Paul's Story Part 2

Bridging the Gap 
Post 2

We continue with Paul's story in his own words:

Something Deep Down Inside

How to describe it?  A fascination with the naked male body.   As a horny young teen, searching through all the possible books in the suburban downtown library a few blocks from my house. Pictures of naked men exercising, gay coming out stories, scientific studies of homosexuality – but no conception of what it looked like in the real world outside of books.

Yet all the while knowing that kind of life wasn't for me.  It was unspoken, but firm understanding that those impulses were wrong.  Not so much from sermons preached at church or Sunday school lessons or youth group meetings, but from many other sources various yet unspecified sources.

One time at a pre-teen Christian summer camp, a younger guy cornered me in the cabin when no one was around.  He lay on top of me on the bunk and started talking dirty to me.  I had kept to myself not knowing anyone at the camp, but he must have noticed something different in me and wanted to ....well, I don't know.  A camp counselor came along and separated us.

But I really didn't know what I was looking for.  I imagined men when I jacked off on the corner of the rug in my room.  I stole glances at the older guys in the high school locker room at PE.  I wanted someone with a hairy masculine body, especially big hairy chest - yes that was my ideal.  I even drew it once in a journal, only to white it out later. 

I went off to college half a continent away.  Once I was cruised by a guy in his 20s or 30s with a huge cock in the bathroom basement of a class building on campus.  I was interested, but didn't know what to do, and left.   In my first few months at university, I met a girl.  My first girlfriend who became my wife.  I was her first too.  We made out but no sex before marriage.  But a year before marriage something happened.

While hitchhiking a long stretch on the freeway in the rain, a guy backed up in reverse after passing me by - what did he see up close - something in my eyes that gave me away?  The middle-aged man, easily twice my 20 years of age, encouraged me to take off my wet pants which I resisted at first.  He kind of watched at the urinals at a rest stop.  

As we continued the trip, he reached over touched my leg, and eventually found his way into my underwear.  My dick got hard easily and he was quickly able to bring me to orgasm - not what he expected so soon.  But he wanted more so we stopped to stay at a hotel.  We had sex for the rest of the evening with a break for dinner for him - I was too nervous/excited to eat.  The next morning he acted as if the previous night's sex hadn't happened and dropped me off where I could catch my next ride.

And that was that - no sex with another man until 26 years later with the guy described in Acting Out.

By the way, the double blow job I got from him was great.  But it wasn't that the sex was so much better than with my wife – it was feeling appreciated and not taken for granted.  It was being wanted and hungered after sexually by another man.  I loved my wife and was in to the sex with her  - it was just so comfortable and natural, to know her and to be able to snuggle up and caress her and fall asleep after sex with her. 

So how could I cheat on her?  A combination of things - with the kids grown up I noticed how apart we had grown.  She had increasing medical complaints and was more focused on her little world of her and the house.  I had over the years shared less of my feelings and self with her.  I have always been emotionally autistic, but the sense of separateness grew.  Plus resentments arose on my part.  I felt I had to walk on eggshells around her many times and often ended up apologizing to keep the peace.  I got tired of saying "sorry" for every little thing as if they were all my fault.  I was codependent in an odd way with her and needed to break out of that.   So despite knowing this went against the Bible, I almost felt justified looking for sex with men  - kind of as an immature way of getting back at her; at least it wasn't with a woman, I rationalized.

And the post-orgasmic guilt I felt lasted less each time as my compartmentalization grew...

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Jack Scott's Post on Honesty

The Bisexual: From Another Planet

Jack Scott wrote a fine post three days ago that has generated lengthy, thoughtful, and provocative comments.  Jack shared his own experience in coming out to his wife, and also his position that Bisexual married men may need to withhold part or all of the truth of their sexuality from their wives,  and to paraphrase him, this "dishonesty" has an "honest" purpose.   Here is the link to that blog - Jack Scott's Blog on "Bisexual Men and Honesty"
Here is my response to his post with an added concluding sentence:
Comment to Jack

Jack, this post of yours has clearly triggered one of the most significant outpourings of thoughtful discussion about the Bisexual's Dilemma that I have seen in my almost two years of blog reading and writing.   You have articulated from your own personal,  deeply thoughtful and sometimes painful evolution what you feel was ultimately right for you and your wife.   It took many years, but you finally disclosed a part of who you were to her, and your marriage survived. 

Just having someone you loved that much, with whom you had a robust sexual relationship forever, now seeing you in a different way and having to adjust to was clearly one of your life's most difficult moments.   But the two of you came through that, and this affirms there was a strong underlying love there that could withstand such a revelation.

Yet you also say, powerful as that love is, and now open about that lifelong secret as you were from that moment on, you still do not share the details and particulars of the sexual times you have had with your men.

That makes sense, as the images of having someone we share our bodies and souls with having that kind of passion with someone else can be very disturbing.   Are you protecting her?  Yes, but I do not think this is "paternal".  You have judged that the disturbance that "total honesty" can cause was likely harmful.   And you did this out of love for her, not just to preserve the institution of marriage.

Perhaps the dilemma for us men in similar situations is that we first could imagine, and then have experienced, that our inherent makeup and wiring allows us to have sexual intimacy with more than one person and we do not experience the need or desire to elevate one of those experiences above the other, or negate one of those lovers to appreciate the other.  One cannot be truly bisexual, or pansexual, if you do not have the capacity and ability to share intimacy like that.   The studies show that for a variety of mostly acculturated reasons, a much higher percentage of women than men can only imagine and embrace loyal monogamy as equivalent to enduring love.  

