Always in Love With the Last One
Wherein our narrator has some revelations about
his person.
Today is Auckland. Got up at 5:30 Sydney time
(Auckland is 2 hours earlier, or later, depending on how you count it) did my
yoga, made brekkie, and caught a plane. Got to my hotel by 4 PM local time, and
walked around, had a look. Auckland is what would have happened if Ralph Lauren
had been allowed to design Seattle. And from what the very friendly and
forthcoming natives (truly) have told me, but for 5 degrees difference (Auckland
is warmer), the weather is about the same. New Zealand is green because it
rains a lot. All the time. But not today. Today was like one of those summer
days that last for months in Seattle, where the cloudless sky seems to
sparkle.
I had set myself a goal: to go
to a city I'd never been to before, and go out, as a gay man. Go to a bar. Go
to a club. Dance. And take my shirt off. You see, I can do that now. I'll
spare you the all-too-boring details about my improving figure (you've already
read about it, ad nauseum) but I no longer feel self-conscious about dancing
half naked in a room of sweaty men. Instead, I find myself looking forward to
it.
Auckland is a late night kind of
city - which is not what I'd heard - so I didn't even get to the bar (Urge, a
"men's bar," which meant a cross between the SF Eagle and the Hole in the Wall,
in terms of population and age) until about 11:30. I sat, got cruised, then
struck up a conversation with a pair of very sweet men who chatted me up for the
better part of two hours. We talked about New Zealand, Australia, America,
everything. I really do mean it when I say these are by far the sweetest, most
open English-speaking people I've encountered on my travels. Australians, much
as I love them (and I do so love them) seem to carry a bit of a chip on their
shoulder. Perhaps all that convict stuff, who can really say. The Kiwis don't
have it, not at all. So everyone's been sweet and open and just generally
interested in whatever's going on. Nice nice nice.
At about quarter past 2 I left Urge
and headed to Flesh, the one real gay nightclub in town. (Yes, Auckland is
*small*. It's got just over a million people and since most aspiring queers
here head to either Sydney or London, I gather the gay community suffers as a
result. But perhaps I'm making that up. I can't say.) After the drag show I
joined the crowd on the dance floor, got sweatier and sweater, and - finally -
took the shirt off. It did the trick: men were looking. All good. But I
realized something - when you can have something, you get to know that maybe you
don't want it.
I can have (and have
had) all the cheap sex the world can offer. The older I get, the less
interesting it is. Either there's that moment of utter sexual frission - when
you know you must have this man, now! - or it's the moment when you see another
person's eyes, see the energy within, and judge it as kind, and sweet, and
gentle, and then you know you must have it, but in its place and in its time.
The first is a quickie fling, the second is husband material. And tonight, with
some sort of discernment born of the yoga and vodka and attention I've paid to
my body, I could look at a man, and judge his soul. Not eternally, but in terms
of his fitness for me. There was one boy, when I met his eyes, there was the
flash, the mutual recognition - but again, that's a husband thing and I don't
live here, so no husband hunting. And I clearly was not drunk enough to lower
my standards, and no one (well almost no one) pressed my buttons hard enough to
make me want to chase them. Maybe because at 41 I know that it's all just the
rubbing of flesh together. Nothing wrong with that, but really it's a lot of
trouble (and slightly dangerous, let's be honest) and you have to weigh out
whether, when all is said and cum, it was really worth it at
all.
But more than this, I have to be
honest with myself. I know the look in the eyes that I'm sensitive to, because
it's defining what I'm looking for. It's Jeff's look and Jeff's eyes, because
I'm still in love with him. That's cool, I've known that for a while (a long
while) but it's interesting to see it popping out so obviously. You're always
in love with the last one, till the next one comes along.
Posted at 03:37 AM