The future soon...

Those of you familiar with my twitter will likely be aware of the person I refer to as #superaggressivefb.

This is a guy I met about 6 months ago, at a group play event at another fuckbuddy’s house.  At one point, #superaggressivefb hit me a little too hard for how you’d playfully hit someone you’d met at a group play event not 30 minutes earlier.  It hurt.  Not a lot, but enough to be definite pain.  Naturally, I grinned.  Probably a little too much.  And suddenly he gave me the kind of fiendish smirk that only ever happens when 2 kindred spirits discover each other, the look that says “Oh, we’ll be trouble together”

And we do have a lot of fun sexually.  But even better, is that we both have a similar outlook - that fuckbuddies can also make really good friends.  He’s one of my favourite people of late, and not just because he beats me up, we have a hell of a lot in common and enjoy a lot of the same things, and can match each other intellectually, but neither of us ever seem to pressure or stress the other.

I’m staying with #superaggressivefb this week while the floors in my place are being re-done.  We’re both slightly scared about this, for my own sake.  It’s entirely possible I’ll end up going home very, very broken.  
But completely unexpectedly (not because I didn’t think it could, I just truly didn’t consider the fact it might), staying with him might be the best singular thing that’s happened to my well being in the last 6 months.

#superaggressivefb has a husband.  And being around them gives me the kind of hope for the future I find difficult to come by at the moment. 

They are in their 40s, they are successful, They live in a flat.  It’s a nice big flat, but it’s a flat, not a house.   They have tenants who rent the other bedrooms because owning a flat in London is so expensive.  They don’t own a car.
They’ve been together forever, their ‘story’ is one of those heartwarming doesn’t it just makes you sick ones.  They got married less than a year ago.  That’s a big thing to me.  I’m old enough that when I was coming to terms with my sexuality, whatever ‘gay’ was, it meant every assumed aspect of straight life was suddenly closed off to you. 
They have shared and different interests.  They’ve managed to avoid that thing that seems to happen when ‘long term relationship’ meets ‘40s’ and haven’t just amalgamated into one set of people.  They have friends that overlap and friends that don’t.  They go out and do things apart from each other.
They have tiled fireplaces and art I don’t understand on the walls.  They have daffodils in vases on tables.  They have board games.  Not scrabble and monopoly.  Ticket to Ride, and Catan, and Dixit.  They have scores and scores of big thick politics and history books on their shelves.  Their bathroom has a note taped to the toilet asking guests/’visitors’ not to flush condoms down it.  They throw dinner parties with soup tureens .  There’s a teapot in the shape of Margaret Thatcher on their shelf.
They play.  Together and apart.  They lead totally respectable lives with impressive but sensible jobs.  They do drugs.  Together and apart.  They trust each other.
I don’t think the husband is completely keen on me.  He’s always courteous.  It’s not a problem that I’m around.  It’s not a problem I play with #superaggressivefb. 
They love each other.  Very obviously.  They are both still besotted with the idea that they are finally married.
They are content.  Not complacent.  They both desire and desire strongly.  They both have ambitions and things they still want to achieve.  They have disappointments.  But they are content.  There are parts of their flat that look old and worn, not in a ‘they’ve always been old and worn and we like them that way’ fashion, in a ‘we just haven’t managed to find the money to fix them yet’ way.

They seem to have achieved a near perfect blend of aging gracefully and together, with never losing that joie de vivre of the twenty something gay male.

The benchmark for people I admire is very high, (and occasionally rather unusual).  It is a list of less than 10.  #superaggressivefb and his husband are the perfect counterpoint to another set of gay married friends of mine.  Both silently helping to assure me, just through their every day lives, with all their struggles and achievements, that what I want can be mine right now, and it can still be mine in the future.


I’m still angry.  I’m still upset.  I’m still sick of feeling like this.  I’m still sick of feeling anything at all.  I’m tired, and I still haven’t found the energy to pick myself up, and start with everything I wanted, and was planning, all over again.   If you asked me why I get out of bed in the morning I couldn’t tell you.  The only way I get out of bed in the morning is by not asking myself why.  I go through the motions, simply because I do not bother to ask myself why I’m even doing that.   I don’t let myself think about the future, because there still isn’t any kind of one to imagine in my head.