According to the book "Sex at Dawn",  both women and men in our early evolutionary stages pursued and enjoyed multiple sexual partners throughout adult life, even while bonding with one primary mate for the critically important function of primary child rearing and food sharing.  The evolution of the nuclear family, which competes for food and money and power with other families, and the demise of communitarian modes of living, by no coincidence brought forth strictures for women in particular to mate with one man for life.  This exclusive monogamy model was set up to be certain of the heritage of the children and the transference of knowledge, wealth, and values to them.

How we evolved cannot be undone, but the truth is that it is NOT inherent in human nature that we emotionally need to mate for life in heterosexual couples, and that sexual activity with other adults threatens the sanctity of the family.  The deep anxieties that come out of the news to a woman that her husband is interested in, or involved with, men is a deeply learned response.  

The true bisexual is asking a mate, and society, to accept a way of being that is counter to all we learn about the primacy of one type of adult human intimacy over all others.  Jealousy, anger, fear of ultimate rejection, are all totally natural and expected outcomes when a man reveals his need for, or indulgence in, sexual intimacy with another person.  That person being a man instead of another woman adds other layers of "projected outcomes"...he is really gay and finds me unattractive as a woman, he is going to ditch me for the new exotic love, he does not make me and our family and friends sufficiently satisfying a life so this is a dismissal of all I (the wife) stand for.

Why would any woman NOT have this kind of reaction?   And more than asking permission to have sexual intimacy with a man (audacious enough, right?),  the bisexual man is asking for understanding and acceptance that pursuit of sex with men IN NO WAY diminishes her love, her importance, her place, her future.   If she cannot imagine or grasp that an adult human being can in fact share naked intimacy and emotional intensity and passion with more than one person at a time, then acceptance of her man's bisexuality is not going to happen.

If the pop psych. idea of "Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars"  provides some truth about our gender differences, then the Bisexual's Dilemma is the greatest test of that planetary misalignment.  

Jack, if anyone could write the book to explain this better, it would be you.   Perhaps it could be titled,  "Women are from Venus, Men are from Mars, and Bisexuals are from a Pre-Dawn Earth".  And I would argue that the connection between Bisexuals and Pansexuals is very close.

One vexing truth is that human sexuality is fluid and situational, more than we want to admit.  According to some research, the Bisexual is particularly a "type" that may over their life and in response to certain events or opportunities find that their primary sexual and emotional thrill shifts.   This may explain why so many married men begin feeling those "gay" impulses having once had what they thought to be satisfying marriages.   They were always latent bisexuals, if not latent gays.  And for a significant number of bisexuals for a variety of reasons, the trajectory is toward more homosexual urges and fantasies as one ages.  

Bisexuality in Jack Scott's case seems to have been a steady state.  But for many men, they are trying to also figure out if in fact this is a major shift to being predominantly gay - which is what I an grappling with.

I think it is not shame that keeps us from talking to our wives.  It is much of what Jack already said, but for many of us we are also, in mid life or later, shaken to know we do not really know what our ultimate needs are after all.  And until that is certain and we are "resolved" about who we are and what we need, opening up a conversation about our sexual fantasies in the moment is going to expose something perhaps even more alarming than sharing with one's wife that you are a bisexual.   That would be sharing with her that you know you have strong attractions to men, but you honestly do not know where that will go.

And with that uncertainty revealed, what woman would feel a secure basis for trying to adapt?   And with that blunt an “honest” revelation that suggests the man wants the security of a marriage with additional outside relationship flexibility and indeterminism,  it is no wonder that 5 of 6 marriages where the man presents that scenario, the marriage ends.  

For those bisexual, or gay, men who feel they derive a lot of meaning from a marriage, and love their wives in some way that transcends sexuality,  the question of whether and how to keep the marriage is a lot more difficult than for those for whom the marriage is shaky.  We want what seems right for ourselves, but know that at some level it will be seen as a wrong against the marriage vows.   And each man has to find out how to resolve this question of being “true to oneself” while also being true to her, on his own.

We will return to the story of Paul later this week.
All photos are from the blog: SickoRicko'sCrap
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Acting Out, by Paul

Bridging the Gap Series:  

Post 1

This post is entirely devoted to my guest co-blogger Paul's first installment of his own story.  Paul will also be providing replies to reader comments on this post.  Here it is in Paul's own words:

Acting Out, by Paul

So here I was - walking through the hotel lobby in my running clothes on a Sunday afternoon in the fall.  As I walked towards the elevators, I  imagined that the hotel employees knew why I was going upstairs.

I finally was going to meet a man for sex.  I told my family I was going out for a run.

He was a  little older, heavier than me, married too.  Not very good looking,  but he wanted my cock.  In fact he said he wanted to suck on it for a long time with nothing in return. Hmmm.  OK, if you say so.  This would be my first time going to a man's room for sex....

What did I want?  Surely not just a blow job. Well, yes, I did want one.  My wife would suck my cock for a little bit sometimes when we made love, but never long enough to let me come.  She always wanted to take it into her moist pussy.  And that was good for me - I loved fucking her and would come pretty quick.  But I wanted a man to lick my dick, to nurse on it and to take my cum in his mouth.

And why after all these years of marriage, of being a faithful husband, was I doing this?  The sex was great with her and it seemed frequent enough.  Of course it was down from the several times a day as newlyweds but after 2 kids and 25 years of marriage, every few days was good enough.

