I had this recurring nightmare, when I was younger, in which the proportions of everything were all distorted. Nothing exactly happened in these nightmares, but for some reason they were the worst kind. A small room would suddenly expand to limitless proportions. A book which had been a short reach away was suddenly all the way across a room the size of a football field. A large piece of furniture would receed and shrink to the size of a thimble. In every room I was the only person around; the entire world around me was shifting, and I was alone and feeling like I was going insane. They were the kind of dreams that, even at the age of fourteen, made me want to wake up my mother, so that someone could comfort me, so that someone could witness with me the world returning to its normal proportions.

A ten-minute conversation on Friday night has suddenly thrown my entire life into disarray. Things are not what I thought they were. A ten minute conversation that flipped on a light; a light that is shining backwards over a year’s worth of conversations and e-mails and emotions, and I can’t seem to move from this spot. I’m rooted with my head looking back over my shoulder, examining the shadows and contours of this newly-lit trail. I’m not sure what is real and what isn’t. 24 hours after that conversation I was sure that everything was an illusion, but now, after three days, I can see that it is far more ambiguous. There really is love in there, if only I can pull it apart from the surrounding mess. I will be okay, he will be okay. Whether or not there will still be an “us”, remains to be seen. If so it will require of me more patience and understanding than I thought myself capable of.

Yesterday the Ex dropped off the dog. He was going to watch him for a few days during the space monkey’s visit, and so I had to tell him, like I’ve had to tell all my friends, that he didn’t come. “Honestly,” I told him, “I feel like this is payback for all the shitty things I did to you when we were together.”

“No. You were a great boyfriend.”

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes, you were. You brought me here to San Francisco. You adopted Louie…”

He was forgetting all the times I had cheated on him, all the drunken arguments and the depressions.

“You’re a great guy,” he said. “Is this guy really all that special? Aren’t there any…locals you could date?”

Yes, he really is all that special, in spite of everything. I did so many things when I was drinking and doing meth, things which people have had to forgive. Who would I be to deny that forgiveness to someone else?

Friday night, after the ten-minute conversation, I wanted an escape . I hadn’t wanted a drink that badly since my mother died, and in some ways I wanted it even more. My mother’s death was nobody’s fault. But this pain, this was somebody’s fault. I wanted to blot everything out, I wanted to never trust another man for the rest of my life. But I didn’t drink, I didn’t snort crystal. Instead, after eight months of monogamy/celibacy, I went back to the chat rooms. At least I can get laid, I thought. Two guys said hello, but I just didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t even reply. The thought of anonymous sex, of a one-night stand, made me nauseous. I’ve never really been built that way. I just went to bed, and dreamed all night of a new world with constantly shifting proportions.

Okay, so I overreacted a little. I guess I don’t give up so easily. Not lately.

Bearbait and I were over at Prometheus’ house last night. The three of us had rented a movie, popped some Lightly Buttered popcorn, and were enduring an amazingly long series of previews. There was one rather dull-looking movie where the narrator was droning on and on about how “Life for Bill and his brother Charlie had always been fairly normal…” and then the music changed, a shimmering sound indicated for us a shift in mood; “…until one day Love Walked In…” and some woman walks through a gate in their fence.

I turned to my friends. “It’d be really great if someday Love just Walked In. You know, I’m just hanging out minding my own business and it just walks in.”

My life would not make the best movie. I suspect that most people watching would fall asleep or demand a refund, waiting for Love to walk in. I’m still waiting. I’m learning a lot about patience and forgiveness and this may be making me a better man. But sometimes I’d rather not work so hard. I’d like a little instant gratification, a little sexual healing. Some wild behavior that could be videotaped and sold on late-night cable for $19.95.

And characteristically I am being vague and coy about all this. Because I am working hard, and I am becoming a better man, and because this involves another person. If I were an even better man I might keep all of this off the Internet. But it’s the only thing I can concentrate on lately, and if I didn’t say something it would turn into the elephant in the living room and I’d keep writing as often as I have been lately, which is to say almost never.

I am the biggest goddamned fool who ever lived. I’m not sure when I will post again.

