!??!?!!!

Guess what I did today! Are you done guessing? D'ya give up? I took a bike ride out to the Columbus Zoo! Do you know how far that is from Campus? It's 15 miles! There and back, 30 miles! I biked for 30 miles! Or...at least according to the Yahoo Maps thing it's 15 miles to get there. It only took me two hours, each way.

I went out there to do an assignment for my anthropology class, where I had to study primate and non-primate behavior. I studied the Bonobo Chimps, the Kangaroos, and the Australian Squirels. It was fun. The Zoo here is like an amusement park, with rides, lots of food, and a whole hell of a lot of kids. The kids cry and scream, and push in front of you when your trying to take notes on one specific specimen, who's moving as fast as it can to make sure you can't see what it's doing. The Dads spend the whole time ordering the kids around and looking stressed out, like they're in a combat zone. The mothers are all ignoring their kids as best they can, and they all got shirts with sayings on them like "Do I Look Like I Care?" or "LA LA LA, I'm not listening."

But it was still fun. Considering all the stressful things I've done today, I've had a good time, and I'm still in a good mood. The only bad part is that the Columbus Zoo is right next to the Wyandot Lake Water Park, and the last time I talked to my ex-boyfriend, The Suburban Pot-Head (who I'm still secretly pining over, and probably will be for the rest of my life) he told me that the guy that he's currently dating (!!?excuse me?!!) bought him a seasonal pass to Wyandot Lake. Welll, being there just reminded me of that. I felt so inadequate; I would never have thought of doing something sweet like that. The most I ever did for him was pay all his bills so he could spend all his money on cigarettes, pot, alcohol, and, horrors upon horrors, Cable TV.

Well, I'm sure he's very happy with his new guy, and I guess I'm happy for him, in my own way. At least I can comfort myself with the fact that if The Suburban Pot-Head ever tried to bike 30 miles in one day he'd probably have to go to the emergency room, and long before it got to that extreme situation he'd be crying on the side of the road, demanding that I bike to the next gas-station and call his Mommy to come pick him up.

Grumbling noises...clenching of fists...secret vows to do something snotty and childish to him one day...

Oh, by the way, here is a list of the things I ate today: A salad with healthy greens such as Spinach, Escarole, Romaine Lettuce, and something purplish; 12 large peices of Sushi with Tuna, Avocado, Daikon Radish, White Ginger, and Sesame Seeds; Rice and Brocolli Casserole with Bacon; Rosemary and Kalamata Olive Wheat Bread with Sun Dried Tomato Cream Chesse.

You know, one of the symptoms of The Risperdal (the drug I'm taking) is increased interest in food. I don't know what else I'm experiencing from the drug, but this is one thing that's unmistakable. So, yeah, I'm gonna gain a little weight. But hey, that's just fine by me.

Well, it seems like a lot has been happening lately, but it's all just like everything else that's been happening for a long time, so it doesn't really seem worthy of writing about. However, I feel compelled to write it down anyway, so that it will be there for me to read in the future when I want to reflect on the events of my life.

I found out that I have a chronic infection of Hep B, which isn't making me sick (my body created the antibodies on it's own), but could infect other people. Of course, this isn't really stopping me from having unsafe sex, though I have been letting people know that they shouldn't be sucking on me or kissing me.

I went to the psychiatrist today. She said I was Schizo-Affective. She was impressed with how aware I was that my symptoms were not reflections of reality, but just a result of my illness. She prescribed to me Risperdal (which just sounds like a horrible drug that's going to totally turn me into a zombie) and she gave me some free samples. I start taking them tonight.

I've become involved with another older man who's totally wrong for me. He's Republican, Christian, and obsessed with Football. Sexually, his desires are very complementary to my own: he wants to dominate me psychologically, and lightly physically, but he doesn't want to cause me any pain. So, well...at least I can act out monogomously, and thereby cut down on the risk of disease. Having sex with someone who knows you well is funner than having sex with a stranger anyway. They've already been trained, and they know just what to do.

School is up and down.

Anyway, that's everything that's happening to me. All the important things, like my emotions and ideas, will have to wait for another time.

I dreamed this afternoon that I had just finished this quarter and I was on my way to visit my sister in Oregon. Right after my last test, which was really easy, I ran right down to the bus station and hoped on the bus. The guy driving it nodded to me like he knew me. Then we took off.

After awhile I started to wonder what time we'd be getting there and what our different stops would be. I started to look for my ticket, but then I realized that I had forgotten to buy one; I had gotten on the bus for free. The driver was inexperienced, so it did not occur to him to check my ticket.