Was I subconsciously trying to get back at her for being mean or petty with me?  Was I not able to find a more appropriate response due to my low emotional IQ?

And what about my religious beliefs and family upbringing?  Homosexuality is wrong and thou shalt not committ adultery.  Well I was about to condemn myself on both counts.

So I got in the room, dropped trou and he went to work on my cock.   You could tell it was something he really wanted to do.  My cock - it was nothing big -  but he loved it. I came in about 10 minutes but  he did not let off.  He let me get through the sensitive phase by just letting it rest in his mouth and then continued to work it again.   Of course, I got hard again and came 20 or 30 minutes later.  Amazingly, he continued to suck my cock and although it got hard, I wasn't able to come before his jaw started hurting.  It had been more than an hour and  I left. 

I was sure the hotel employees knew what happened as I crossed the lobby. 

I got home from my "run" and the family could have cared less.

All photos are from the blog "Cocks and Asses and Only", see link to this blog on the right.  To leave a comment, scroll rightward across the date shown below for a comment box.

Paul's Story Begins

Bridging the Gap

It is spectacularly sunny and warm, day after unrelenting day, in my part of paradise.  In a wind sheltered cove as I walked a beach today, I was convinced around the next outcrop where summertime brings the nude sun bathers, I would find one daring guy to gawk at.  But I was walking with my wife, I had to keep the glances I gave a few great looking guys at the cafe on the promenade hidden behind dark glasses.  I would certainly have to be nonchalant if we chanced on a naked man, which we did not.  This is a new year, and in many ways the relationship with the wife is better than it has been in a while, but my sexual attention is still mostly aimed at men.  

I just try to enjoy the aesthetics of this strolling out in public and checking out a few guys without feeling nuts.   I must still have a few bisexual leanings as the heaving breasts of a woman at dinner last night were so compelling it took my eyes completely off the Caravaggio looking Italian waiter with the thick black hair, 3 day beard growth, piercing dark eyes, and narrow hips.  At least I was diverted several times, though the truth is the waiter got the last look of the night. 

So far, I am savoring the world which seems so beautiful around me, and the passion of three nights out of five last week with Jake.  I have to just smile and appreciate how good life can feel sometimes, even for a perpetual searcher and seeker.  The gap between my interior life, and the world around me, sometimes can feel enormous, but on some days the gap disappears and I can almost imagine being able to integrate all these disparate parts of my life and manage to feel whole, and fully engaged with those around me I care about.

Let's see how long I can hold onto that ideal.

In this new year, I had been thinking of what to do next with the blog, in order to wind down all the hours of writing, but keeping this blog still relevant and regular.   I have a big career move to plan the details for, a house to finally complete in order to put it on the market, and a real need to keep the relationship with Jake active.

As if some reader had been reading these thoughts, a new reader “Paul”, not to be confused with a regular commenter by the same name, wrote to me last week eager to share his story with others.  His chronicle goes further forward than mine, as his path through a marriage longer than my own ended in finally coming out, separating from his wife, and beginning a new life as a still-not-quite-out gay man with a lover.   


He wanted to learn how to blog and share his story, and I felt like he represents one of the legitimate paths I might be going down myself.  How about sharing my blog with me, I suggested?   And with appreciated enthusiasm and an interest in maybe a weekly post, Paul agreed to a fledgling partnership.  

Mergers seem to be in the air – I discussed this with Paul and the very day we agreed to proceed, Bi Like Me announced he is turning his blog over every Friday to a younger guest author.

Paul comes from a faith background, and while I am not into any kind of formal religion, it has struck me how much I find the writings of men of faith like Jack Scott compelling, and reassuringly compassionate.   Most recently Rob of Bi Married Mafia wrote of his unexpected emotional catharsis meeting a man in a GLBT church and having complex emotions unlocked by the rituals and music and hush and reverence that he experienced.  This was not in a parentally forced repressive church, but in the company of a community of people who espoused faith AND the freedom to have intimate relations with a member of one’s own gender as compatible.  Not just compatible, but full of divine grace. 


There is a very critical component some call spiritual to this quest for self acceptance, acceptance by others, being welcomed into a community who shares your values, and being able to pursue love and fulfillment with great comfort and joy.  And Paul suggested that his brand of Christianity is not so represented by other bloggers yet.  I have always seen myself as an agent for expanding the dialogue among our disparate bi/gay married community, and welcoming diverse viewpoints from the brotherhood of guys like me.  So here was a chance to try putting some of that camaraderie into practice.

Paul and I set up very few ground rules – he is free to write whatever he wants, I will not edit and just get it up in the blogsphere as he sends it to me, and for the first posts I will choose a couple of pictures that I think go with his themes.  He thinks he may want to generate one or two short posts a week.  We will see how that plays itself out but I want to give him a place to express himself, and anyone else who want the pulpit from time to time as well.

So here is Paul’s first post, straight out of an e-mail with proposed text he sent me last week.   Welcome Paul, you are a man who dared to make the huge life change, and I am eager to hear how you got to that momentous turning point, and where you are going next.  You chose to call your blog column “Bridging the Gap” referring to the uneasy relationship between sexuality and spirituality that characterized much of your personal search.  

It takes on another meaning, as by writing side by side, you are helping Bridge the Gap between those of us still secretively pursuing our sexual relationships with men inside a marriage, and those who have ended the marriage yet still have that long legacy of a traditional heterosexual family life behind, and are attempting to create a new life as a gay man.  And Paul made one irreversible leap across the gap in legal terms just 7 days ago.  

