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Friday, June 27, 2008

fourth step



•Personal Relations is my deep seated idea of what this type of relationship should look like.
•Sex Relations is my deep seated ideas of how a real man and/or real woman would be in this situation.
excerpted from the jay walker

i have come so far in my belief about sexual encounters in my life. it used to be that i slept with anyone and everyone i could, whenever i could. i did that for years. i never gave it a second thought. i used guys like tissues and they agreed to it, so i rarely even wondered if it was okay. i didn't worry about looking at the soul or the heart of my partners, rather i looked at their outsides and i looked at whether they fit my requirements. if i could set them into my preconceived mold of how the encounter should look.

when i did my fourth step on sex and relationships, sadly there were so many that i could neither count accurately nor could i remember very many names. this is actually appalling to me now, so please do not read callousness in my tone here. i have had to come to terms with my behavior and i have done my best to do so. most of my partners were in agreement with this practice at the time and were of similar minds. it was sex as sport. it was completely recreational without relationship baggage attached. it is not how i look to live my life now. i have begun the forgiveness process and have started to let go as well.

i still objectify good looking men at times, as you can tell by some of the pics i post. but i do that in an adoring fashion hopefully, and i also think that eye candy works to perk one's interest, both for me and the reader. but i have definitely changed my tune with regard to tricking. i have tried it a couple of times in sobriety and it has really been more than underwhelming. it doesn't interest me any longer. i don't want to be validated with a knob job or a ben dover. i would now much prefer a conversation and a shared idea over a shared meal.

i'm glad things have changed. i feel much better about myself and my life this way. the chain doesn't get rattled quite so often, and i have begun to look for something that has much more substance.

and to anonymous- this i am positive is jean carne. i distinctly remember this song of hers as well as "free love". i used to huckle buck at a club called "le pub" in my platform shoes and my flared jeans. hot, hot, hot- or not, not, not.... and i still love the star wars sounds in the music of those days.

Was That All It Was - Jean Carne

3 comments:

Java said...

I cannot comprehend that "sex as sport" attitude about sex. I know about it, I know it's fairly common among young people in general and young gay men especially. Maybe it's a gender thing. Women tend to be more emotionally involved. Objectifying sex like that cuts out the best part. It's like eating the plain bun with no meat in the middle. (OK, that was a very sexual reference, wasn't it?) Your more recent attitude about sex and relationships seems much more healthy.

Mark Olmsted said...

Yes, Java, it is a male thing, for sure.
As a gay man who's undergone a similar trajectory, I can say there is also a third way, in between sportsex and relationship sex. If you are very lucky, you can have what I call open-door sex, in which you are warm and friendly with the one you are having sex with, while the door is open to something more and yet there is no pressure to force things in a particular direction. It's fun and playful, but comfortable.
That said, it doesn't happen too often. But I'm amazed at how okay I am night after night going about my business and not out on the "hunt." The compulsive search, that feeling that not having sex often was somehow a mark of inadequacy--that is gone.

Northwest said...

Oh man can I relate to this post. But then again, what formerly tweaking gay man would not? You defined the sexual lives we all lived when we used. Meth opened all doors necessary to trick early and often.

The two cannot be separated, until one becomes paranoid of course. And then sex is all a mental activity (the saddest of sad states a meth addict can reach in my view).

I have not reconstituted a healthy sex life since I got sober. It is a challenge my partner and I simply have not been able to tackle yet.

Some would find that tragic. But when you spent so long pursuing every form of sex you could think up, it isn't such a tragedy to take one's time putting things right, especially with the man you have committed your life to.

But it reminds us of the price we paid for valuing "trickery" over fidelity.

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