And There You Have It

You know, I think my life is pretty good, for the most part. Actually, that's kind of a cheesy qualification. My life is pretty good across the board. Especially when you consider the lives of many people. I kill a lot of time in chat rooms when I'm bored, and there are people out there, my friends, who're angry about life, and revel in being mean-spirited and cruel. There's something about the anonymity of the internet chat experience that just brings out the worst in people... or maybe they don't need help in brining it out. I don't know. Whatever the reason, though, I find it really depressing.

I'm not really one of those self-help-books-for every-occasion sorta people, but I'm continually reminded of The Four Agreements - a sort of Toltec view of the world - and one of the agreements particularly: Take nothing personally. Essentially, that means that whatever someone says, whatever someone does, however angry at you they are, however foully they treat you, it really has nothing to do with you; it's entirely about what they are feeling inside.

But when faced with the cruelty of angry, blind people on the internet, it's hard to hew to that particular party line. Some of the things that people say to other people are just so amazingly unkind and deliberately hurtful that it makes me blanch.

And all this when I'm not even the object of the derision! It's the underdog in me that makes me feel for the cyber-downtrodden. I've actually been lucky in that I've made a couple of very good "friends" in the chat rooms, and among ourselves we make the chat experience a lot of fun, tending to ignore the really nasty crap going on around us. Don't get me wrong - these guys I'm chatting with aren't real friends (hell, I don't even know if they're real people - in the sense that they may or may not be who they say they are in their chat profiles); they're acquaintances with whom I enjoy passing idle time. I like that we create this little oasis for ourselves in the middle of all the weirdness, but still manage to engage in the weirdness, too. None of us would claim to not enjoy the occasional hookup, after all!

So, as much as I love my apartment and my roommates, sometimes when all three of us are in town at the same time, it can get a little crowded - so I'm delaying going home by hanging out at the Starbucks in Chelsea. I've been thinking lately that I don't get out enough, so I elected to walk across town (*GASP*) and take the subway down here, in hopes of finding a table.

You'd be surprised (or, maybe you wouldn't) by the number of e-mails I get from people who read this journal and get pissed off at me for supporting Starbucks instead of tiny little mom & pop type places. Truth is, though, those places get crowded, and dammit it's hard to find an outlet in those places! So anyway, I'm in the heart of clone central, hanging out at a coffee shop.

Friday night is a good night to try to get in quality hang time at a coffee shop... everyone rushes home after work to get ready for their night on the town. The other side of that coin, however, is that there's not a ton of eye candy hanging around the ol' Starbucks at this hour - and what eye candy there is is paired up with other eye candy. Not that I'm looking, mind you... that's just too much craziness for me to be involved in at this point in my life.

I've been thinking lately that it's time to really focus on me; getting my life to where I want it to be. I've made a lot of progress at it lately, and I don't want to be distracted. Of course, being a Gemini (or just plain fucking wishy-washy), I play my own Devil's Advocate: Maybe my desire to focus on making me happy with me is more about avoiding taking a risk on some random guy; you can't fail at what you don't attempt, right?

It's a recurring theme in my life - something I do to myself a lot. Way too much navel-gazing when it comes to my own motivations. Sometimes I think I should just live my life and shut the fuck up.

My god, there may be dearth of eye candy in the Starbucks, but there's a butt load of it walking by outside. Too bad it's dark outside, I'd get a better view.
For all my attempts to insist that I'm focusing on other things, there's no denying that my libido is as active as ever it was. I'd like to tell you that I'm above all that, but the plain fact of it is I'm a guy who's been out of his last relationship for over a year and hasn't had tons of luck with dating, so consequently hasn't gotten laid a whole lot in the recent past.

I did have an experience recently, though, that really made me focus on what it is I'm looking for in the way of potential partners - one-nighters as well as life-timers.

There was a guy who I'd met online (I know - you can keep those comments to yourself... it helps me avoid smoky, nasty bars, in which I'd still have the circumstances I'm about to describe) who I found charming, thought was really cute from his picture, and seemed to me to be interested in hooking up. It was made pretty clear that neither of us were looking for more, which was okay by me... I'm not a prude, and I'm single, free and healthy.

Well, I ended up at this guy's place, and he was many of the things that actually drive me wild about a guy, the details of which I'm sure you don't need to hear. We got down to, uh, transacting business, and a couple of things became obvious: His ideas about sex were formed largely by watching gay porn (which, in my opinion is the least romantic thing ever committed to film (or, in this case, video), and he actually needed poppers (a popular inhalant/drug, for the uninitiated) to... well, forgive the frankness: get off.

I'm not a prude, friends. I accept that there are people out there who need and or like these things, and want to include them in their sexual lives. And I'm all about "as long as you're not hurting anyone else, you should enjoy yourself." But the experience did focus what it is that I want out of these sorts of transactions.

I want some sort of connection outta this kinda thing. I'm not saying I have to believe that every person I sleep with is gonna be my life partner. That's not just unreasonable, it's idiotic. Finding a life partner take time, takes experimentation, as it were; exploration. But even mindless sex for me can't be completely mindless; there's got to be a reason I'm there with that person, there's got to be some sort of a connection, even if it's just on my side and it's only of the "we're helping each other out of a hormone-fraught down period" variety. I'm not sure I'm explaining this well.

This experience, that I'm talking about? It didn't matter that it was me who was there. Any body would have done. My uniqueness really didn't add (or detract... maybe it woulda been okay had it detracted) from the experience of the guy I was with. Maybe I'm really not good at meaningless sex.

Actually, I think in saying that I've found the distinction I wanted; maybe I'm putting too fine a point on it, but I think there is a difference between meaningless sex and mindless sex. I don't think every sexual encounter has to have meaning, but I don't see the point of sex that's rote.

Does that make sense?