Bridging the Gap, by Paul

My Background

Despite being divorced and living with my partner,  I am still not "out" in my mind, I still deal with guilt, I still have a lot of ground to cover to reconcile my past with my present.  And like you I want to provide a unique voice out there in the blogosphere.  I see many LDS with their married bi/gay blogs, but not so many from my brand of Christianity.

D-Day

My divorce was finalized a week ago, on January 10, 2012  The end of a 30+ year marriage is a big deal.  But I will write about that later.

D-Day is also decision day.  Now that I am divorced, I feel free to write about my struggles, to help bridge the gap between my spiritual and sexual sides, to understand what I did, to provide insight to others on the same path.  There are many other men out there who were like me – trying to be good husbands and fathers while resolving their desire for other men with their religion or ethical beliefs.

So why am I blogging?   Partly to untangle my thoughts of me being attracted to other men (SSA, gay, homosexual, bisexual, what have you) as being a choice or an option, and therefore a sin and immoral.  I want to explore why I did not choose the celibate way of simply staying married to my wife and not acting out my same sex desires.  I don't want to simply justify my decision or beat up on myself for making a wrong choice.  But I want to understand what I did and the ramifications my choices had on me, my partner, my wife, kids, family and friends.  And to be an example or source of info to others on the same path, whether they are the married guy, his wife, his kids, his lover/partner, friends or family.



How will I blog?  I plan to talk of a variety of things - explicit sex, spiritual aspirations, religious doctrines, personal upbringing - and connect with a wide variety of blogs.  Now I am unsure of the blogging format - it has lasted well over 10 years but who is to say it will go the way of the bulletin board soon...

And talk about the contradictions - a married guy who loved sex with his wife for 29 years, but in defiance to his purported values continued meeting up with other guys for 3 years.  A socially and psychologically straight guy, now divorced and living with a male partner.  He’s not really bisexual, but can't bring himself to call himself "gay".  He still isn't sure of his identity and how this reconciles with the religious beliefs he was raised with, and in many ways he doesn't really know what he thinks now.

So welcome on board!



About Me: 

I am a man in his 50s who was married for over 30 years to a straight woman, now living with my male partner. I am still trying to bridge the gap between my religious beliefs and my current circumstances, and to integrate these opposing dimensions. 


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Can Passion Trump Orgasm?

Jake Stuns Me

I haven’t written about sex in a while.   My mind is full of thoughts about this period of transition, what the holiday revealed about my relationship with my wife, and all the work crap I have to finish to make the big job change this summer.   I am preoccupied with some thinking, but at least not also overworking.   I am circling around this unavoidable question of, am I bisexual or all gay?  And either way, is my best path forward one of continued secrecy with all its associated problems, or coming out to my wife with all its anticipated consequences.  

Once again this got to be a big topic of my phone call to Jake last night – which included some strongly expressed opinions on his side about whether there really is a condition of “bisexuality”, or whether a lot of grown married men who in today’s more open culture might have come out as gay in their teens, are carrying out a “bisexual” existence with men on the side to preserve their facades.   We got into a verbal exchange that bordered on a fight, not in a bad way, but infused with opinions and observations of men’s behavior around us.   This dialogue erupts in some form triggered by something I say often, and this time it came out of our talk about films with LGBT themes we would like to watch together, and my disclosing how watching some of them a few years back set off almost panic in me when I related to a married male character that began sex with men.

But this whole topic deserves its own post, and the real story about Jake and me I want to focus on is our recent reconnection after the longest break in contact we have had since we started our affair.

Jake and I have now seen one another twice since our holiday three-week separation.   Between his nine-hour jet lag after a six thousand mile trip the first night, and my having slept terribly the night before his visit with me, our major impulses were more about passionate kissing and long embraces, and getting to sleep early.   This is not to say there was no sexual thrill there.   On night one we both woke up about 4 in the morning, and he was so hot and hard I could not help springing down on his magnificent uncut cock and sucking him to an enormous blast.   The presence of a new upstairs tenant above his bedroom added a new twist to the love making, as he had to exert huge self-control to stifle his normal loud screams and deep groans.

The next morning we got a lazy start despite my initial pledge to get on the road to make a good early showing at my office.  Leaving almost two hours later than intended allowed us to cuddle and talk and linger and continue our talk about our holiday experiences.   With less than 5 minutes before my absolute deadline to leave for a mid morning conference, we felt this rush of sexual intensity and were rolling on the floor together famished for one another’s bodies.   He took the assertive role quickly, commanding me to lean back squatting on the floor as he stood over me stroking his throbbing cock to a body rattling orgasm.   Rope after rope of cum shot all over my chest and oozed down from my nipples to my pubes.  

Fuck, we can get so heated up without advance warning.   At my house on Monday, while we were snuggled up watching a movie and downing our dinner drinks, the occasional kissing started to trigger something in each of us simultaneously.  Within minutes we had lunged at one another, ripped one another’s clothes off, and were smashing our heated up wet lips and tongues all over one another’s bodies.  Sweating like wrestlers on the bare hardwood floor, I pressed him down overcome by animal surges of passion.   From some inner locked up place loud cries of astonishment hit the air and drowned out the loud sound track on the screen.

