wherein it's complicated (but not meaningless)

Late Friday night, dressed in my jammies, I went to an expensive mid-town hotel and had sex with a virtual stranger. I’m less interested in reflecting upon the sex right now. However, as it is conceivable that the man with whom I mussed that expansive hotel bed may read this, I do note genuinely and sincerely that the sex was lovely. He’s a champion hair-puller, no mean feat indeed. He has an atavistic understand of sexual cadence, of play and release, of teeth and lips and tongue, of nails and fingertips. His body is long and white and thin, a lovely creamy thing, and his cock is similarly tasty. More than that, he’s smart as a whip and twice as honest. He’s hard not to like as a person and a lover, and I do.

He probably thinks this post is about him, but he’d be wrong. It’s about me, and about melancholy and the billowing not unpleasant melancholy that comes with fucking a virtual stranger.

This man was one of those men that I clapped my eyes on with great delight. It’s not merely that he’s a beautiful geek. It’s that he’s cynical, funny and smart. His mind visibly goes tick-a-tick-a-tick and his words sometimes come out garbled and weird in his intensity. These are things I like in a human. He stuck out his hand upon meeting me. I clasped his long white fingers in my own and got greedy with lust. It’s one of those things that blindsides me from time to time, though recently a lot less often than it once did.

He is, as is my wont, younger. And I suppose that youth is part of the melancholy that I’ve been marinating in so willingly all weekend, since I left that broad white bed around 7:00 on Saturday morning and cabbed home to my Gotham apartment. The youth is so significant as to be overdetermined, but mostly what it seems to be screaming with is the press and clutch of great loves of my past.

Three years ago, I broke with the last of those loves. I’ve healed. I no longer pine. I left pining behind a long time ago. Pining is so far retreated in my rearview that I saw Donny last December. We went to a play together, and it felt much like visiting your old high school does. Everything seemed a lot smaller than you remember it. It felt a lot like closure. But although I’m over that last broken relationship, it’s written on my body and in my heart. My next love will walk past that relationship’s mirror; it’ll get caught, refracted, however briefly. That lost love marked me. It was there; then it was gone; I hurt; and now I don’t. But the chalk outline, blurry and ill-defined, remains.

These days, I’m fine. I’m alone, single, and I’m fine. I had a brief, moderately horrid ill-calibrated relationship with a man last winter, and when it ended, I breathed a deep sigh of relief. I haven’t dated since, and I didn’t date before the moderately horrid ill-calibrated relationship. I’ve been alone, fine, single, content with my friends, who are undeniably fabulous.

I’m fine and I’m fine and I’m fine. I ignore the call of my wild libido. I masturbate like I wash the dishes: efficiently and matter-of-factly. Flirtation rolls like tumbleweeds through the ghost town of my social life. I really am ok living on my onesie; I’m not even angry at Sunday afternoons. I’ve achieved a zenlike calm about my solitude.

Nothing wrecks that calm, shreds the tissue of my self-delusion, or shines a Klieg light under my bed to illuminate the dustbunnies of my love life as fast as six hours spent in the cool confines of a high-end hotel utopia wrapped in the hot limbs of a stranger. I left the hotel striding the earth as a Colossus. I sauntered down that dim corridor and sashayed into a taxi. Tiger, tiger burning bright in the forest of bright white 7:00 a.m. sunshine. I had been tumbled, rogered roundly. I had fucked and it had been good. I was still sticky with come. All was shiny delight.

Then the endorphins left the building, and I fell cowering in their wake, a raw mess. The man I’d fucked loomed large and became the silver-flecked screen for all my most filmic projections: the Zeffirelli haloed glow of infatuation, the Hawks chiseled relief of witty banter, the Altman clarity of real adult love, the Allen jitter of insecurity, the Carpenter blood-splattered horror of rejection. I got hit with the ice truck of melancholy, and it was all I could do not to write poetry. Nothing should drive me to poesy.

