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.