It’s a little upsetting to stumble across a friend in a porn movie from the 80’s.  Nothing kills an erection like seeing this friend, who has cultivated a rather Daddy-like image, speaking in stilted tones with frosted hair in an office with teal-flocked wallpaper getting his ass plowed on top of a cheap, varnished desk.  Not that I ever search the web for streaming video porn or anything.
But even if I did, I would do it to excess, as I do any sort of addictive substance.  And since I no longer partake of substances, other activities will sometimes take their place.  Like the occasional porn marathon, say, or this recent music-downloading habit I’ve picked up like a bad cold.  I never got into the whole Napster thing, but I often come to fads and fashions much later than everyone else, out of a misguided stubbornness against anything popular.  And I won’t tell you what site I am using, because now that the Feds are indicting people for music-swapping, it would be just my luck to land in jail and end up as someone’s bitch, just for being a little cheap.  I’ve probably said too much already.
So yes, downloading over a hundred songs within a 24-hour period might seem a little compulsive. It was rather short-lived, however, as I have reached a mental block; I can’t think of any other song I want.  And it must say something about one’s character development that most of the songs I downloaded were from several years ago, during the 80’s and early 90’s.  The songs I fell in love with during those years have attached themselves to my emotional core.  They don’t entertain so much as elicit past moods; a form of nostalgia towards which I have always been prone.
So between these songs and my friend’s frosted hair, I have retreated into the softly neon-lit 80’s, where memory smoothes over all rough edges to produce a simpler, more naive era. Memory distorts; it’s not to be trusted, which means that most of my writing is suspect as well.  What lies have I conjured, all with the best of intentions?  But that’s what happens when you’re always looking over your shoulder at the past.
Then again, that’s not entirely true.  I am a red blooded American, I believe in possibility.  I tie my happiness to the uncertain future, to events and people and cities I hope will come to me.  I count down the days, over and over, till the long-delayed arrival of my handsome space monkey.  I pore over catalogues for schools across the country.  I imagine myself in better jobs.  I mentally shed the two or three pounds that must be obscuring my six-pack abs.  I sometimes even let myself imagine a cure for the virus in my bloodstream.
But there’s no harm there.  I’m just saying I would make a lousy Buddhist.  The Power of Now is lost on me.  Between the past and the lurid future I am torn, missing out on the present and all of its simple gifts, if you believe in that sort of thing.

Met up with Mr. Geekslut for coffee on Friday night. I always get a little nervous when I am about to meet another blogger for the first time, like a blind date of sorts, but he made for great company, and he wasn’t too bad to look at, either. His weblog has a distinctive voice, a unique combination of writing style and subject matter, the kind of blog I visit frequently. Which doesn’t mean that I always agree with what he says, I’m a little more idealistic in matters of love and devotion, but it makes for good conversation, and good reading.

Woke up Saturday knowing I was going to spend the weekend in bed; one of my 48-hour flu’s that hit me once or twice a year. Spent a few hours watching a John Hughes movie-thon on TNT. I didn’t realize that I knew all the dialogue in The Breakfast Club. It was rather sweet, actually, seeing Mollie Ringwald again. Something almost naive about all those stories of love across school cliques, the freaks and the losers triumphing in the end. Something that plays the violin to my naive, romantic heart. I always wanted, at the end of the movie, to leave the church and find a handsome man leaning against a red Porsche, waiting for me.

And indeed he is. Maybe it was the movies, I don’t know. I get these musical obsessions, where a song from my past or present infects me, and I must find it and play it over and over and stew in the blissful melancholy it usually produces. So yesterday the song was “Space Age Love Song”, by yes, a Flock of Seagulls. I searched in a fevered haze for a free MP3 somewhere, with no luck. I told the Space Monkey about this today, and later he uploaded it for me, and here I am writing to you, blissfully stewing. May someone say to you, someday:

I saw your eyes
And you made me smile
For a little while
I was falling in love

Another bout of insomnia; the flickering blue light of the television, movies I’d already seen. At two a.m. I remember with a jolt to move the car from the museum lot at the end of the street; signs had proclaimed Saturday would be “Bug Day,” whatever that is. I drive down the hill. Below me the city is half-asleep, the lights of the bridge stretching across the bay. Quiet winding streets, an empty parking lot, the bright glow of the Safeway drawing boys and girls stumbling home from closing time like moths. I squint as I step through the door. The hand basket bouncing against my leg as I circle the store, aisles cluttered with boxes and pallets, the late night stock boys stepping politely aside. I wander the same three aisles in confusion, hopeless before the logic of beverage categories; fruit juice here, soda there, water another aisle over. I stop before the Gatorade, yellow sale signs marking decimated shelves. I had passed here three times. Now I stand, dizzy under the florescence, scanning the color-coded flavors, the quarts and the eight-packs, the confusingly clear fluid of the “Ice” series. Pink label equals Watermelon. Later a half gallon of milk, four pale bananas and a bottle of vitamins. The basket hanging heavy from my hand. At the express lane a skewed microcosm of the city’s youth, everyone here this late is under forty. We crowd around two registers, stunned silence under such brightness. A boy steps away from his group of friends and faces me. But he is not you. To look back at him would be unfair, as nobody in this city could be you, nobody could resemble the handsome monkey contained in my swooning, biased heart. I have forgotten, for an hour or two, that this was the day we were to meet. I have attempted, for once, not to dwell on all things absent from my life. I move to the next register and pay for my meager groceries with a crisp twenty.