This was very much exciting to me. I knew I'd probably have to change buses at some point, so I wouldn't be able to ride for free the whole time, but I had no idea how long I'd be able to ride this bus for. I was going to be dropped off in some random city, where I'd probably have time to explore and chill out.

To my great disappointment, however, I noticed that we were pulling in to my home town of Minneapolis. I even knew where we were: at the intersection of Franklin and Cedar, not too far from my Mother's house. I shuddered in apprehension, praying that this bus would be continuing on from there, and that I'd be dropped off somewhere else instead, like maybe Montana. Then I woke up.

So a rather straight-forward dream. The thing that made me remember it so well is how excited I was to be traveling again. I'm pretty sure I'll be traveling around Christmas time to go see my Oregonian sister, and then maybe take a little detour down to southern California to visit The Talker. Even though that's really far in the future, I've gotten very excited by the whole idea. I think, this time, that I'll take nothing but trains. From Columbus to Portland you go through the mountains of Montana, I believe, which my sister has told me are incomprably beautiful when seen from the isolated viewpoint of lonely traintracks. From Portland to San Diego you travel mostly along the coast. The last time I rode the train, from Columbus to Chicago, a man told me that you're practically right on the water when you go the ocean route. I haven't seen a lot of ocean in my time, so that would be a real kick. And from San Diego to Columbus? Sounds kind of boring, except you probably see alot of desert during the first part of the trip, which would revive old feelings and memories from back when I spent a lot of time in Arizona.

So maybe this would be good. Yeah. If I can save up an extra 700 dollars I should be able to do this. The likelyhood of me being able to get that much extra cash is slim...but if I really want to do it, then I won't let the fact that I have no money stand in my way. I"ll spend money that I don't have, and damn the consequences.

I talked to The Talker for awhile on the phone today, and then I hung out with The Dolphin for awhile in my room. These are both people to whom I have assured that I want only friendship, explicitly to The Talker, and implicitly to The Dolphin. Yet my interactions with both of them took a sexual direction. It didn't get very overt with either of them, but the sexual tension was there. With The Talker is was just a little bit of talk about sex, which could have been totally innocent, if I hadn't mentioned to him that I was masturbating while talking to him, which seemed to excite him, though he didn't try to pursue that line of conversation. With The Dolphin it was just cuddling, which could have been taken as purely platonic, if it weren't for that fact that I was rubbing my hard-on against his thigh a little bit.

I went to my SAA (sex addicts anonymous) meeting today. One of the guys was talking about how he had an ex-lover of his (a female) do some professional work for him recently, like some secretarial stuff. He was real proud of himself for not coming on to her, but when she wrote him a polite e-mail saying that he should "keep in touch," he couldn't help but mention that he had had a really difficult time keeping his hands off of her. Her reply to this was "that's what I meant by 'keep in touch'."

So there it was. A moment of weakness, and the damage had been done. He's in a long-term relationship with someone else now, and he can't be fooling around with ex-lovers. He knew that, but knowing that didn't matter. In a moment of sexually induced amnesia, he forgot about everything he really needed and wanted. The only thing that this will lead to, for him, is either more acting-out, or a messey disentanglement from the temptation that he created for himself. No good.

It reminds me of my Pseudo-Friend (who used to be my Pseudo-Lover), who still comes over for a visit every couple of weeks. When he comes over, we both know that we don't want to have sex, but that we're definitely going to. Why do we do it, when we know we don't want it? There's always something that one of us says, or one of us does, that the other one can't say no to. For me it's usually a physical action, like, I'll touch on his shoulder a lot, real friendly like. I do that with my other friends as well, but I know that he can't resist me when I do that, so it has a different overtone. He can't show affection without having sex, so if he starts to feel affectionate towards me, he's automatically going to push us to get into a sexual situation. He'll always react by doing something weird and manipulative. For instance, one time he repeated the number 'six' over and over again, like he was trying to remember a phone number, only he made it sound a whole hell of a lot like 'sex', and he was staring at my crotch the whole time. Now that's pretty juvenile, and really manipulative (even if it was obvious what he was doing); but it's exactly that kind of thing that leaves me feeling powerless under his advances. He's an immature, petty pissant of a non-man using childish, tactless was to try and manipulate me, and for some reason that works. Like, it turns me on that I'm being manipulated by some neurotic loser, especailly if I'm fully aware that it's going on.