This has never happened to me, either with a man or a woman, this kind of rapid, intense, all consuming body lust and overflowing passion that takes my breath away.   And these moments are not just a prelude to great genital or anal sex.   Some nights, like Tuesday, we race to the bedroom for hours of prolonged kissing and building up of feeling and fondling that goes on and on…. and that becomes the real focus of our sexual adventure.

For the first time in the history of our relationship on Tuesday, neither of us actually came to full orgasm.  We traversed back and forth from sizzling sex to gentle body rubbing and almost shy and tender kisses.   And locked together in a final spooning position, the last embrace took us quickly into sleep-deprived recovery.   And two hours after the surge that started on the sofa, no jizz had exploded from either of us.

Yet I would mark Tuesday as one of the most memorable sexual experiences I have had.   What was so amazing was the depth of feeling and the several cycles of build up and electrification.   We feel comfortable making love without having to make orgasm as the ultimate achievement.   Lovemaking is so much more than just cum making.

I have worried less about those times I seem to get so close but not cum, as the frequency of my orgasms with him is now about every other visit and they are so extraordinary.  It is hard to describe how his masterful sucking and stroking of my cock and massaging my ass and legs and stomach and gently squeezing my balls gets me so hard and so awash with total sexual pleasure that I just want that to go on forever….and not cumming after what seems like hours of intense sex with Jake beats most of the climaxes I have had with many other lovers.   And it is scary to consider it certainly beats the sex I can remember having with my wife with some wonderful exceptions.

I head down to see him again on Thursday, and this resumes our normal pattern of being together two nights a week.   We are still reconnecting but at least by this third date since the holidays, sleepiness will not dominate the experience.  But perhaps the leather chaps I bought on total impulse before Christmas, which we keep at his place, plus our mutual interest in getting back to some topping and bottoming positions again, will shape the experience.   But then, let's just see where the passion takes us this time.

I will leave that revelation of new playthings for the older guy out there as a teaser.   I have to say we both look great wearing that leather.  While neither of us is a Folsom Street Fair macho type, it turns out there is something very sexy and erotic about a man’s body wearing some leather things even for those of us who never had leather fantasies or watched leather porn.   And trying new things so far has amplified the sex, but not taken away from the core passion that really must be there first to drive it.

If I had to describe this unanticpated way we connect sexually, I guess I would say simply, it is stunning.  He stuns me.  He is stunning.   


Jake, I hope you understand how very different our relationship is from what I had expected when I began having sex with men a year ago.  I expected to have orgasms.  I expected to experiment with new positions.  And I soon learned that kissing and embracing was a powerful wonderful part of the sexual build up and so much more essential than I realized.


But I did not expect those moments we have when we each feel so stunned - to be overtaken by that all consuming passionate forcefield that feels as if our two separate bodies had defied physics and were now merged into one superheated throbbing swirl of pure emotional release.   And it happens with no warning and requires no triggering devices. 


I did not expect to be stunned.  I did not expect that the moments of being stunned without orgasm would match or even overshadow the stunning climaxes we also have.  And if I had to choose between the two ways you stun me, after Tuesday night I can see this choice:  Illogical as it might be for a guy who started this journey searching for the ultimate orgasmic experience with a man,  I might pick the other kind.  I might pick the shuddering gasping all body and soul passionate mergers, over the seismic registering massive ejaculations you bring on in me.  Because sometimes, as you have taught me, Passion trumps Orgasm.

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Attempted Connections

Seeking Satisfaction and Hope
Warning - this is a really long post, a kind of year end wrapup shaped by two weeks of unusual solo time to wander about in my head and in my town.  I could not find a good place to chop it into separate posts.  So I gave it four section titles

1.  Connecting to the World

I have had a lot of free day time over the holidays, perhaps too much time, to wander about and reflect. After the usual people-packed events of Christmas, my wife had to go back to work, while I booked a two week series of half-work days. I took my laptop to local cafes to do office work, then wrote or drew or wandered about, a solo tourist in my own bustling town. It evolved to be a taste of what it might be like being single in a place I have been married for over 25 years.


I did not set out to have it be like that, but realized soon that these afternoons filled with all kinds of potential human interaction while being solo in public places were so rare as a married family man. It made me think back to my single life before marriage, as well as made me wonder, if I really did conclude that our marriage simply could not last, what it might feel like to be single and free.

It is a mixed feeling, that being alone and watching others whose lives you imagine being so much more resolved sometimes. Mostly one sees younger people out there during midday, but it was encouraging to see the numbers of middle aged and older men out like me. There must be a lot of people whose work hours are not regular, or live on trust funds, or just use coffee houses as mobile offices.

I found myself having the full range of emotional response to these two weeks of simulating single life as a guy way over 30 in the big city. At its worst, I projected a life of being lonely and compulsively looking for friendship as well as sexual liaisons in a world full of younger, attractive, vivacious men.

At its best, such as when striking up a conversation with a younger guy who had just returned from Paris and was brimming over with eagerness to share tales of travel, it made me feel terrific to break out of my own isolation and meet someone new. He had paused after getting up from his café chair at my table, pulled out his cell phone, and asked if he could take a picture of the sketch I had done of him. It caught me off guard, as I thought I had been very surreptitious in doing the drawing, and had moved on to write some things and not noticed his coming over.

He liked the sketch and I explained I did some drawing for my living and the conversation just took off from there. By the end of what became a pretty long and winding dialogue on all matter of things, he offered me his business card. I took that as a good indication he had enjoyed our interaction and maybe even felt some kind of attraction there. He had the most incredible dark eyebrows, dark Italianate eyes and thick wavy black hair, framing a flawless youthful face.