But one like this wouldn’t be too bad.

Don't stop

Drive on,
Drive on,
My special one.
Don't you stop, 'til you know you're gone.

Your sister and me
Will keep your place clean
So it shines when you finally come home.

Drive on,
Drive on,
My special one.
Don't you stop, 'til you know you're gone.

All the love's still there I just don't know what to do with it now

If [we] believe that everything's alright,
[we] won't be alone tonight,
And I'd be blessed by the light of your company,
Slowly lifting me to somewhere new.

...oh can you tell I haven't slept very well since the last time that we spoke?

Please understand, if you see me again, don't even say "hello".

Drama

Crazy stories are my thing.

You all have a passion that drives you; if I have a passion it's taking life and turning it into a series of crazy stories.

If you can do that without me, then I don't know who I am anymore

Habits

A month on, and I still can't stop myself from saying "I love you" out loud into the void every time I get into bed.

Old habits die hard.

Skittles

The other day I found out I do not have melanoma.  It was my second cancer scare within 6 months.

I'm a pretty sickly kid, I have one health problem after the other, I'm on an array of drugs, I get a new health issue on a regular basis.

Currently I find myself wondering, having dodged this one, how many months do I have before the next big major health problem rears its head.  All my issues are pretty big, not quite life threatening, but severely life affecting and would only take one bad turn to become threatening.  I'm constantly on borrowed time and just waiting for the one that finally brings the house of cards crashing down.

Most recently, I've been not wanting to take my ARVs.  I've only intentionally skipped my dosage once before; it was shortly after I started them, and I needed to do it so I would experience the regret and panic that ensures I take them every day.  But recently I don't want to.  At least that way I know what'd get me, and with my other health issues chances are it wouldn't be long at all  before my HlV made me very ill. 

The fact that I am considering saying "fuck it" to my HIV meds is a very, very clear sign of how not okay I am these days - I'm religious in my taking of them, I've missed maybe 5 doses tops in 2 years of taking them, like everything else, I am sick and tired.  Sick and tired of waiting to see what I come down with next, how long it'll be till that happens, how it'll interact with all my other issues, how many meds that will take to control; it's all just another exercise in trying to survive day in day out and that is very definitely I am something I am tired of, so why not call it quits on this?

Write off

You wrote me off long before that week in September.  One bad reaction didn't decide things for you, it might have confirmed it, but it didn't decide them.  You wrote me off so you didn't need to tell me you were marrying someone else, I wasn't entitled to that anymore.  You wrote me off so you didn't tell me I was fucking things up.  I wasn't worth the courtesy of it, or telling me I don't give you what you want or that you were gonna break up with me  You can sit there in be in love with me and I do belive you are, but you wrote me off in your head long ago.  You love me, but it doesn't make me worth jack shit to you any more

God you would have just said whatever you thought I needed to hear over hat week and longer if necessary.  I forgot what a manipulative bastard you can be.  I guess I figured maybe I wasn't subject to it as much as the rest, but then I have the horrible realisation I'm no better than anyone else to you.  I almost believed it for a second.  My perfect guy, the one my jaw dropped to the floor for, the one miles out of my league, who I didn't think would give me a second glance.  You did, you fell in love with me, from an ocean away, so eventually I got to think maybe I had something going for me to get a guy like you.  I believed it for a shining moment.  And then I remember you couldn't even do me the fucking courtesy of breaking up with me when you actually realised you wanted to.  No one is ever special to anyone.  I forgot that.

I'm having to remind myself every day not to hate you.  I could hate you so much for things over the last few months.  Really truly completely utterly hate you.  To the point I couldn't see you again, where I'd have to abandon all our mutual friends, where I'd not be able to go near Boston again.  I could hate you to the point where the mention of your name would get me as angry as I do when Brandon is mentioned.  I don't want to hate you.  I really don't want to.  So I try to remember not to.  But God I could.  So much and so easily.