The following is a rather lengthy excerpt from a conversation that Double S and I had Sunday night. Several weeks ago, she asked me -regarding my blog- what exactly it was that I was wanting to redeem myself for, and in whose eyes. I pondered that, and the idea for this post has been going through my head since she texted me that question. I realize that most of the time, we seek redemption so that we can atone for some sin of our past, in order to make up for something we've done for which we are experiencing some degree of debilitating guilt. When Stacy mentioned that I have already more than made up for the wreckage I inflicted on friends, family, co-workers, and other supporters, I realized that she was correct. I also realized that I would have to come around to having most posts on topic with this phase of my life (a phase that I am really starting to iron out as a full-on prologue or preview or forward or overture to what I'm hoping will be a great dawning of the Aquarian age). Although I've hinted and suggested and had a few posts that were somewhat dazed from the thick honey drippings of stream-of-consciousness self-flaggelation.
Everything that's going on in my life currently reminds me so much of February, 2000. Everything that once was is suddenly coming back with a vengeance, and the urges and needs are stronger than ever. This is the reason why...
"I suppose that I need to take the time to post this on my blog for a little further clarification, but here's the story now...
...the story: There is only one time in my life when I can actually remember doing something that I really wanted to do, really following through on my dreams. When I turned twenty-one, some buddies of mine took me down to New Orleans. It was a Sunday night, and I had classes that I knew I needed to get home and study for, and I really just wanted to have a good time. I'd lived my entire life as the good kid. I barely drank, never got into drugs (other than the normal experimentation that we all did at the point where adolescence is making its shifty and stumbling juxtaposition toward adult-like behavior), never got into trouble. The way I look at my subconscious reasoning for being such a don't-drink-don't-smoke-what-do-ya-do-Goody-Two-Shoes is that my brother and sister had put my parents through so much hell that I never even really considered the possibility of stepping out of the box and testing my wings. In retrospect, I find that it's always better to test one's wings seed-by-seed rather than scarfing down an entire bag of wild oats all at once; however, hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20 (unless you're a dumb ass, and I meet plenty of people with retrospective myopia).
Everything that's going on in my life currently reminds me so much of February, 2000. Everything that once was is suddenly coming back with a vengeance, and the urges and needs are stronger than ever. This is the reason why...
"I suppose that I need to take the time to post this on my blog for a little further clarification, but here's the story now...
...the story: There is only one time in my life when I can actually remember doing something that I really wanted to do, really following through on my dreams. When I turned twenty-one, some buddies of mine took me down to New Orleans. It was a Sunday night, and I had classes that I knew I needed to get home and study for, and I really just wanted to have a good time. I'd lived my entire life as the good kid. I barely drank, never got into drugs (other than the normal experimentation that we all did at the point where adolescence is making its shifty and stumbling juxtaposition toward adult-like behavior), never got into trouble. The way I look at my subconscious reasoning for being such a don't-drink-don't-smoke-what-do-ya-do-Goody-Two-Shoes is that my brother and sister had put my parents through so much hell that I never even really considered the possibility of stepping out of the box and testing my wings. In retrospect, I find that it's always better to test one's wings seed-by-seed rather than scarfing down an entire bag of wild oats all at once; however, hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20 (unless you're a dumb ass, and I meet plenty of people with retrospective myopia).
"I'd moved down to Lafayette in December of 1998, met a dude, fell in love (the first great love of my life, the first time I ever knew what that helpless, wreckless, petrified-excited mindset of contradictory and electrically charged emotion can feel like), and made straight A's through the spring of 1999. I'd turned twenty, dated Seth through the early part of the summer, had a really bad break-up in Florida (the fight actually started before we left, in the dressing room of some store in the mall where Seth was picking out my bathing suit for me; also, this was the last time I'd been to the beach before going back to almost the same spot [in fact, unless all beach communities in the area look exactly identical, the great Gulf Shores Experience of 2011 may have been in the same town - on nearly the same beach at that - as the previous adventure of twelve years before] where I experienced my first break-up and had to drive back to Lafayette in a silently screaming car before jumping into my car and hauling ass another three hours to get home to cry at my parents' house for a few days), then came back and went through a mediocre fall semester where I started drifting with how I felt about everything related to academics and my future.