All the while he stood talking to me as I remained seated, it was hard not to stare at his handsome visage, and take in his very lean young form. He had been a competitive swimmer in high school and we talked briefly about the nearby renovated indoor public pool, where once I had done regular swimming, but then that was probably before he was even born.

This was a warm human encounter with a stranger, and left me feeling I could do this, I could meet new people and form new relationships and even if it is not about a dramatic end to my long marriage, I just have to break out of the static quality of my current life and might be able to pull it off.

If I were not involved with Jake, this is the kind of encounter with a man that I would likely take as an invitation to make that call back, propose some reason to meet for coffee or a glass of wine, and begin a more intentional act of seduction. And maybe it would just lead to a friendship between two men who love travel and feel great swimming and while perhaps both of us are into men sexually, we find what we value or want from one another is companionship, not sex.

It gave me hope, as fleeting and inconsequential as it was, that one can meet other men and form relationships in public places and they might take many different forms. It was about an open rather than a closed feeling of the possibilities of the future.


Against the backdrop of some good days out sketching and writing and talking to a few people, I know my secret bisexual, or gay, existence is a huge impediment to my feeling totally connected to my existing friends, not just to my wife, and that gets rubbed in painfully over the holidays. There were some good moments which were in large part because I worked very hard to fight my alienation tendency and to make connections and value my circle of buddies and social friends.

But it does take work, very conscious work, to draw myself out of my own internal world and into theirs when so much of what we talk about is what is going on in our lives, and the biggest thing going on for me, my passionate involvement with Jake, is taboo subject matter.

2.  Connecting to a Friend

I spent one afternoon with a friend from our guys group who managed a lifetime career in music and theater arts, and found myself wondering as I drove over to meet him for lunch, could I tell him, and could I trust him to keep this all secret between us. He is one of only two men I know in my circle of guy friends I might even make indirect comments to, but this is still not the time and I am very unclear where this is all going anyway.

The conversation was a lot more about what he has been through lately, a serious set of diseases from which he is finally recovered, but that shook him up and left him feeling a whole lot older and out of shape than he would like. Spontaneously after lunch, he suggested, “Hey man, how about heading over for some healthy sweating in a steam room?” It turned out he meant, head over to his gym and spend some time in the sauna, steam room, and Jacuzzi on a cold gray day and keep the buddy time going. Of course being a long married straight guy, he likely has no idea that there are a couple of gay bathhouses within a few miles of where we were, and I am sure they were getting some midday action from men ducking out of their offices early.


So we did hit his gym, and spent almost an hour leisurely taking in the capacious steam room and sauna, and then the hot tub which was on an elevated perch at a strategic very open alcove between the shower stalls and the locker room. The gym designer had created the perfect cruising platform where the available seats for my friend and me put us in the prime view seats. I was conscious of working hard not to have him catch me gazing at a few of the great looking bodies that strutted toward and around the Jacuzzi. It was even more difficult not to stare over at the two men who joined us in the swirling hot water who were hung like porn stars.

Was he oblivious to all this, as he talked on about one of the consequences of his prostate operation was he no longer got hardons looking at buxom or gorgeous woman all the time? Or was that a macho way of not acknowledging the looks being exchanged around the locker room?

“I have to use Cialis now with my wife, and that works fine, and the goods are still functioning well. So in some ways this was a blessing, as I spent a lot of my married life resisting the turn-ons I got from women and feeling that genital alert signal many times a day. I feel calmer, and my wife is my only real focus now”.


And he captured exactly what I was feeling at that very moment. There was that slight tingle down there as I was in the gym, the heightened sense of being a sexual animal as evidenced by the tension in the body and the darts of eyes when out in public and around men who exude a certain quality. And these constant bombardments of male erotic poses do for me what strolling women did for him, and does for most straight guys, turns us on and competes with sexual urges toward the wife.


We headed out for a drink at a local bar after the gym, each of us sharing how important getting to the gym a few days a week has become as we have gotten older and need to put more regular energy into staying fit and healthy. It also calms you down and lets you sleep better, which is true for me as the longer term effects are much more the draw for me than just the chance to be naked among other men.


I had started the morning feeling lightly blue about the failure to connect to some people over the holiday, and the real me trapped inside the conventional married man role. I ended the day feeling terrific about my time with a buddy, even though I did not divulge myself, and the unintentional bonding we had acknowledging we men get erotic hits all the time. All this left me thinking more about how during the course of a day, or the arc of a social event, I can go through such a wide range of emotions and feelings. The unusual free time I took this holiday forced me not to bury myself in work and household obligations entirely, gave me hundreds of hours of unscripted time, and left me freer to let those feelings flow. And it made me circle back to that theme of dissatisfaction.


Underneath it all, when I am away from Jake, I am aware of a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction that has been there a long time, and I know is primarily there because I do not show my true self to others, and am bottled up. So when I step back and reflect about my life, career, family, friends, and hobbies, It all doesn't add up to total satisfaction and still just can’t make me feel complete.

3.  Connecting to Archtypes

Being a middle aged married man, especially with children beyond the dependency ages, brings its own tendencies to restlessness and doubt and even crises over what does it all mean. I am drawn to novels about men grappling with all this, and find I relate strongly to male characters who find themselves alienated from their social set or trapped in banal marriages or frozen in a career point. Dissatisfaction has lots of sources, and some are things we can control, or try to put in a more realistic perspective.


