to brave the world beyond the Rouse’s chip aisle and attend the same party as me, don’t warn me when you see him. If I know that a hurricane’s in the gulf, I can’t focus on work. And if I know that a former 1st tier slam piece is in the same room as me, I can’t concentrate on all the vodka I’m supposed to be shotgunning. Before leaving prematurely, I’ll spend the night staging laugh scenarios and stepping into flattering lighting. Let me see him on my own and I’ll handle it organically and gracefully.

Never mind. Tell me when that fucker walks in. I need a heads-up so that I can ensure the visibility of m’junk in these cut-offs.

But if you hear that my ex is dating someone else, keep me in the dark. After we stopped dating, his tiny sex organs fell onto the ground and were quickly snatched up by a Pomeranian. Plus, I choose to believe that I’m the last person he’ll ever do wiener stuff with before passing away of old age. But if some unfortunate, simple fruit falls for the charming way that he peppers normal conversation with mispronounced French expressions, or the look on his face when he's genuinely surprised, or the way he sleeps with an entire pillow over his eyes, I don’t think I need to know about it. It’s none of my business.

So let's all pretend that he's gone. He moved to Europe where he can finally practice his Italian and his bathhouse etiquette at the same time. He's in his apartment; forever pinned under a fallen tower of Chili's boxes, under which he survives on flecks of batter and sauce. He's just not here anymore, so we can all go about our business and we don't have to talk about what he's up to. I'm asking you nicely.