the long road.

i'd been waiting to meet him for months. i'd added him while trolling random guys on facebook. creepy, yes, but he had one if those super-watt smiles that makes you want to feel that happiness.

we exchanged a couple of messages but he was never very forthcoming to conversation and i figured he wasn't interested in me. why would he be? he was perfect and i was a stalker who messaged him on facebook about some arbitrary topic to make the awkward opening only slightly less awkward. he had tons of friends, he was active and glowing and i was stuck somewhere between heartbroken and heartstrong. a real catch.

eventually i gave up and stopped messaging him, i deleted him from facebook after adding him aggressively because i had already embarrassed myself enough. my jaded energy rubbed off on everything i was part of. i was low and scared and unsure and markedly unhappy about every romantic piece of shattered glass in my life.

this year we started speaking again. i messaged, of course, but i couldn't help it. i was scrolling through my whatsapp contacts and there he was. smile and all. we would exchange occasional "heys", sometimes i would message and receive no reply which i began to understand was not an attack on me but simply his busy life. cool.

we stopped talking for a bit again. occasionally i would say hi and he would tell me he was horny or masturbating. i didn't really know how to take those messages. as poignant as my sexual past is (that may be an odd adjective but it has been... poignant), sexually aggressive and straightforward messages aren't my forte. i wield my sexual energy through physical interaction - it's stronger and more authentic that way. sending a dick pic really doesn't get my juices bubbling. whenever he would message in this manner, i would laugh it off and nothing more. the conversation would die until the next awkward hello.

once i asked if he would ever be interested in meeting. we both go to the same university so meeting would not be a problem. he informed me that he was busy with school and that if we ever met it would have to be on his terms and i couldn't rush it. those were his words: his terms. i assumed he meant he wanted absolute control of the situation and didn't want to be pressured. every subsequent message about meeting would either go unanswered or ignored completely - why can't i read "the signs"? because my quest for this love-construct i have created in my head outweighs the signs.

this week i messaged him early in the morning. "jocking" was his response when i asked what he was up to. "jocking" is colloquial for masturbating. i replied, "show me." on came a sleuth of photographs of his erection from various angles. suffice to say, i was instantly drawn in. the conversation meandered along, until he asked my sexual position - a question i abhor over a textual conversation. i answered "vers" but with a disclaimer: that sexual chemistry wasn't something to be decided over a whatsapp conversation.

"i'm top," he appropriated. so there it was - no questions, this was who he was. this was a sexual conversation. this was not about how cute my profile picture looked or how well-spoken i was. it wasn't about my intellectual ability or stimulating conversation. it was about my anus.

"would you let me fuck you?"

"yes," i said - unsure of myself. did i enjoy bottoming? certainly not in a random hookup instance. impersonal, in agony and detached is how i feel if ever getting fucked by a complete stranger. it isn't my sexual caviar. but his smile, the 3083498 penis shots he had sent and the fact that i had been trying to meet this boy in the flesh for a long time overrode the facts that i knew within myself. i put aside who i am and what i know of me for him.

he was a horny fucker that morning and thus he said we could meet later that evening. i was excited. very excited. but i was excited because i wanted to meet a beautiful guy who i could connect with; a guy who would want to hold my hand while i put my head in the nook of his neck while we spoke about last night's episode. the purpose of this meeting was thoroughly sex, though, as put forward by him. he even asked that i bring condoms. but this is where my mind plays the trick: i cannot disengage between what i want and the actual reality of what someone is requesting of me. in actuality, i probably fall too easily, love too much and have a massive amount of hope that is truly saddening, threatening and scary.

throughout the day i messaged him and asked if we would still meet. "yeah, most likely." most likely. the two words that kept me going through that tuesday - even in that instance "most likely" was a shining beacon to me, when in reality it was the invalidation of my emotions. it was not a definite answer, it was not a "yes, i want to meet you and can't wait." it was a consolation, it was a maybe i can, maybe i can't - you're just going to have to wait see if i'm still horny enough to be tantalised by the thought of meeting you to stick my penis inside you. i was the crack addict and the prospect of meeting a guy that seemed sexually appealing and also vaguely sweet was rock. and i was ready to inhale.

we met in the darkness an hour after we had planned. he saw me coming and walked over. "james?" he asked although it was obvious i was james. i was nervous and desperate: i oozed it; i smiled at him, i engaged him, i simultaneously wanted to die and rise. we walked for a bit until deciding to sit in a dark park area on campus. we spoke for some time, nice conversation really about many things. were we forging a connection or was this polite preamble? eventually we went off in search of some adventurous space to fuck.

polite preamble, it was.

we found a spot and started to kiss. it was nice. he is slightly taller than me, the perfect height for intimate kissing, where you can lean your bodies together and feel your heartbeats as if they are colliding in the same space. things got heated and then i lied: i said i didn't have a condom. he wanted to fuck anyway.

"that's irresponsible," was my stance. the real irresponsibility was lying about not having a condom, not being honest about why i didn't want to have sex, giving in completely to my physical ethos and sucking his cock the first ever time meeting him. so, there i was: a hypocrite, a liar and completely emotionally dressed up, pretending to be someone i wasn't and acting like i wanted things without being specific about the context in which i needed them.

"you know, when someone sticks their cock in my ass i usually prefer that i be in love with them." why couldn't i say that? why couldn't i be honest? was i that hyper-aware of his feelings? too accommodating to the stranger i met who would fuck me without a condom because he was so involved in his own visceral experience to care about every other conjecture?

yes, it was the first time we had met but did that mean that my wants and needs were any less than it would be if it was the fifteenth time we had met? no.

honesty is like the trap door you so desperately want to peer through but are too nervous or incomplete to be able to fully accept what it could reveal when opened. it's there - present, abrupt, nagging - but it's shunned. don't be too honest upfront, don't lay all your cards on the table, play the game, don't say i love you first, don't let yourself feel more than the other person, don't tell him that or he will freak out.

where did all this advice come from? and who thinks being this repressed about your emotional necessities is healthy to anyone? holding back isn't going to hurt the guy who "most likely" would see me at 7pm which turned into 8. it isn't going to exonerate him, or fulfill him, or make him feel satisfied that he was at least the person he knew he was. it hurts me - the one who knows that the experience i want is not the one being experienced.

i am so far away from the person i think i am. my mind and actions don't work in tandem and i am probably self-destructive to a tee. and so the long road awaits, the one where i walk and "find myself", and get to some place "within me" - some dodgy, corny hogwash. at the core, the reality is i need to start caring as much about myself as i care about the projection of myself.

and i need to be enough.