The middle age searching man, like the protagonist in John Updike’s “Rabbit is Rich”, written when Updike was 48, is not entirely a sympathetic figure. Updike’s guy started off a marriage with some doubts, has an early affair in the first novel of the 4 part “Rabbit” series, and has daily bouts of looking around and saying his life is actually quite rich, then skidding into doldrums and tantrum around all the limits of his life, including the nature of his marriage.

I started the series with "Rabbit Run" and have not finished this third book in the Rabbit Angstrom, series, which in its days got major prizes and stirred up great controversy as it exposed an ugly side to post war, suburban American adulthood.  Plus the work is admittedly not kind to women, and attracted strong repulsion from feminists.  

Updike is an astoundingly good writer who captures the disconnect between the interior monologues and contradictory hopes and fears of a middle aged, fairly unconscious but representative American man.  Rabbit the high school basketball hero become used car salesman, is the poster child of the Mad Man era dissatisfied man. While I feel worlds apart in terms of many qualities of Rabbit Angstrom's life and world, I wince with constant recognition at some of his frustrating alone-time thoughts and barely concealed social anomie.  For many different reasons, but with similar corrosive effect, we are both alienated from conventional monogomous mainstream male culture.

Richard Russo wrote “Straight Man” a generation later, when he was also 48, and his hero has a more kind way of coming to terms with being now middle aged, and accepting the limits he himself put up around his academic life in a mediocre institution. The title has nothing to do with sexual orientation, albeit all the characters are robustly heterosexual.  While Updike is in my opinion a much better writer, revealing the complex irresolutions of adult life and aluding to the decay at the center of many marriages, Russo offers more humane hope for the dissatisfied.

One night drinking with an old buddy they discuss what the magic percentage of “Like” over “Dislike” one needs to have for a spouse to feel yes, this is really a valuable marriage, and I will not get tempted to have an affair or jeopardize this relationship – because no relationship is 100% great, and we all need to settle for some imperfections in one another.

They settle for a 60% satisfaction score as the minimum basis for marital satisfaction and loyalty.  Russo’s hero realizes that he has feelings for his wife that are higher than that average, and they really are a high scoring 75% or more on the satisfaction scale.  So he begins to value what he has more just from that one conversation. 

And the buddies also talk about getting to the middle years when you are no longer making yourself, and building a fresh new career, and youthfully at the center of your own infinitely expanding universe of possibilities.


You accept what you have, the author through his major characters concludes, as decent and good because it is what you have yourself made, and need to take modest but real pleasure in it, “with grace”.  This is not a religious idea of grace, but a humanistic one that acknowledges with both gratitude and good humor the foibles and unrealized pieces that are part of even the best life. 

This idea of grace is not resignation, at least as I recall from a book I read a year ago, but a real deep appreciation that somehow, in some maybe unconscious way, we have made most of what we are as an adult by our mid 40’s and now the developmental task is to keep it rich and robust and savor the good of it.


As I mulled over in my post a few weeks ago, I have come back to a similar theme of what control we have over feeling positive about our existence.  This comes after a strange week of ups and downs, including some restless nights and constrained holiday days of wondering, can I keep doing this marriage thing and make it better, or is it fated to fail and I am too cowardly to leave. The marriage does not change dramatically in the course of a day, but my feelings about it sure can swing wildly. 

I guess it is in my power to see my life as good or not, to see my marriage as valuable or not, and to chart some course forward that is based ultimately on the positive aspects of my life, and a hopeful view of the future.

The existentialist in me can relate to the world of John Updike's frustrated middle aged guys, but the choices he gives them are bleak. The positivist in me seeks the compassionate self acceptance of Russo, but free of his sentimentality and somehow able to accept outside affairs and bisexual or gay sexuality with grace too.  Or at least accept this as a possible stage many otherwise good men go through.

4.  Connecting to My Own Future

I try to fight back the negative feelings, and to become more centered and find regular daily rituals to bring some meaning and joy into my life. This year I have to put even more effort into that. It will be a year of bigger than normal changes, a shift to working part time by my wife, and a move within the same company from my current small town outpost back to the Bay Area.

I have this sweet twilight period now that may go to July or August of still having my weekdays alone and away from my wife, and then the wonderful freedom to be with Jake for overnights on a regular basis will have to end.

I cannot fathom that ending, and want to ignore its approach, but each day of this New Year will require me to invest time in making the big move and doing something with the second home, and that will just keep reminding me that the ending is coming for Jake and me.


My work life will improve, my proximity to old friends will be so much better, and I will return to a place where I have such a strong visceral connection. So some things will be gained. And some big things lost. The one big satisfaction in my life now, my one true honest relationship with Jake, who is knows better now than any other human being, will change.  

The experience with him that has so lifted my spirits in enormous ways, will have to end in its current form. Jake and I have already talked about how we must stay in contact, and both hope we can arrange some visits back and forth, but there will be an abrupt and irreversible cessation of our regular frequent time together, and I will miss that kind of time with him very much. That is one big change in this New Year that will hurt.

It is now the time for vows as one year ends and another begins. 


My vow two years ago to start going to a gym regularly finally worked after years of false starts, and that has actually reduced some of my lows and made me feel more physically fit and less anxious. My vow last year was to stop the almost manic pursuit of men using Adam for Adam sites, and see if one of the guys I had already met, including Jake, might become a more regular steady man. That turned out to be so much more meaningful and sensual and sexually liberating than I ever imagined.