I've been fortunate to have had two great loves in my life. The luck, the loves, and the history are incontrovertible and intrinsic. I don’t dwell on the loss—my life is as my life is—and my current state is one of content solitude. But the flesh knows. Like the way my body can recollect the choreography of dances I learned twenty years ago once the music starts playing and I let my conscious mind hang numb, so too when I’m having sex does my body remember what it’s like making love with a man whom I love with every nerve ending, every dendrite, every particle, spark, byte and bit of matter that is me.  It’s not unpleasant, but it is disconcerting.

The keening truth of the matter is this: I miss being with someone and being completely. I miss the trust and the eddying swirl of feelings. I miss making plans and breathing the same air. I miss snuggling warm at night and waking up sticky. I miss knowing someone's body and feeling secure in the knowing that he too knows mine. I miss shared history and the sanguine hope of shared future.  When I haven't had sex, when I haven't kissed and touched and felt my breath catch in the back of my throat, when I haven't felt the sharp loss of an inch of space or the fluttering hush of anticipation, I don't acknowledge that bricolage of losses. I can fool myself into feeling fine alone. And mostly I am fine. But I'm not plush with the rush of love.

It’s Sunday, the day of the couple, and I’m still melancholic. It’s not unpleasant; it’s just complicated. I’m glad for what I did and what I’ve done and what I’ve felt. I just wonder if that is all there is, and if that’s all there is, my friends, I suppose I’ll just have to keep on dancing.

 

Comments

[Djaevle]

I have no great comment, aside from a certain understanding and unshod (a nod, no words) agreement.

Really, I just wish you'd write more (here).

[chelsea g. summers]

Thanks, man. I'm trying to.

[Onthesensor]

It's good to see you here again CG even with these melancholic musings. I've had similar emotions reflecting on times past and time, in general. I wounder if your new Italian adventure will have some impact on these melancholic feelings? Ah the possibilities...

[sera]

So this is so perfect I'm just going to pretend I wrote it. I know exactly what you mean.

[Pete]

CG,

I always enjoy your musings and the exquisite and intense word pictures that you draw. You convey feelings in an artistic manner that is a joy to read even if your writing is about less than joyful happenings.

Keep writing, it is always a bright spot to read your posts.

Pete

[BeeCee]

Having similar feelings of melancholy. Why does our flesh hijack us with memories of what has been?

[Forpuck]

As a Russian, I'm well familiar with melancholy. The only thing I would say is beware, it's both addictive and toxic in the longer run.

[Hannah Miet]

This made me ache with something. I'm not sure what. But thank you, for your honesty. And writing that get to me, tossing things over.

[chelsea g. summers]

Well, good to know I'm not alone. Thanks for the mad outpouring of support. I'm nearly back to my usual steely cynical exterior wrapped around an ooey-gooey Romantic heart.

This solipsism has become tiresome. Now it is time to dance. Just not polka.

[Onthesensor]

I like the ooey-gooey side.

[M]

This is so incredibly beautiful. Thank you for writing.

[Innocent Loverboy]

You are awesome.

[Scott]

I was building a monster email list for my brother when I happened upon your email addy! It reminded me of all the incredible Journeys you take us on with your words so delicious to read. So glad to hear from you again!

Scott

[alphagirl]

Up early here in the west and found myself wondering if you had posted lately and there you were writing again with two beautifully written posts. Once again your words speak to my soul and my heart that are also on a similar journey. Keep writing to us...for you...for us.

alphagirl

[Mollysdailykiss]

I am a new comer to your blog. This post is was a bit like reading about myself when I was 'single' but seeing a fuck buddy. Every time we were together it was amazing, the sex was wow, but afterwards I was always left feeling a bit bereft and rather empty. I realise now that although I was physically satisfied I was emotionally and mentally unsatisfied. You wrote about that feeling so well, the wanting to breath the same air as another, etc. I am lucky I have found Him now, but thankyou for sharing this. Made me count my lucky stars all over again

Mollyxxx