That spring, I'd also met some new people, some really carefree folks who introduced me to Parker Posey and The House of Yes and the Tales of the City books, and gratuitous marijuana inhalation, and that subsidiary group became a stalwart for my personal associations. They were pleased when Seth and I were done as they were a rather hippie-like gay male/lesbian group who fought me to not endure a relationship at the very back of a closet behind the winter stuff and dry cleaning bags. They introduced me to others, more people who were like-minded, and 1999 ebbed and flowed to its natural conclusion.
The Christmas of 1999 was phenomenal.
I had three weeks free from classes during which I came home to spend time with my family, and I finally got to hang out with everybody as an adult for the first time. As an added bonus, I was treated as an adult for the first time. It was a real Christmas, ya know? The first I'd ever had with the whole sha-bang: family in from out of town, my sister took time off from work and we spent days at her place watching old miniseries from their Golden Age circa 1970 - 1989 and British comedy on BBC America, making cookies with her and christmas ornaments with my niece from paper and glitter and glue... it was great. I was on the verge of becoming an adult, had just changed my major from Psych to English (I started as Public Relations at LSUS in 1997, switched to Psych with my move to Lafayette in December of 1998, then finally moved to the spot which was right where I wanted to be), and went back to Lafayette for the spring semester during which I met up with the first group of male gay friends I've ever known. And I was suddenly exposed to a life that i never really knew existed. And, to be honest, had I known about it in advance, I may never have pursued the events that came next. I never really got to know any of them personally.
I was still at a stage in my life where I wanted to be with other guys who liked making out with other guys, but I never really liked having any of my actions or thoughts displayed or seen by exterior performers in my life. It was a life that I sort of poked at with a stick, then recoiled when a tendril of it reached out to take my hand and welcome me in. I was intermittently scared and excited, and suddenly February rolled around and they wanted to take me to New Orleans, using my upcoming birthday as an excuse to go -not that anyone down South needs a reason to hit that city or to just have a spontaneous party or festival. Despite the fact that I didn't know any of these guys very well, I did know that they were a lot of fun, so I decided to go with them.
While we were out in the city, I realized that they all pretty much lived their lives as they wanted. They could party without repercussion, live life by the day, and got to hang out in gay bars till all hours of the night. They weren't in school, had service-type jobs and though they probably lived way beyond their means, when you're twenty-one, you look at people who live like the larger-than-life characters we grew up watching on tv, and you're intrigued by all the pleather and body glitter and conspicuous eye liner and people who are obsessed and surrounded by everything that's anything and everyone who's anyone: all that is new, hot, young, and of-the-present-moment.
When we were on our way back, I ended up back with the same dude who'd driven me down. I think his name was Cory. We were never in touch much after this trip. Occassionally, I'd see him out and we'd hug and our eyes would twinkle at each other, but we never really got to know well enough to know whether or not we'd be missing anything. He was my age, very cute, and I think I only met him when he picked me up to drive me down there. It seems like I'd been invited by a guy who was a DJ in a gay bar in downtown Lafayette. I think he had an after party, and I went with two friends I knew better than the DJ and his group. I must've mentioned something about only having been down to New Orleans on a sort of middle school field trip, and that pretty much settled it. From that point on, they took it upon themselves to take me. That's what people are like down there generally, but it's far more apparant with those who were in our late teens and early twenties. You could just hear that someone had never been to another city and an instant decsion could be made that everyone present would be taking a trip there in the next few hours... and, of course, we'll worry about the transportation situation tomorrow (probably five minutes before we were scheduled to leave), which is likely how I ended up in Cory's truck, despite the fact that I think I'd only met him the night before or the day before.