Sigh...I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here. I mean, I enjoyed what I did today, very much so. But I feel like I'm causing myself unwanted problems further on down the road. I'm keeping myself trapped in the same scenario, replaying over and over again. It's livened up by the presence of new characters, but it's holding me back just the same. I'm enjoying it, but I have a feeling that there may be something that I would enjoy a whole hell of a lot more, further on down the road

For the last couple of days things have been happening, and I've been wanting to write about them, yet somehow I can't find the words. I think that there are many ideas, but not enough connections between them. I have no nugget of truth, only mental dust. I will just have to wait.

But, for the most part, I am no longer sick.

This sickness is not getting better. There's so much mucus coming out of me, it's amazing. I usually take this abundance of snot as a sign that my body is getting better, but that doesn't seem to be happening.

I have a feeling that it's just not going to get better until I stop smoking again. But I worry so much about the condition of my mind, and how that will change when I get rid of the cigarettes. Well, two friends of mine, independantly of each other, both informed me that there is a class of drugs that act on the mind in a very similar way that the nicotine does. So I made an appointment with a therapist to talk about it. But I wanted to continue smoking until that time. Oh well. I'm even more negatively affected by the health problems associated with cigarettes than I am by the lack of nicotine. Probably I will change my mind once I am missing the nicotine again, and I remember just how bad it is to live without it.

I'm not feeling so good today. For one, I'm starting to get really sick feeling (yes, because of the smoking, I'm sure). For two, I spent all last night sexually acting out. I think the two are connected: when I'm sick I just want to feel better, right now. Acting out, though damaging in the long run, does relieve pain in the immediate sense.

Luckily, I didn't choose to have sex with other people, so there was no risk of infecting myself or infecting other people (I found out that I probably have Hep B the other day). Also, no risk of an emotional scene, or of associating myself with someone who's crazy and obsessive. No, what I did was just jerk off a couple of times. That wasn't so bad. The bad part was that after I had jerked off, I still couldn't keep my mind off of sex. I started to create a very long and involved fantasy. Because I couldn't get off, there was no cue to end the fantasizing, so it just got longer and longer, and more and more detailed. Finally, I decided that I should just write it down.

Well, for the next five hours I did just that: I wrote about 30 pages in a spiral bound notebook, all the while stimulating myself manually. Basically, my whole world became that fantasy. My hand hurt, and I was really tired, but I felt like I needed to get to the end of the story (I do this same thing when I'm reading), so I stayed up way too late, 'till I started to feel crazy with sleep deprivation combined with rampant sexual stimulation.

I read it after I finished it, and it sucked. There were a few good passages, but overall it was really disappointing. It was badly written, of course (it's not so easy to think clearly with your dick in your hand), but worse than that was how little of a turn-on it was. It was boring, as a matter of fact. I couldn't get off on it. The power that the scenes held for me in my mind was totally lost on the page. I passed out discouraged, with a sense of failure.

All that was okay. The absolute worst part, now that I've spent hours upon hours thinking about this one fantasy, and probably dreaming about it too on some level, is that I can't look at a guy now without automatically incorporating him into my fantasy world, without picturing what he'd be like in that situation, how he would act, what role he would play.

This is one of the worst parts of my sexual addiction: I can't talk to someone without sexualizing them. I can't see them as human, with interesting personalities and value beyond their sexual potential. Everyone is reduced to an object, and my only interest in them is focused on their dicks, their asses, and their mouths. This really gets in the way of me forming meaningful friendships with other men (and women too, because if they hold no sexual potential, why should I pay any attention to them?). I become very isolated then, having no emotional or psychological connection to others.

I don't want this to happen me. I wish I knew how to stop it.

By the way, it's only been a day and a half since I started smoking again, and already I'm seeing a really massive improvement on my mental state. The delusions I was having have gone away almost completely, and my emotional state is much more balanced. Yeah, I have smoking headache for sure, and my breathing is already getting worse; but I don't care. I feel so much better now.

I was talking to my sister today, the one in Portland, Oregon. She's pregnant, about four months along now, and from the sound of it she's really enjoying the experience. Her man, who I haven't met yet, seems really stable, loving, and giving. He already has a five year old daughter, and she and my sister really love each other. It reminds me of the situation that my other sister, down in New Orleans, found herself in. Her husband had three kids when she met him, and she really loves them all. He too is very stable and loving.

I'm very happy for them both. They've gotten their life partners, and are building their families up now. I'm really happy for them.

But I'm not too happy for myself. It seems so natural that they would find their husbands and settle down to engage in domestic life. But not for me: it seems unlikely that I'll ever find someone that I really love, who will really love me back and want to settle down with me. The people I always attract are either insane or way older than me. I don't care that lots of other gay guys get involved in relationships with guys that are a lot older than them; I don't want to do that. I would be really embarrassed introducing a guy to my family who's closer in age to my mom than to me. I want to find a nice guy, who my family will like and get along with. I don't want to alienate myself from my family by choosing someone who I can't bring around without making things uncomfortable for everyone.