///

Sunday night I tie my shoes. Everyone else is working in the morning so I take myself to a movie. I drive out to a theater near the ocean; the blinking marquee, two screens, a pimpled usher in wrinkled shirt, steaming popcorn spilling from the spinning silver bowl. Twelve of us sit in the dark theater, nuzzling, whispering couples and other solitary souls.

Afterwards I take the long way home along the wide, empty avenues. The night’s unexpected warmth, a passing dog tethered to a shadowed figure, the darkened spires of St. Ignatius pointing to the starred sky. I roll down the windows and play the song, the one that makes you think of me. I sing along off-key, slowly cruising the dark streets, and I don’t know how I can wait any longer. The pinpricks of lights over the hills, a murmuring in bed. The shower’s spray across your back. My hand on your knee in a dark theater. The white walls of a museum and the view I would show you. But I haven’t found the limits of us, and driving home tonight I feel like I could wait forever.

Sudden derailment, gravel road detour through an unfamiliar town. Or wait, I’ve been here before.

Hello, mister. Welcome back. All your doubts are waiting, just ahead. They’re having a picnic. Spread out on the artificial lawn, a patch of green in red desert. The shimmer of heat over the road, a cold rock sunk in my gut.

I thought I lost you guys. Shit.

Merely a minor vacation, they say, what did you bring, we’re starved.

Just me, I say. I look around at the desolate landscape. You might as well have at it.

They eat me alive. They down shots of whiskey and throw bottles up in the air, howling. The glass shatters and they wrestle over the shards, their blood joining mine. Why the long face? they ask. Then they laugh. As if it was the funniest goddamn thing ever.

I pull myself up. They play along the edges of my vision. They’ve thrown my keys behind a pile of rocks. I stumble over and fish the flash of silver into my palm. They walk behind me, fat and happy. They poke each other.

You’re out of gas, they say.

I slide behind the wheel anyway, focused on the hills unraveling ahead. Bug stains on the windshield. I slip the key into the ignition and turn.

///

Three muscle bears sitting in the open window of the Edge bar as I walk past.

“Woof,”says one.
“Hey, hey! Hey!” says another.
“I am all about THAT!” says the third.

I smile in spite of myself.

///

“I met your friend Ski,” Prometheus says over dinner. I look up at him, chewing.

“Oh yeah?” I say.

“Yeah. He was kind of down. Said he was seeing someone now. That he hadn’t dated anyone in a long time.”

“Thirteen years,” I say.

“Yeah, since, uh…”

“Since his boyfriend died.”

“Said it was bringing up a lot of stuff for him.”

I chew for awhile, then swallow. “Funny. I wanted to rescue him from all that. You know. Be the first one since.” Prometheus nods. He gets it. He always does.

A year ago I shared a little cabin with Ski, up in the woods near Sebastopol. We slept on twin beds a few feet apart. I pretended to be just a friend. Who can predict a year of change? I wouldn’t trade it, but there it is, the ghost of a sting. Ski’s dating again.

///

This letter is to confirm your acceptance into the Sarah Lawrence Summer Seminar for Writers to be held June 22 through June 27. Pay up.

///

Running on empty. Night sky, a haze of stars, cold wind whipping through the open window. I’m a fugitive, a loner, a Springsteen lyric. My hand cups the wind. The fluorescent signs rushing past. Motels dying by the side of the road. “Life’s a journey, not a destination” read a poster in my Sunday school classroom, many years ago. I step on the accelerator.

The lessons we’ll never learn.

///

Estragon: I can’t go on like this.
Vladimir: That’s what you think.

You’ve become a really great person.
-Oh come on.
-No really
-
-
-Well, thank you.
-You’re welcome. I can say that, we’re friends now, right?
-Right.
-So we can consummate our friendship, right?
-What? What are you talking about, “consummate our friendship”?
-We can do that now, right, I mean we’re over it, we’re past it, right?
-Stop.
-What?
-No.
-It would be fun.
-No. I…. no.
-I’m just kidding you.
-I’m kind of saving myself.
-You’re saving yourself?
-Yeah.
-That’s cool, I respect that.
-Yeah, well.
-I had a dream about you the other night.
-You did?
-Yeah.
-Do I want to know?
-Uh, you were really good, that’s all you need to know.
-
-Your laugher is infectious, I’m on a roll, aren’t I?
-You certainly are.
-No, really, you mean a lot to me, our last conversation helped.
-About?
-Your suggestion of quitting for thirty days, it’s something that I can, uh, get my head around.
-You mean the crystal…stuff.
-The Crystal Light.
-Right.
-Yeah. And when you said that other thing.
-What?
-You said I had burned a hole in your heart.
-
-Didn’t you say that?
-Uh,well….I think I said you’ve earned a place in my heart.
-Oh.
-But that sounds better.
-Yeah, it does, can I use that?
-Yeah.

