I started to live again in my late 20’s I think I was 27 or 28 when I had my first visit to Hillside campground. I had met a few local gays through of all things bear in Canada . Hillside is a blast if very scary to someone who had had little exposure to other gay men let alone a bunch of horny half naked cruisey gay men in a place known for sex parties. I really was a novice at it all. Girl the things I saw in the first half hour there… Makes me um, nostalgic… Yeah that’s it Nostalgic.
I had been going to the Bikestop at least once a week for a few years by then and one of the great people I met was Ron, I had a crush on him because he was living the kind of life I wanted to live, Society for Creative Anachronisms, Bear club (Ron, me and a few others had started Buddy Bears which became the Delaware Valley Bears the first Bear club in Philly), and just living an open life. Well Ron didn’t feel the same for me so I moved on.
I met Jim when I was 29 and I was feeling really bad about my life, Mom was gone and my sisters and I were sharing the family house but Mom had written me out of her will when I was seeing Mary (Mom hated her with a fury unlike God had seen before) and so the house belonged to Jean and Cathy and I was feeling like a guest in the house I grew up in. Jim was living with an older lover and the situation was not good for either of them. Jim and I lied to each other about just about everything and thought the other didn’t catch on. We got an apartment in Philly and things just devolved in a few months to me feeling no KNOWING I was living a lie and Jim having such stress on him that he eventually snapped. He told me something that scared me enough that I took off and moved in with Eric’s girlfriend Stephanie. I had been working as a Psychic for the Psychic Friends Network but felt it was not going anywhere so I quit and Jim got me a job at Wawa. The Wawa job sucked rancid bat shit and after I left Jim it just got worse. I started to go to the Tom Cat cinema for cheep anonymous sex and really got into debasing myself (I did warn you I would be bearing my soul here). I eventually lost the job at Wawa when I got a terrible flu (The more I know about Congestive Heart Failure I think that’s when my condition started) and couldn’t get out of bed most days. Stephanie couldn’t afford to keep me as her housemate and eventually told me to leave. Devastated and sick I limped back to my sisters’ tail between my legs and a hole where my soul had been.
So there I was turning 30 and no one in my life, living at home and driving a delivery truck for a homophobic NAPA store. My life was complete!
But I’m nothing if not lucky. I’ve always found a way to fall into what I want even if it means going through hell first. Ron and I had remained friends, I still consider him one of my best friends even though we run in very different circles. Ron had called me up asked me if I could help with the Mr. Philadelphia Leather event at the Bikestop and I said yes because I could be at the ‘stop and not have to think about meeting anyone because I had decided that I would never find love so I might as well just drink and not get to involved with anyone but my friends. I was selling tickets to the Leather pageant when Ron came up to me and said there was this hot bear named John on the 3rd floor asking about the Delaware valley Bears, I should answer his questions but not let anyone else near him because Ron wanted him. Ron was working a 3rd shift job at the time and had to leave for work. I said I would and left the booth to the others. I went up to the “Top of the Stop” and saw who Ron was talking about. I looked at him and it appeared he saw me and was giving me the brush off so I left the floor and went to the basement bar called the “Pitstop”. It took me a while to get down there and I found that John had beaten me there. I had promised Ron that I would answer John’s questions and so I made my way over and introduced myself. John hadn’t seen me on the 3rd floor after all and I felt more comfortable talking to him then. So comfortable that we eventually started kissing and I went home with him to his place in Reading PA.
I will tell you right now that there IS such a thing as “Love at first Sight”. John is everything I had been looking for, smarter than most people I had ever met, caring, compassionate, older than me, and had his head together. I still don’t understand what he sees in me, but I’m not going to over think love, that kind of thinking leads to madness. One of the funny things about our first days together is that I was monitoring a safe sex party the night after the Leather event and invited John to come along. He jumped at the chance as he had never been to one before. Before we left I said to him “Look I’m only chaperoning the first part and will want to play around myself the other half, If that’s a problem let me know and I’ll stop. I already feel something special her and don’t want to ruin it.” He made me promise the same thing even through my protestations that I “didn’t have a jealous bone in my body”. Thus our second ‘date’ was an orgy. Sure enough watching John have fun with a group of guys was a bit much for me but I kept my mouth shut because I wanted him to have fun, we weren’t a couple after all, we had only met the night before. Once my shift was over I just couldn’t bring myself to have any fun despite the attempts of the guys around me. I finally said to john that I was not interested in anyone but him and with a sigh of relief he admitted the same. We went up the stair into the ‘no sex area’ and lay down on the couch cuddling and kissing. I told him I thought I loved him right there and he said the same to me.
We talked about my moving in with him and open relationships, we decided that I couldn’t move in for 6 months and if after 1 year we felt the relationship could handle it we would open it up to others, like I said he was older and much more intelligent than anyone else I had met. 6 months to the day I had a job in Reading and I moved in and we decided to get married at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading on our 1 year anniversary.
Wow that’s a long post, More coming tomorrow.
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