And to have children: that's definitely never going to happen to me. Because I don't want to adopt, and I don't want to do the whole surrogate mother thing. I want to meet someone, be in love with that person, and then create a child using both of our genetic material, and then raise that child together. I want to build a family. But that's not going to happen, because I'm gay. I've thought about pretending to be straight, because I can fall in love with a woman on a purely emotional and psychological level, but that really doesn't seem right to me. I'd always be regretting the sacrifice of real love that I made. I wouldn't be happy, and neither would she ( if she was happy knowing that I was feeling stunted and oppressed by my fake straight relationship then she wouldn't be any kind of woman that I could fall in love with on any level).

I don't know....I just wish I could do things a little bit more normally and harmoniously.

The kind of guy that I feel would get along with my family is, unfortunately, not easily found in the gay community. Quite honestly, almost every gay guy I've met has been obsessed with money, or their image, or their career, all of which are extremely boring to me. I want to find a guy who's main concern is just with happiness and togetherness. Who just wants a peaceful life. Who doesn't feel like he has to compete with people to have the fanciest house, or the nicest car. Who's main concern is not whether people are looking up to him, or whether he looks right, but whether or not he's doing what is actually worth doing (and, by the way, spending one's life worrying about the trivialities of money is totally not worth doing. I mean, when you're laying on your death bed, are you gonna think fondly about all the time you spent at work? Or of all the money and things you managed to accumulate? Unless your job has some sort of deeper meaning, then probably not. What's most likely to happen to a lot of these gay guys out there is that they'll realize that their lives were meaningless. That they had no real happiness, only material things).

I come from a poor family, that's actually proud of being poor. My parents were both people who ignored the material side of life in order to focus on finding deeper meaning to their existence and growing as individuals. And while I do think that they took it a little too far, it seems like everyone else I meet is taking it too far in the opposite direction. If I get involved with someone who spends all his time working, and trying to get more money, and trying to improve his status...well....I'd be ashamed of myself. And I'd be ashamed to introduce that guy to my family.

Well, I started smoking again today. I thought about my options, and smoking seemed liked the best one. I will be less full of hope, but I'll be happier.

Sorry if my words are a little strange. I can't seem to think with clarity right now, because I have been looking at this website, and it's totally slightly skewing my sense of what is appropriate ways to put together english words.

Also, I think I have found my new philosophy of life. It is a message that I find very comforting.

No, I'm not happy about starting smoking again; but yes, I am happy about feeling sane again.

This morning The Talker called me. I was enjoying a little bit of sleep-time, so I just let it ring, and then listened to him as he left his message, vaguely catching that he wanted to talk to me, and that he seemed worried, or maybe a little angry.

When I fell back asleep I had a dream, in which I saw him from a shadowy grey distance. Super-imposed over this image was the understanding that our "relationship" was just like the mathmatical function f(x) = tan (sin x) *. The reason for this is because sin x will never give the value of more than 1, or less than-1. Taken as the imput for tan x, this creates a graph that just goes a little bit above the x-axis, then drops down to just below the x-axis, over and over again, world without end, amen. That's just like how it is with me and The Talker; nothing ever really gets that good, and nothing ever really gets that bad; but no matter how good it is, I know it's going to get bad again later, and vice versa.

Actually, what this dream says about my interactions with The Talker is less interesting to me than the fact that I could come up with a mathmatical analogy in my sleep; especailly ones involving trig functions, which I never seem to quite understand at more than a superficial level.

* note: if you want to graph this function on a graphing calculator in order to better picture this analogy, the most important thing is to make sure you're doing it in DEGREES not radians. Thank you to The Dolphin for calling my attention to this important distinction. Also, you would be well advised to set your viewing window to see very large x-values, and pretty small y-values (the interval [-1,1] should work well).

My Precious, Tender Ears

I went to the doctor today. She said that the reason that my hearing has been so fucked up lately is probably because of all the fluid that's in my ear canals. She perscribed me some Flonase, which I tried for the first time right after the appointment. It was horrible. It was like inhaling toxic waste, or some other substance that is obviously not supposed to be inhaled. From the aroma and the flavor it seemed clear that I was poisoning my body, and that I should not do so again.

Well, I'll try it for awhile. Already I can feel some movement going on in my ear canals. It feels a little bit like how I feel before I get an ear infection (which I actually get quite frequently), when the pain hasn't started yet, but I can tell there's something happening in there. Perhaps this time there will be only good things happening in there, which will restore my hearing abilities to their former splendor.

