Random Rubber Bands

To read my blog, click "In My Own Words" under Casting About.

Rainbow Arch found in downtown Reno I'm a gay man in Reno, Nevada. I started blogging to keep a record of what I've been up to away from home. My boyfriend is an unrepentant asexual, and celibacy through monogomy isn't an option (and I was celibate with him for over a year). I'd like to be monogamous, but it just isn't working out.

This little corner is my personal space. Here I can chronicle my behavior, share my thoughts, and engage in my own conversation. Through this medium, I can share what it is that I'm doing. Regardless, I do this so that I can look back and ultimately, accurately assess what it is that I'm doing.

WARNING: This collection of random thoughts is explicit! Please be warned. Do not read the contents of this blog if it will offend you. If reading this blog causes you to break local laws, please leave now. By following any links or opening any page of the blog you declare under penalties of perjury that you are not a minor or in the company of a minor and are entitled to have access to material intended for mature, responsible individuals capable of making decisions about the content that they wish to read. Any further material you read will be the result of explicit action upon your part.

It's My Life

I'm in my late 20's. It's been awhile since I first came out of the closet. I made that leap early in the first year of college, after shrugging off the demons from both an oppressive religion and also growing up in a very rural area. Coming out of the closet suddenly lifted this weight of secrecy, but even still, a shroud of self-loathing for my queerness still existed.

After many years of this self-repression and fear, I've come to the realization that my sexuality is not something of which I should be ashamed. I've embraced sex as a simple, but very pleasurable, part of my life. I can only hope that it will be an everyday part, more or less.

I've been a constant advocate of queer rights, but in my early days, I felt as though I needed to repent my hidden desires and fantasies. I was able to reconcile being queer, but I couldn't completely reconcile my sexual appetite. I wanted to sow the wild oats, but that basic biological need made me feel primitive. So I tried to suppress my desires, but found myself entirely unsuccessful. Those early college days were filled with a sexual network of guys in the dormatories. Each romp often led me back to the thought, "what's wrong with me?"

I solved my dilemma by doing something seemingly stupid, I tied myself down to a relationship.

Milling About

I felt that monogomy would help me compensate for my transgressive sin of being queer. For a while, in my first and currently longest relationship, it worked.

This relationship was with a much older man whom I was with for almost six years. While I was with him, I was generally satified, and my secret desires were mostly repressed. I had a few lapses, from which wetted my appetite for more, but each time I pulled back and thought "what the fuck am I doing?" The paradoxical thing though, was that I encouraged my partner to go out and sexually explore. I held no jealousy, and I thought that it was only I who had to live up to my own expectations. The self loathing was palatable.

Ultimately that relationship ended because of a non-intuitive power struggle (not quite the power struggle that everyone thinks of in that type of relationship!). I reveled in being single for a time again, and then, out of the blue, I met the man who is now my boyfriend.

This Craziness

Meeting my boyfriend was the best day of my life. It was also the day, although I didn't figure it out until a couple of years afterward, that I would begin an unexpected journey towards my own self-acceptance. We dated for a year before deciding to move in together, we were almost completely compatible. In all the ways that couples are supposed to complement each other, we did. All except for one thing, sex.

My boyfriend has apparently been uncomfortable with sex since before I met him. During the first year, I thought that this discomfort would fade away once we became more established. Instead of getting better when we moved in together, it got worse. Ultimately, he disclosed that he's asexual, and he too thought that his sexual desire might come around with time and familiarity. Unfortunately it didn't, and there I was - sexually charged and very frustrated.

I had to give up monogomy if this relationship was to survive. Our relationship goes deeper than sex, and is fulfilling on many other levels. I didn't want to give up my boyfriend, nor did he me. We had to find a solution, and after a year of attempting to find more traditional means, we finally found something that worked. I can go sow the wild oats, and then I come home.

That's were this blog comes in.

If you want to contact me, I'm at tildarfrick@hotmail.com

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Action Packed Weekend

This last weekend was rather entertaining and there was a bit of fun mixed in as well. I headed off to the Bay Area to visit myfairy drag mothers, who were hosting a white trash themed party. Now, political correctness aside, this shindig was a celebration of boxed wine, tasty but crappy-for-your-health snacks, frightening dishes of spam,

and extremely tacky props.

