Love and sex, so confusing. Both cause problems, both bring happiness. Last night after I wrote, it wasn’t all peace and love. The intake session with Jamie Jones reopened some wounds, for me at least. There is still the issue of an open relationship. I find myself surprised at the traditionalist stance. Me, Mr. Iconoclast. We discussed the issue over steaks at Arthur’s. I devoured my steak, Bill didn’t have much of an appetite.

Bill is clearly into the free love thing, I am the romantic. I have had my fun playing at an early age, from about 1977 to about maybe 2000. Quite a run. But it had gotten tiresome. And when I met Bill I had hoped that it wouldn’t be that way anymore, the running around and stuff. I was wrong apparently.

I don’t have to go to a Bathhouse or a Sex Club to bust a nut. I know where to go, granted it’s usually a hit and run scene, but it’s what I know best. Bill knows the Sex Clubs and bathhouses. I had done a lot, just never made that leap to the sex clubs.

Last week Bill had a plan to go to a club in the city and I have to admit it was enticing, yet there was a fist of anxiety in my gut. We had discussed it before, how I felt that it would be like the atrocious film, ‘Summer of Sam’ when Mira Sorvino and John Leguizamo go to Plato’s Retreat and Leguizamo sees Sorvino messing about and he turns out to be repulsed by what he sees, despite the fact that he encouraged her to do it. Life imitating art is what I am afraid of.

There is the love between us, and also the fear that each has, that one could fall in love with the sexual partner of the moment. It has been a feeling I’ve lived with for a long time. Not an easy situation, loyalty versus promiscuity. The knowledge that the one you love is in bed waiting for you doesn’t lend much credibility.
This tends to happen when you think with the smaller head.

It is a great concept. I told Bill when I was trying to get him to have sex with me over the summer, that Sex is Sex and Love is Love and when you have the two together it’s incredible. That was verbatim.

Back then, in July, he was very angry with me for over a fucking year and didn’t say anything to me, just shunned me. Rebuffed any advance that I had put out. That was truly a definitive character building exercise in my life.

I’ve whored around quite a bit and there was a dalliance here and there but they were mainly unconsummated. The Old Catholic guilt hangs around this atheist’s neck like an albatross.

I also look at relationships and how society bases itself on fidelity, between two people.

I based Bill and myself on those principals, and look what that has gotten me.

It was baseless of course because it was entirely one sided. Bill likes a lot of sexual partners. I like one. I could easily find one to play with, they’re always around. I have my pics online, but instead of just chatting it wouldn’t take much to go to the next level of meeting and fucking around. I didn’t want to prove to straight people that gay men are dogs and will fuck around at the drop of a hat.

I can’t guarantee that I wouldn’t fall in love with someone else through sex. I don’t know if anyone can, especially if it’s really good sex. Hoboken is such a homo town it’s really not a problem to go over to someone else’s apartment and fool around. It can be so easily done.

For me it’s simply a matter of falling back into my old habits and predatory ways. Since this all started, and I did have my rendezvous a few weeks ago, it’s easy.

Bill and I are both HIV negative. Safe sex is the key. That’s what I would do. My friends say that I’m a catch, meaning, good looking. I just got to motivate myself and get out there and sample the world. I was going to go to the Townhouse this evening, a gay bar a few blocks away from work. But Bill said he was coming over tonight so I didn’t go.

This (blog) is more important than sitting in a bar and turning off any intellect I may possess. But it is a nice ego stroke to be admired and lusted after.

All anyone would have to do is say something intelligent. And believe me, that never happens in gay bars. Somebody might think I’m good looking and me, being me, doesn’t believe it. But I love to talk, and not small talk. I love good conversation. Not many gay men do it seems. The day of and the myth of the witty gay man, i.e. Oscar Wilde is over. And I don’t think I’m going to run into David Sedaris at the Townhouse.

The Townhouse by the way is on east 58th Street. It was three bars, and really resembles a funeral home. Instead of a casket there is a piano, and show tunes.

My company’s holiday party is this Friday in Chelsea, the belly of the beast. I was toying with the idea of going to a bar in the area, and checking out the meat. I just have to anticipate the horrid music that will most definitely assault my ears. Now don’t think I’m making bold assumptions. Go to any gay bar, especially in Chelsea, and you will see and hear virtually the same music and chatter and patrons in each bar you go to. Check your intellect at the door.

I’m sure one of the guys that I work with that are ‘queer’ will go with me if asked.

So many hurdles. Go to a gay bar with some neck I work with and pay a wad of dough for beer and listen to dreadful house music while not fitting at all in the gay scene that exists and that I have never been a part of.

Sounds like fun, huh?

Today was C day. Day for counseling. After the past few months, weeks, days, hours and minutes (don’t get me started on the seconds) Bill had set up an appointment to start the ball rolling and we would begin counseling. Well actually today was all about intake. To see if we deserve counseling? See if we had fundage for the session? Who knows? The appointment was at 6PM. I left work early, which was something I hadn’t been able to do for the past few weeks.

Timed it so I’d be able to stroll down Fifth Avenue and still smoke my cigar. You see, I do have my priorities straight. Also picked up some of the last remaining packs of Gauloises in Manhattan. In midtown yet. Someone was asleep at the wheel of the van driving to Sloan Kettering.

Got on an ‘R’ train to 14th street. Being rush hour it was crowded and being that I caught the train around Macy’s made it even more crowded. I didn’t mind much. I did have some apprehension about the session. Got to 11th street in the Village and went into the building. Got on a elevator with 3 other people in need of therapy. We all got off on the same floor so that’s how I knew.

As I approached the window to register, Bill appeared as the woman behind the glass was about to ask if there was someone else with me. Bill said yes, and it was him. Which was nice, because it was him with me.

The woman behind the glass came out and gave Bill and me some clipboards and forms to fill out to begin the intake process. Usual name, address info. Piece of cake. After we handed them in Jamie Jones showed up. She was our intake person. Nice, probably a grad student.

She walked us through a buzzing door and walked us to a large walk in closet. She sat us both down and said that she was going to see us one on one so somebody had to go and wait in the waiting area. I volunteered. I looked at Bill who looked uneasy about the whole thing. I tried to reassure him that it was going to be alright, it’s not going to hurt.

I don’t think I reassured him. I sat and read a New York Times Magazine from November. I read an article about genetic (genomes?) medicine and a disease affecting Amish and Mennonite children in Pennsylvania Dutch country. It was well written and I was engrossed. Then I read about Darwinian Literature. Also fascinating. I thought Bill’s intake was going to be 45 minutes but it seemed to be running long.

I was getting concerned when Bill finally came out. He looked even more uneasy that he did when I left him an hour earlier. I tried to let him know that everything was going to be ok.

I followed Jamie Jones into the walk in closet and sat on her couch. She had a few questions, starting out with where was I born? Hackensack Hospital, Hackensack NJ. So far so good. I was on top of things, answered questions truthfully and intelligently. Added a touch of humor when I felt it was needed. Talked about my education, or lack of it. My mother’s death. Crying. Drugs. Alcohol. And Bill. All the major issues in my life. My relationship with my father. My anxieties and worries.

It ended and Bill and I walked out. We talked a lot about the session, where we are going in life, and how we are going to go through life together even if it kills us. Bill treated me to a steak at Arthur’s Steakhouse in Hoboken. It was nice, not too many people like on weekends. We were able to have a pint each. Actually a pint and a half since Bill couldn’t finish his.

That’s what love is, finishing your partner’s pint of Guinness. It was a deep discussion and we both seem to be looking forward to where it might lead. Objectivity and subjectivity. That is what it’s all about. That and a half pint of Guinness.