I Present to You A Challenge

Why do I feel the need to be in a relationship? I can't see any reason for it at this point in my life. I can't say that I need someone to have sex with, because I don't. It is true that there is a biological urge to have sex, but for me that urge is completely satisfied by masturbation. I don't need a lover to attain intimacy with someone: the level of intimacy that I have with my friends is actually quite deep, or at least deep enough to satisfy me, and frequent enough to satisfy me too. For physical contact, I very frequently touch my friends in platonic ways, giving them hugs and what-not. One thing that my little affair with The Talker showed me (note the past tense) was that I really don't want the increased intimacy that having a committed relationship brings; I didn't enjoy sleeping in the same bed as him, and didn't enjoy being touched by him all the time. I didn't enjoy always being around someone who was trying to figure out what was going on with me on a deep level, and I didn't enjoy knowing what someone else was feeling all the time. Having a psychologically intimate experience with someone for a few hours at a time, every other day, is just enough for me. Then I want to have some distance from that person, and focus more on my personal interests for awhile. I like sleeping alone; I like saying goodbye to someone, and then turning back to my peaceful solitude; I like being fully responsible for all my decisions and actions, and not having to answer to anyone. People are great, and I love doing things that involve them as well, but only in small doses.

The only other reason that I can think to have a committed relationship is the need for financial security. Well, to be honest, every affair I've had which had financial concerns in a place of central importance has felt really wrong to me, and rather corrupt. Also, it's too easy for me to focus just on how much money someone has, and forget about the important things, like whether or not we get along, whether or not I agree with their moral values, and whether or not our relationship is making our lives better.

No, I can't see anything wrong with wanting to be single, and with wanting to spend my life partnerless. As long as I'm not isolating myself, then I don't see anything wrong with being a little bit of an eccentric loner. I want to live a balanced life, and I recognize that human interactions and intimacies are an essential part of psychological health, and by extension physical health; but the level of human intimacy that I seem to require in order to feel balanced and healthy is actually not so very much.

And if anyone out there has a problem with that, then I present to you a challenge: Tell me one thing that I can get from a committed relationship that I can't get in a different way (and that one thing should be something that I would actually want: terse, uncomfortable arguments at 4 in the morning are not going to be any enticement for me).

And yeah, I understand that at some point in my life I could very well start wanting to have a deeper intimacy with someone than I'm able to have just being their friend; but until that day comes, why should I subject myself a level of intimacy that I don't actually enjoy?

And I'm not so worried about The Talker being older than me anymore; I've been thinking about what I want out of a relationship and about the kind of guy that I would like to have, and I'm beginning to think that I'm not ever gonna be able to find what I want in a guy my own age. Like, someone as young as me would just be unlikely to have the characteristics I'm looking for. For example, stability (both in the sense of a stable psyche and in a material sense as well), experience..., a sexy bald head.... Even guys that I've known in their early 30's seem too inexperienced and unstable for me to enjoy thoroughly.

But The Talker is only in his late 30's, which really isn't that old. Perhaps he's just unusally mature, not just for his age, but for humans in generally (which is a little ironic, because he was telling me just last night how immature he is...). Actually, his stable, reliable vibe really reminds me of my ex, The Suburban Pot-Head, who was only 28. Come to think of it, Mark, my ex before The Suburban Pot-Head, was alot like that too.

*shudder* All my typos...all my bad grammer...and my confusing, almost ambiguous sentence structures....if he ever reads my blog I'll be so embaressed.... Not embarressed enough to go back and edit my entries, but embarressed nonetheless...

Obsession, Obsession....

Whelmp, I've been hanging out with The Talker for the past few days now...I guess he's not as unstable as he led me to believe before. I've actually been having a lot of fun with him.

I've been thinking about him alot, especially today. When this is over, and he grows distant, I'm going to feel very let down.

Actually, I've become almost a little obsessed with him. I even went so far as to print out his astrology birth chart, and gague it for compatiblity with mine. We were actually born on the same day of the year, and very close to the same time, so some very important things are the same for us, such as the sun's position, the rising sign, and the house arrangement. However, if I can believe this chart and my own ability to interpret it, then it seems that he is more suited for short affairs than long-term partnerships.

There's a lot of positive interaction between our respective Marses and Neptunes, which means that our lust and physical attraction for each other has a spiritual, other-worldly, or highly fantastic quality about it.

I really want him, and I want him to stay with me. I've only known him for about a week now, so clearly this is a highly irrational thing to want. I hope that I can find a way to not get to torn up when it becomes clear that he isn't interested in me any more.