He had a bit of fun together, and unlike the last time I saw them, I was more relaxed this time and I could actually enjoy myself. I was less stressed about the triad emotional potentials that I had so blown out of proportion this last May. This time, I knew where my boundaries and limits were in general. I'm more comfortable with my body and my sexuality, and I'm also more comfortable with my personal limitations. The little screwy thingys that I know will happen don't stress me out anymore. I know that if I probably won't cum when I'm playing for the first time with somebody, or if it had been a long time. I don't have to be embarrassed about this. More importantly though, I've learned where my own moral compass is, and I am no longer torn between what I want to do and what I feel like I should be doing.

I have no other friends like these particular friends. While outstandingly successful professionals, they also engage in simple fun without fear of their projected maturity levels. Freud would be proud, they love low-brow jokes, anal jokes, sexual jokes, the sky's the limit. When I was in my first couple of years of college, as I was developing my emerging sexuality, I used to engage in jokes with the quality and content that these boys still do. They aren't embarrassed about it, and while I learned to be embarrassed by my own behavior because of the friends that I had made many years ago in college, they apparently had different friends. I love them and appreciate the freedom that they have, and when I'm with them, I'm still learning to let go and actually have fun with the sexual jokes. I've spent the past 12 years self-censoring, now I have the opportunity to let go and be perverse - I just need get comfortable saying random things.

If only I lived closer to more people who believed the same, rather than in Reno where false propriety reigns.

Ah well, it was nice not having to be concerned about the little voices of morality for a weekend. On Saturday morning after a lovely hot tub soak in the morning sun, we dabbled with each other a bit, explored some more intense sex than we had before, although I couldn't finish myself off.

While we were still setting up for the party, one of my drag mother's close friends showed up a bit early. He's a very handsome man, almost exactly my height, older than me, and I thought, completely out of my league. I had met him a couple of years before, but I had kept my distance. When I'm smitten, my most common reaction is to clam up. Disappear. Be busy doing other things. However, I didn't have most of those choices available to me this time since I was helping to set up and with how few of us were there at the time, to disappear or clam up would have just been rude. So I didn't, and we talked. And talked. And talked some more.

We talked about his life, my life, his ex, my boyfriend.

The party came along, and while we both separated long enough to mingle, we continued talking. I was fascinated by him, not just physically, but he was just so damned interesting. I felt this connection. I realized that we could easily be fast friends. I wanted something to happen, but simultaneously, I didn't. At 10 o'clock, he apparently had to go home and asked me to walk him out. I did, and he kissed me. I kissed back. I was impressed.

I really did want him. But it was obvious that it wasn't going to happen that night, so I held him. I held him for a long moment. Then something came over me and I did something frightfully forward and probably inappropriate, I put my hands down his pants.

I regretted it almost immediately. He didn't protest, but while I was interested in more, I wasn't interested in specifically that. I realized I had just cheapened everything that had happened thus far. I'm still learning those boundaries, and timing, and appropriate behavior. God, sometimes it's just so much easier to be distant and safe than to take risks.

The next morning, my drag mothers were interested in what had happened. Politely, they weren't pushing, but hoped I'd share. While soaking in the hot tub in the morning sunlight again, I told them. I was interested in this person, but wasn't sure if anything would happen. We left the subject a that. Except when I would bring him up again, and again.... I guess I was smitten.

Before I left, my two hosts and I dabbled a bit more together. I was more relaxed this time, and could fully enjoy myself. I had a lot of pent up sexual energy to squeeze out of me, and you know what - it's nice to have friends you can just fuck around with. People are all so prudish about sex in real life, if we could all just let go and enjoy ourselves without oppressing ourselves. Sexual liberty is so fantastic, it's too bad that even I can't make a clean break from societal limitations. Do what feels good amongst consenting adults. It doesn't make you a slut, it doesn't cheapen relationships, it makes them more interesting. Sex develops deeper connections and creates a greater sense of closeness and trust. Keep that damn jealousy and possessiveness out of the equation, and wow, it's all so fantastic!

Now, if only the world could be like that - it'd be a much happier place in which to live. Unfortunately, we've got what we've got, and I have to learn to navigate it as it is, drama, uncertainty, novelty and paradigm. Once I'm through all that however, and I've seen some very tempting and satisfying pockets of smooth seas thus far, I think I'll really find myself - and the place where I belong.