The Human Condition Ch. 04

He stayed silent for a moment then spoke again. "It's a new world out there Mike, the rules are changing. Whatever kind of relationship you want can be yours if you believe in it enough. Just don't shut yourself off from the possibilities."

He smiled. "You're my best friend, I love you, man. So don't be an asshole and screw up your life." He turned and walked out the door.

I don't know how long I sat there. I do know that when I finally made it into the bathroom to brush my teeth my cheeks were wet. Was Joe right? Was I just a romantic fool who wanted a vine covered cottage and a white picket fence or whatever the gay equivalent was. Mr. and Mr. Cleaver, I thought, and grimaced.

The frown was an automatic response honed by years of practice. I'd realized, almost from the beginning, that being gay was going to mean my life would not take the normal track.

Kids, of course, were out of the question. Even normal contact with said little persons would be tricky. Pedophile is such a nasty word and so easily bandied about by those who can't understand the difference between gay and deviant.

Would I even get to know my own future nieces and nephews? Or would my siblings, when the time came, be distant and afraid to let Uncle Mike get too close because, you know; he's different. No, I wasn't really that paranoid but still, there was this little whisper in the back of my mind that couldn't be silenced.

As for marriage, well obviously I wasn't going to even consider that. One of the main reasons I finally came out to my family was because I couldn't stand the way they were always throwing me into the path of some pretty girl. There had started to be some talk about gay marriages but that seemed so out there that I couldn't get very enthused about it.

So I told myself, and anybody else who asked, the same things I'd just finished saying to Joe. Gay was different, not bad, but different. We didn't need the outmoded conventions of the straight world. We could handle multiple partners, needed them even. I was very convincing.

But did I really believe it myself. Did I truly want a life filled with men in my bed who weren't in my heart? Or was I holding up my freedom like a cross in the face of the vampire of loneliness. And if that were the case, what was I going to be able to do about it.
I'd been telling the truth when I said that I'd never known a completely monogamous gay couple.

That was, I suddenly realized, why I'd never gone down that path. It was one thing to fuck around when you were just dating, quite another to find strange briefs in the couch cushions and stains on the sheets. But the men I knew played around as a matter of course. It may have just been because we were in college, but I didn't think so.

I took a good long look at myself in the mirror. I was young, apparently good looking if the come on stares I got were any indication, and at this point I had no problem finding willing guys to fill up my dance card. But what about 40 years from now when my muscles were gone and most of my hair? Who would be there for me then?

I sighed and scrubbed my hands through my still thick hair and shuffled off to bed. It was stupid to worry about what might happen. I needed to concentrate on the here and now, not some doomsday possibility of the future. And what I needed right now, I thought as my eyes drifted shut, was a boyfriend.