This year I am not searching for a man, but I am still searching to find deeper meaning in my life than just from my career, and have decided to invest more time in creative, expressive activities that will also get me more centered and less restless. My vow this year, started before Christmas, was to do one drawing and write at least one sentence in a small journal I bought last year, like a daily creative diary, and so far I have kept it up.  It is a kind of meditation and way to feel more centered and regular in a year that will have some hard transitions and likely to have some very strong emotional occurances.


This new habit is actually a rekindling of an old practice that got me through some other times of transition.  The commitment to getting out to write and draw has been part of the fun of this break. And there is an immediate positive feedback loop when the journal work opens up a conversation.  Or when making the effort to get out with a friend revives you both.  It is like a good gym work out, or going to hear great music, or just getting a jolt of good feelings from an outing you want to remember.  

Of course great sex is another one of those needs we have that makes us just feel good, and maybe one of the reasons I was more restless on this break than I anticpated was that Jake and I are apart for 3 weeks, and my wife and I are not having sex.   So it was even more important for my mental health to have some new hobby and excursions out of the house and allow myself to venture into the hopeful world of infinite possibilities.

Today I am more calm for some reason, and headed out for one last day alone, laptop and journal in hand and warm clothes to stave off the misty cold day. I find when I just stay in my house alone, it is like spinning around in my head…I can get stuck and feel restless and easily go to the negative.

Jake and I talk about each of our tendencies to crawl into our “man caves” at times, like some wounded animal that instinctually needs to be away from all and rolled into a self comforting ball. I have always felt more alive when I am out in the world and while I can be washed over by sadness and inflicted by a sense of the tragic side of life anywhere, somehow walking around beautiful natural areas or taking in the energy and excitement others radiate in their cities lifts me up some. Or at least I can get my images and words flowing better in some small café, than in my silent enclosing house.

Today again I feel, we do have some control over our petty dissatisfactions by trying to act, or think, and then feel, more positive about our own lives. But the big issue is still out there, not resolved in 2011 and likely not next year either. I am a married man leading a secret life having an affair with a man. I write that and recognize this is an unstable situation. And on this eve of an old year ending, a new one beginning, I am no closer to feeling where to go with the marriage and how to integrate my newfound sexuality into my adult life.

I only know that I need to get out into the world more, make some new friends somehow with whom I can reveal myself, and fight against the twin ogres of dissatisfaction and hopelessness that can trap one between an untenable present, and an unpromising future.

So here is for a Happy New Year for all. I hope this is a year in which you can feel better about who you are, value your current life, and make some new connections that help you feel more balanced and fully alive.  Here is to gaining ground against the creep of dissatisfaction, and to feeling positive about the future.

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T'was a BI/Gay Night Before.

Holiday Cheer

I have always had a penchant for doing parodies and spoofs, and despite my quite serious demeanor, enjoy the lighter things and good humor immensely. Somehow in the little time I have between all the family holiday preparations and gatherings, I found ninety minutes to do a parody of that oft recited holiday Poem by Clement Clarke Moore who penned it for his own kids.
To all my married Guys Like Me
Here is my special version of:
“T’was the night before Christmas”

T’was the night before Christmas and all through my brain
The images of nude men washed down like warm rain
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care
But I longed for hung men without underwear


I tried, like the family, to snuggle in bed
Yet visions of naked men danced in my head
My wife in her sleep mask and I in my cap
Were too tired to screw and she snored through my tap

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter
Away to the window, I flew like a flash
With hard on still throbbing, I threw up the sash

The moon on the skin of the fresh fallen snow
Lit a masculine torso emerging below
And even more wonderous, what should appear
But his fellow buff buddies exuding great cheer

With the limousine driver arriving so quick
I new in an instant it must be Saint Dick
So manly and robust his crewmates they came
As he groped them and stroked them and called them by name


“Now Dasher, now Dancer, now Prancer and Vixen!
On Comet, on Cupid, on Donner and Blitzen!
On the top of the porch, off the side of the wall
Now suck away, fuck away, blast away all!”

As lovers that before the wild hurricane fly
When they meet with an obstacle, mount toward the sky
So up on the housetop the buddies all flew
With lube and with sex toys the better to screw


And then in the moaning and shouts on the roof
The prancing and probing of each gave me proof
That if I held silent and turned full around
Down the chimney Saint Dick would arrive leather bound

He was dressed in red chaps with work boots on each foot
And his ass through his jockstrap was covered with soot
A bundle of chains he had on his back
And he looked like a weight lifter with his six-pack


His eyes how they twinkled, his dimples were merry!
His ass cheeks were gorgeous, his chest was so hairy!
His cock was enormous and balls hung so low
And his blond buzz-cut head felt as soft as new snow


The stub of a joint he held tight in his teeth
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath
He had a fine face and a flat tight smooth belly
And a muscular build that could melt me like jelly

He was pumped up and eager, a right sexual elf
And I panted and drooled, inspite of myself
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread


He spoke not a word, but went straight to work
We merged with such passion it drove me beserk
And just when we both came, and I kissed his nose
With one last big cum spurt, up the chimney he rose!

He sprang to the limo, to the guys gave a whistle,
And away they all sped like the down on a thistle
But I heard him exclaim, ‘ere he drove out of sight
“Happy Christmas my fuck buddy, can’t wait ‘til next night!

 

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