Most importantly, he smoked and he let me smoke in his truck, and we got a lot of talking in on our way down, a lot of basic getting-to-know-you bullshit (in the truck, the young boys come and go, talking of Caravaggio); however, an important note is that Cory had this really possessive, really dramatic boyfriend that kinda freaked me out. He was a short, overly "pretty" (and pretty fake) Spanish guy named Miquel (or "Mike," depending on who he was with, I guess), dull, and dangerous dolt that had been unable to come along, but pushed Cory to have me ride with him because I was the trustworthy and innocent member of the group who didn't partake in many of the activities to which the others were prone. I didn't get high like they did (at least, not openly, and -at that time- weed didn't really count). I had a good job, and I was a full time student. I was the one that people called to help them out with things, and I did it without asking for anything in return.
I don't remember exactly why, but it was suddenly VERY late in New Orleans. We'd downed a ton of overpriced designer drinks and the group had gotten separated then came back together (well, Cory found me and refused to let me out of his sight again because he felt some kind of responsibility toward me and when he couldn't find me for half an hour, he went into a panic until he saw me) then Cory and I got separated from everyone else. Cory and I walked around the quarter for a while looking for the rest of our posse, and when he realized that I'd never been in New Orleans to really get the full experience, he grabbed my hand and told me that he had so much to show me in a very short period. I seem to remember Cory saying something like, "we gotta lotta shit to see before the sun comes up." The line sticks out in my brain because I also remember hearing the Concrete Blonde song "Bloodletting" drifting loudly out of one of the overcrowded bars or strip joints or whatever type of establishment it was ("I got the ways and means; to New Orleans; I'm goin' down by the river where it's warm and green; I'm gonna have a drink; and walk around. I got a lot to think about - oh, yeah" [the song reminded me of Anne Rice and both the stories of the Mayfair family and the stories from the vampire books]).
Cory quickly achieved the status of awesome. When he grabbed my hand, I felt a little spontaneous and unexpected smidge of romance. He took me to the river and the aquarium and to Cafe du Monde and past all the famous restaurants and cemetaries and night clubs. He showed me where to buy Hand Grenades and Hurricanes, the best club for a lapdance, the perfect place to get twink action, fratboy action, straight boy action, black-on-white action, the best handjobs, the best blowjobs, the best and roughest anonymous sex, and a club that was so dirty, he would only point from the outside and refused to let me go in by myself. For most of the trip around the area, we were on foot, keeping an incredibly swift pace despite what must have been extremely high blood alcohol levels. When we stopped just inside an alley where he asked me to keep a watch for cops while he peed, he zipped up and decided we needed to get to his truck, so then we made the rounds to see more sights in the comfortable confines of his pickup. When we started heading back to I-10, we only had maybe another hour or so of moonlight remaining. Soon, dawn was to start making her purple-red-orange appearance in the sky and the magic of the past several hours would be lost when the full-on sunlight revealed to each other what we really looked like.
About ten minutes into the drive, he mentioned that he really needed to pee and he was really tired and he asked me if I could drive a standard. I told him that I could, but not very well, and then he started throwing out the idea of a hotel. And he debated this verbally, but without any input from me, for a while. To the point that we stopped at a motel that advertised rooms available. But when he came back out to the truck, he got in and sat back for a minute in silence. I did the same because I could almost hear his brain ticking in though. Finally, he said that he was very attracted to me and that he'd been "assigned" to me because everybody trusted me, and they knew I wouldn't hit on him, but he didn't trust himself if we got the hotel room. He told me that he knew that, if we checked in, he was going to fuck me and that we wouldn't sleep anyway (the loose reason we had preliminarily and unspoken-ly established as a reason for getting a room) and that we'd have a big secret to keep for the rest of our lives (like I said, his boyfriend was CRAZY, and I have to respect Cory for thinking his way through the situation the way he did).
I told him that I was attracted to him as well, but I really felt like I could contain myself. And I meant that. He looked at me and said that he trusted me as well, but that there was no way, and that if we got the room, we were going to have sex. I paused for a minute. Turned my head to look out the passenger window at the first suggestions of sunlight. Finally, I told him just to drive back.
And it was on that trip back, as the sun was coming up and I was rubbing the New Orleans night funk out of my eyes and intermittently making eye contact and smiling at Cory that I realized I was sick of being the trustworthy, responsible one.
To Be Continued...
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