Daydreams Of Silly Things

For every man, there is a song. For every song, there is a memory. And for every memory there is a point in time in which I thought that love would completely annhilate me. For what it's worth, I never thought I would survive the devastation after going from a [WE] to a 'me'. I mean who really truly ever thinks to themselves "I will survive this" after the one who says I love you back stops saying it and suddenly stops sharing your bed, then eventually quits sharing a life with you. Perceptions of a happy ever after are suddenly deflated and there is an infinite sadness that lives on in place of hope. I have lived there. I have lived here. I evolve with my memories and the songs that take me there.

The funny part about loving someone and attaching a memory to them is that every emotion, every ounce of pure unadulterated bliss, becomes this story that only you know. It is forgetful to the people around you and the person that the feelings and emotions were attached to in the first place. A trip down memory lane isn't as quite devastating to another party as it is to the person who owns the memory. We are all in charge of our own stories, so it makes sense that there are different versions of how things were and how they became what they became. Little makes sense to the timeline except for the exact words shared between person 1 and person 2. And even then, it always means something more to one than the other. You will always find me on the side of it always meaning more than it did to the men that I loved. And as difficult of a pill as it is to swallow, this has also affected some of the relationships with women that I have had. As platonic as they were, I beleive (to some degree) that I was the person on the other side that it never matter to at all.

For the sake of being breif and uncomplicated I would like to focus my time on Jason. This is not the Jason that I talk about regularly. This person was my 1996. He was someone that mutual friends set me up with during the early days of my coming out. I desperately wanted to be loved. I desperately wanted to love someone. I wanted to have a fairytale true love gay story with groom and groom and a lifetime of memories. Jason was everything to me for a small period in time. Our first date was nothing spectacular, but it was pretty memorable. A bunch of us headed up to the river on a cold night. We sat around a bonfire. Goofed around and told stories. We talked a lot and got to know one another. Jason and I took off for a little walk and we ended up on top of one another under a bridge, making out, like two horny teenagers. It wasn't magical, but it was memorable.

I remember the day that he told me he was moving back home. It was like a two week deadline and he had apologized to me that we were getting so close so quickly. I didn't do anything to help it I guess. Back then I was throwing my dick around to any bottom that would have me and Jason was such an eager lover. We left hickey marks on one another, we fucked standing up, me on my back, him arched over me. We did it every which way to Sunday and then some. For whatever reason, I was sure that my love and affection would be enough to make him turn around and stay with me. Even during the last few nights that we spent with one another.

Now this is the memory, the song, and the man that I mentioned earlier....and every time I take this walk down memory lane, a small part of my soul gets crushed and I feel my heart break a little again. 

In the smallest bed, probably a full mattress, draped with the worst linens, Jason and I lay side by side. My big spoon to his little spoon. A candle lit the room with just a dim light and my radio was playing Tori Amos. The song CHINA came on and every rush of emotion came to me as I stroked my lovers arms up and down, breathing up and down his neck to capture the essence of the moment. The song is not a love song. In fact, most of the lyrics talk about a strained love.

"Sometimes I think you want me to touch you

How can I when you build a great wall around you

In your eyes I saw a future together

You just look away in the distance"

I remember touching him softly. I remember whispering "I love you baby" into his ears. I remember thinking "why can't you stay with me, why can't you be happy with me?" And it made the emotion and the memory all that more intense and distracting. I couldn't sleep that night. He couldn't sleep that night. With every song on Little Earthquakes all I wanted to do was make love to him. We cried a little. We shared one another. We exploded into an unsharable memory that only ever seems to be captured when romantics write (or direct) Hollywood love stories. And in the quiet of the morning, we showered, got dressed and I took him to the airport. I watched him get on the airplane and he left my life. And it crushed me.

It hurt so much to listen to the songs that played that night.

And it isn't fair to say that the story ended there, but that part of it ended the feeling that I had when I first met him and thought I could love him forever. We tried to do more, but nothing came of it. He eventually cheated on me and left me for someone else. His story had different directions than mine would allow. Even in our late 30's we reklindled something that fizzled rather quickly when we attempted to try to be the 20 year olds we were when we met. I don't hate him. He has found love more times than I can count and I don't understand what it is that he looking for to complete him. It isn't for me to know. I can't really talk to him about things like that anymore. I hope that he knows the place in my heart that I have always had for him. It's a memory attached to a song. And a night that we loved one another without reservation.