I swear, if I make it through this, I expect to be made a saint. I want people praying to my image. I don’t care if there’s already a Saint Michael, we’ll figure something out. Saint Dogpoet or something. Something easy to remember. I want my own special day and I want shrines, lots of them. I want my medallion to hang around the necks of cute Catholic boys. Dogpoet, the patron saint of endurance.

My handsome space monkey has been offered a terrific work-type opportunity that will interfere with his visit. Once again we must reschedule. We have met at a time of great transition for both of us, and I suppose it’s a testament to our connection that we keep holding on as these months pass.

I know I have been rather vague about the monkey here; I am continually torn between my desire to shelter this relationship with a little bit of wise privacy, and my need to write about my life, as I have done here since Day One. And the monkey’s slice of my life continues to grow. So I feel like I must acknowledge this, him, if I want to keep writing. My heart hurts, but I am proud of him. We will make this work. Perhaps I will Fed-ex myself to his house.

it gets kinda rough
in the back of our limousine

The other day at the gym I was in the locker room, changing after my shower. Depending on the hour and other incalculable factors, the little section of the locker room I usually gravitate towards can either be very quiet or very crowded. Murphy’s Law: if there are only two men in the locker room, they will have unknowingly chosen adjoining lockers.

So there were only three of us in the section, one guy was using the locker right above mine (which reminds me of the time this couple was leaving the locker room as I entered. One of the guys pointed to the locker he had just vacated and said “There’s a top, if you want.”)

Now I had noticed the guy on top of me plenty of times before. That thick-muscled, scruffy-faced type I like, he was usually alone and rather quiet, a selling point in a gym full of Chatty Cathys. A little mystery always helps. As he reached over me, spinning the dial on his combination lock, he accidentally closed my locker. “Oh, sorry about that,” he said.

“No problem,” I said.

He opened his locker and dug around in his bag. He then walked over to the only other guy in our area, another cute boy with muscles and a tribal tattoo etched across his lower back

“Hey there,” Guy #1 said to him.

“Hey,” the Tattoo Guy said.

“Here, I brought something for you.” He held out his hand, his fingers wrapped around something metal. For a moment I thought it was a combination lock, but then he dropped it into the Tattooed Guy’s outstretched hand and I saw it was actually a shiny cock ring. The Tattooed Guy blushed a little.

“James found it at home and was like ‘whose is this’?” Guy #1 said. “I was like ‘it’s not mine.’ It took us awhile to figure out it was yours. So I thought I’d bring it in.”

“Thanks.”

I finished dressing and left. I realized that Guy #1 had suddenly become a lot less interesting to me. The mystery had vanished. I certainly don’t think open relationships or group sex are wrong, (I’m not innocent when it comes to either) just wrong for me.

Lately I often feel like I’m out of step with big-city gay culture when it comes to sex. Or rather, I’ve always been this way but youth and drugs obscured my instincts and let me do things with a lot of different men when all along I’ve only wanted one man. I mean, I’m no prude. I can be a total pig. But only with someone I trust. I could certainly bore you to tears trying to analyze my need to be special at all costs. Maybe my parents didn’t shower me with enough love, who the hell knows.

I cheated on my Ex until I got sober, and I don’t have a good excuse, aside from the boring alcoholic fear that there were never enough drugs, sex and love for me.

Until last year I logged more than my fair share of hours in chat rooms. But most of those hours were a complete waste of time because my raging hormones were battling my dislike of fleeting encounters, leaving me paralyzed, which wasn’t very hot. I would actually sit there looking at some guy’s photo, thinking “My God, he’s really hot. But will he respect me as a person?”

I haven’t had sex since November. I realized back then that the space monkey deserved my complete attention. I decided I would wait. Not because he asked, but because I wanted to do things differently this time. I wanted my actions to fall in line with my desires. I wanted to see if I could do it, and if I could, what it felt like. Even more importantly, how that colored the sex we would hopefully have together.

I have rather bizarre thoughts. Namely, that if something comes too easily I won’t appreciate it. Maybe it’s my Midwestern work ethic. I think the harder I have to fight, the sweeter the reward. Good things come to those who wait.

Hopefully in seventeen days the space monkey won’t be disappointed when I meet him at the airport. God knows we’ve waited long enough. I’m only hoping that when he tells me he’s actually a 300-lb Korean woman, he’s only joking. No offense to 300 lb. Korean women or anything.